When It Comes to Innovation, Focus on the Process

The potentialities for health care innovation are professedly limitless. However, even the foremost robust health care organizations can’t pursue every great idea. That’s why a focused approach to innovation is important and ultimately helps create digital products and services that make a difference in peoples’ lives and well-being.How to begin the innovation process? Admittedly, the foremost important step doesn’t sound too innovative – specialize in truth problem you're trying to unravel. If that looks like a no brainer, it’s actually a radical mind-flip for health care. Too many of our organizations specialize in financials and what’s best for the enterprise when it’s really all about the end-user. We also got to stop pertaining to those we function patients and use the term “consumer” instead. Patients, because the word implies, suffer and await us to form decisions for them – not precisely the way most folks want to be regarded. Consumers are vital, decision-making members of the community who actively seek the simplest partner for health care.

Next, recognize that buyers have problems to unravel. This, too, might not sound like news since we all know the U.S. health system has many problems. However, not all problems bother our customers, so being selective is critical. Find the sweet spot of finding solutions to problems that adjust with big issues addressed in your strategic plan. For instance, Providence St. Joseph Health is pursuing answers to psychological state concerns during a big way. meaning we give points to pursuing solutions that help keep people emotionally well.

It helps to possess a system and process when defining the scope of your work. We’ve established that achieving consumer value may be a must, but there are three other factors to consider: caregiver value, financial value, and enhancement of quality of care. 

Before we tackle a drag, we'd like to understand our solution will help improve the work of those who are providing the care. The financial value may be a must for any responsible organization. And, the work should ultimately enhance the standard of care, making health care better. These four factors aren't always evenly weighted, but can't be overwhelmingly skewed. For instance, we would like to pursue a drag that will make us more financially responsible, but if the answer has limited consumer value it'll not succeed.

Once we’ve defined the matter and scored the worth of our pursuit we size and prioritize it. If it's an enormous concern that directly impacts a serious strategic goal, it shoots to the top of the queue. Less pressing but still important smaller projects should get attention although with less urgent deadlines. Next, the fun begins with what we call “the technology cascade.”

 The idea is to create trust, bring all stakeholders along as partners, and ensure credibility

this is often a sleuthing activity, with the goal of determining the way to achieve the simplest possible answer to a prioritized problem statement. First, we glance within our own organization and determine if we already own the answer. That’s the simplest possible situation because it proves we’re truly conscious of customer concerns.

If there’s nothing owned internally, we scan the market. we glance for best-of-breed companies, which is where our risk capital arm, Providence Ventures, comes into play, helping us find the simplest of the simplest. But we don’t tap into every opportunity we identify. We may check out many companies a year and only make a couple of investments. And if we don’t find just the proper answer through our market scan, we may make the choice to create it.

There are not any short cuts going to the “build” decision, albeit it’s easy to urge excited about the likelihood of making and controlling the event of something new. nobody gets points for originality – we get points for solving a drag. the simplest digital solutions not only solve a drag for our own customers, but also for those in other markets. For instance, we incubated our Circle app to supply trusted content and engagement for expecting mothers, and, when it had been evident our work would help others beyond our market, other health systems took an interest in it and licensed Circle also.

More keys to success? Reach bent stakeholders on a daily basis. this suggests quite simple check-ins with board members and executive teams. It means working through your digital and innovation strategies during a way that promotes collaboration and frank dialogue.

In fact, you want to build regular communication into your process. And remember that technology moves so quickly that you simply may have to frequently circle back during this work, especially once you modify your course. the thought is to create trust, bring all stakeholders along as partners, and ensure credibility. Remember, it’s not the stakeholders’ job to know what you are doing, but it’s your responsibility to stay credible and establish trust within the pursuit of innovation.

Yes, the chances for health care innovation are enormous. Those folks fortunate to be the innovators must maintain the main target and discipline to urge it right. Our organizations and our customers depend upon it.