Healthcare Enablers

How to innovate succesfully?

 

Six keys to successful health innovation

New technologies and applications offer a wealth of opportunity to improve and reorganise healthcare. This is not necessarily about introducing the technology as such, but rather about the way in which the technology actually adds value for users: patients and healthcare professionals. How do we ensure that technology makes the best possible contribution to healthcare innovation? Or better still: how can technology contribute to the necessary healthcare transformation?

Although technological applications are finding their way into healthcare more and more and are becoming an inherent part of the healthcare process, their deployment and use is not always self-evident. In the past five years, Health Enablers took a deep dive into over 500 innovative examples and performed an extensive case study with over 50 innovations to unravel the keys to successful implementation. Based on the lessons learned, we list six keys to successful healthcare innovation, to strengthen the innovative capability of healthcare organisations. Not with the intention to be non-exhaustive, but to open the door for a collaborative way forward. The keys are explained in more depth in the publication of Healthcare Enablers.

Innovation is centred around the end-user

The biggest danger is to focus on the technology itself rather than the problems it is meant to solve or the value it is supposed to deliver. Only the end-user can clearly state the problem that a certain technology may be able to solve.

INNOVATION DEMANDS AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

Technology is just one of the ingredients of successful innovation; it accounts for 10% of the innovation process. Innovation is a continuous process that includes process innovation, social innovation and technological innovation that make up the foundation of a sustainable change.

INNOVATION REQUIRES HEALTHCARE REORGANISATION

Incremental innovations are not enough; successful healthcare innovation demands outside-the-box thinking. Think fundamentally about what issue you want to solve, what the underlying barriers are and what contribution technology can make to the solution. Many organisations are rebooting their strategy and focus on digital healthcare in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

INNOVATION IS A CYCLICAL PROCESS OF EXPERIENCING, LEARNING AND ADJUSTING

Innovation is not a linear process with a clearly defined start and finish. The innovation approach is one of experimentation and multiple iterations. It is a cyclical process with many small steps. Most of those steps provide a sense of progress but it is inevitable to be taking a couple of steps back every now and then.

CREATE THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS AND CAPABILITY FOT INNOVATION SUCCESS

The ability to innovate demands more than just a few good ideas, technologies or enthusiastic professionals. It requires attention to multiple aspects, such as: 1. The innovation approach, 2. Available resources, knowledge and skills among healthcare professionals and end-users, and 3. the financial preconditions.

Innovation is the result of co-creation

Co-creation is the only way to make our healthcare system future-proof. Co-creation is a transparent process where all relevant parties collaborate actively and build on each other’s complementary insights, knowledge and skills. It is learning from each other and exchanging success stories as well as failures that will promote our joint learning curve in healthcare.

Innovation Maturity Model

The power of healthcare to innovate depends on the capacity of new, but in particular existing, healthcare organizations’ capacity to innovate. Not all organisations are equally advanced when it comes to innovation culture. This may be due to conscious choices, but also by absence of certain preconditions. One organization anticipates and creates, while another waits until an innovation has proven itself before proceeding to implementation. There are various models and theories to map the innovation capacity of organizations. Providing insight into aspects for increasing the innovation capacity provides tools for organizations to get started themselves. But where to start?

The Innovation Maturity Model (IMM) provides insight into the innovation maturity of a healthcare organization. The stage an organisation is at is determined on the basis of various aspects divided between dimensions such as strategy and governance, funding, results and measurability, methods, culture, competencies and communication. In order to further innovate, organisations will have to include innovation in their long-term strategy, make innovation part of their culture, and invest in innovation competencies. A random sample shows that more than three quarter of the Dutch Healthcare organisations score on the level of ‘innovation seeker’ or ‘innovation builder’.

A simple assessment shows where improvements can be made to strengthen the innovation capacity of the healthcare organization. By investing in our healthcare organisations’ capacity to innovate, we can really make sure that these technologies will serve as an enabler in making our healthcare sector futureproof.

 

CURIOUS WHERE YOUR ORGANISATION STANDS? DO THE TEST!