Several powerful innovations have moved into the healthcare space in recent years. However, there is some debate about those technologies and their longevity in the ever-changing payer-provider dynamic.
Panelists discussed innovation and entrepreneurship in healthcare during a Sept. 21 panel at the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference, which took place Sept. 19-22 in Chicago. The panelists included Megan Ranney, MD, director and founder of the Emergency Digital Health Innovation program at Providence, R.I.-based Brown University; Simon Lin, MD, chief research information officer at Nationwide Children's Hospital and professor of pediatrics and biomedical informatics at The Ohio State University, both in Columbus; and Aaron Symanski, chief technology officer at Change Healthcare.
Here are three thoughts panelists had on healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship:
1. When asked what he considered to be the most groundbreaking technological advancement to hit the healthcare industry in 2018, Mr. Symanski said he did not believe there was one.
"I haven't seen a groundbreaking innovation [this year], but what I have seen more and more are [healthcare organizations] reaching out to patients and interacting with them … instead of forcing them into patterns that fit how healthcare is delivered today or how it's typically run," Mr. Symanski said. "There is more of a tele-presence, more chat, email — points of contact that are more willful than going to a large facility. I think this is just beginning and will creep up more and more."
2. Dr. Lin discussed a book entitled The Innovator's Dilemma and how healthcare executives can incorporate practices outlined in the book into their organizations.
"The key idea from that book is that in order to stimulate innovation, you need to build up a team and give them some room to fail and not hold them responsible … so they have the freedom to explore and a safe environment [in which] to fail. … I think healthcare systems can do that in different ways," he said.
3. "I'm obviously a huge digital health and technology evangelist — I think it has immense capability for extending our workforce and helping us take care of vulnerable patients. But I feel that a lot of the things we're excited about — like artificial intelligence — are overblown," said Dr. Ranney.
"The way the [tech] cycle works is that in order to get venture capital funding, you really have to sell yourself to get customers, and sometimes you're doing that with a very basic proof of concept that doesn't hold up when you place it on a bigger scale. … As clinicians, it makes us really scared to put something into play that could potentially mess with the thousands … or millions of patients without having that evidence under it," she added.