Defense Health Agency officials are shifting their mindsets on innovation to "make IT boring again," so that technology can become more of a standard service for supporting the agency's IT modernization efforts, according to a Jan. 21 Government CIO Media report.

A new master's program focused on human-centered healthcare design aims to bring care delivery back to basics, sparking change "at the human level," according to Stacey Chang, executive director of the Design Institute for Health at the University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School.

In the coming years, as organizations increasingly prioritize the consumer experience in their business plans, innovation will largely be driven by shifts in consumer preferences, according to Sara Deshpande, partner at Maven Ventures and a lecturer at the Stanford (Calif.) Graduate School of Business.

Innovation in healthcare often requires a technology component and significant cultural change. As a result, it's not always possible on a tight timeline.

Highmark Health and subsidiary Allegheny Health Network, both in Pittsburgh, announced on Jan. 15 the expansion of their longtime collaboration with Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine, creating one of the nation's largest women's health-focused research initiatives.

Here are seven hospitals and health systems that have distributed innovation funds — to startups, internal projects and venture funds — in the last two weeks, beginning with the most recent:

UPMC's innovation, commercialization and venture capital arm plans to funnel a total of $1 billion into the development of new drugs, diagnostics and devices by 2024, the Pittsburgh-based health system announced Jan. 14.

The American Medical Association announced on Jan. 14 an initiative launched in partnership with investment platform RedCrow to build collaborations between physicians and healthcare startups.

Over the past couple years, "innovation" has become a strategic imperative for many hospitals and health systems, but what exactly is innovation — and how can leaders sustain innovative changes in their organizations long-term?

Though it has been barely one month since Moffitt Cancer Center named Edmondo Robinson, MD, chief digital innovation officer of the Tampa, Fla.-based organization, Dr. Robinson has already dived headfirst into the newly created role.

The Small Business Innovation Research program, which sets aside federal funds for promising early-stage companies, must be strengthened if the U.S. hopes to continue producing massively successful tech giants, argues an op-ed in The Hill.

Despite frequent reports that much of American innovation is centered in large urban regions such as Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston, a new report published in Research Policy suggests rural areas and smaller cities across the nation are just as innovative as those tech hubs.

Express Scripts' chief innovation officer says technology is what is going to change the healthcare landscape for the better, and that's why the pharmacy benefits manager remains optimistic about its investments in digital health solutions, according to Yahoo Finance.

Nearly one-third of U.S. states achieved "innovation champion" status in the Consumer Technology Association's 2020 U.S. Innovation Scorecard, with the majority located far from the coastal areas typically classified as the nation's technology hubs.

A new facility backed by the University of Southern California's Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine will use technologies developed in collaboration with AT&T to improve the experience and outcomes of cancer patients.

When it comes to successfully adopting and integrating technology, the healthcare industry has traditionally lagged behind all others, according to B.J. Moore, CIO at Renton, Wash.-based Providence. 

Technology has disrupted almost every industry over the past 10 years, but behind every transformative startup that took off during the last decade has been a steady influx of investment capital, according to a Jan. 2 Bloomberg op-ed.

In the vast majority of cases, innovation is best undergone as a "team sport," but on rare occasions, a lone inventor can achieve superior outcomes working alone, according to the Harvard Business Review.

New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System has been innovating around population-level social determinants of health since it was founded in the 1940s, well before value-based care had become a widespread priority of the healthcare industry.

It is equally fascinating and frustrating that one of the most important characteristics increasingly valued by healthcare and business leaders alike is also one of the hardest to define. "Innovation" is not an ethereal creative wind that blows through the corridors of your organization, somehow multiplied by implementing "Casual Fridays," bringing dogs to work and setting up a Ping-Pong table in the break room.