Where innovation is needed most in healthcare

Innovative solutions are needed in almost every aspect of healthcare including its delivery to consumers, its technology and its business models.

Three health system chief innovation officers told Becker's areas where healthcare innovation can grow.

Question: Where do you think innovation is most needed in the healthcare space?

Note: Responses were edited for length and clarity.

Elizabeth Hagerman, PhD. Chief Innovation Officer of UW Health (Madison, Wis.): There is room for innovation in every corner of the healthcare space. Innovation inherently involves some level of trial and error, and that can feel antagonistic to quality systems designed to support continuous improvement of health and safety, which is core to the mission of every healthcare organization.  

In the healthcare space, we must therefore be astute about when it is appropriate to try something new and disrupt an established way of doing things, while still maintaining high standards for health and safety.  

The more we can build in mechanisms to support early adoption and evaluation of new ideas and processes without compromising quality and safety or larger operational goals, the faster we will be able to advance innovations that can improve all aspects of health, care delivery and support.

Jesse Goodwin, PhD. Chief Innovation Officer of MUSC Health (Charleston, S.C.): I believe there are big opportunities related to enhancing our patient and family experience as well as improving our own care team members' mental health and overall wellness. These two areas of opportunity represent approximately 40 percent of the ideas submitted by our care team members through our innovation gateway last year and are areas which our leaders are keenly focused on transforming.

Thomas Graham, MD. Chief Innovation and Transformation Officer of Kettering (Ohio) Health: Popular dogma may gravitate to the tech solution that enables volume-to-value transition or leveraging genomic information to reverse disease. 

Honestly, I think we need to "Innovate Innovations." We as CINOs must continue to collaborate both on the ways we stimulate and gestate tomorrow's solutions and how we convince our systems that innovation is an essential element of operations and strategy. 

If successful, we will protect the values of ideas and the importance of the role. 

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