Healthcare is full of extraordinary people called to do extraordinary work. And yet, despite the brilliance, compassion, and sacrifice of caregivers, the results are too often unacceptable.
Too many patients are harmed.
Care costs too much.
Caregivers are exhausted.
And despite breathtaking advances in science, healthcare learns and improves far too slowly.
That is not because our people have failed. It is because our systems have. For too long, healthcare has relied on incremental improvement when what patients need is transformation.
Innovation is the missing piece.
Not innovation as theater.
Not technology searching for a problem.
Not another endless pilot that generates excitement but never changes care.
But real innovation that solves material problems for patients and caregivers.
That is why we announce the creation of Creative Destruction Lab Cleveland — focused on healthcare delivery innovation.
It is a partnership with Global Creative Destruction Lab; the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, which brings tremendous talent in innovation, design, AI and leadership; and University Hospitals of Cleveland.
And what makes this extraordinary is this:
We are the first Creative Destruction Lab housed inside a health system.
That matters.
Because the greatest healthcare innovations should not be built far away from care.
They should be built alongside the people who live the problems every day.
With patients and their loved ones. With nurses. With physicians. With operators.
Too often, innovation happens around healthcare — not inside it. Entrepreneurs build from a distance. Technology gets designed for imagined workflows. And then we wonder why adoption is slow. Why solutions do not fit. Why caregivers resist. Why good ideas die. But healthcare is not theoretical. It is human. Complex. Messy. High stakes. Patients and caregivers need solutions that work.
At CDL Cleveland, we will ensure they do. Because here, entrepreneurs will not simply pitch ideas to healthcare. They will build with healthcare. They will co-create solutions with the people who understand the problems best. This is because we believe that what we co-design with fellow caregivers and with the community must be utterly human-centered—especially and even more so in the age of artificial intelligence.
And because this lab lives inside a health system, ideas will not simply be admired. They will be tested. Measured. Improved. Scaled.
This is where invention meets accountability. Where bold ideas meet operational reality. Where innovation becomes impact.
Creative destruction can sound disruptive. Destructive on its own is harmful. But coupled with creative intent, there can be healthy tension for a system to drive continuous renewal. In other words, for there to be a kind of renewal engine, there must be both subtraction and creation. Some things in healthcare desperately need replacing. Processes that harm and waste human talent. Systems that exhaust caregivers. Complexity that adds cost but not value. A culture that too often accepts slow learning as inevitable.
We reject that. Because every preventable harm is a life disrupted. Every wasted dollar is care denied somewhere else. Every exhausted caregiver is a warning that the system must change. Healthcare’s obligation is not simply to care for people. It is to continuously reinvent how we care for people. Only with removal of harm, cost, burnout, and unnecessary red tape can we then fill our teams, organizations, and community with something preferable and desirable.
And if we do this right, the next great healthcare innovation will not come from observing healthcare from afar. It will come from standing beside a patient. Listening to a nurse. Learning from a physician. Working with an operator. And building something better.
Because the future of healthcare does not belong to those who protect the status quo.
It belongs to those who love patients enough to build something better. And we will know we are making progress if every day, we elevate and connect more than we diminish and separate.
Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, is chief quality and clinical transformation officer at University Hospitals, the Veale Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Clinical Transformation, and executive sponsor of Creative Destruction Lab Cleveland
Kipum Lee, PhD, is president of UH Ventures and site lead of CDL-Cleveland
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