Having worked in both Tech and Healthcare I often wonder why healthcare can be slow at innovation. In tech I was part of an innovation team that consistently pushed the envelope with new tech, built demos for keynotes, advanced product ideas, tried greenfield ideas, pushed open source adoption/contribution and built developer advocacy.

I’d like to think that the same could be done in the Healthcare space, but how? How can we enable innovation teams, early stage development and ideation in healthcare?

IMHO - I think there are a few areas to invest in

  • Healthcare Leadership/Talent Investment - Invest and build up internal development and innovation teams (treat it like a tech innovation company). Allow them to experiment, test out ideas in all areas (business processes, EHR integration, enterprise integration, cloud adoption, etc). Give them the space, responsibility and ownership to innovate and build. This will help you recruit the best talent as opposed to just implementing and supporting what outside resources or industry potentially suggest. Leadership needs let these teams have ownership, as Steve Jobs once said, without owning something over an extended period of time and all that goes with that allows you to get 3d dimensional experience and you learn more.

  • Iterate quickly - Don’t be afraid to iterate quickly without relying on implementation guides or specifications. The point of innovation is to help drive these guides and standards. Use test systems to prototype with synthetic data.

  • Embrace accepted web standards, don’t build slight off shoots of well known technology that is just different enough that it takes to long to implement. If a spec doesn’t support something try and work with the web standard body to build an extension or work to have the standard change in the next version.

  • OpenSource - I’ve often heard that opensource cannot be used or you cannot publish opensource projects in the healthcare space. I disagree with this and you can and should opensource projects and prototypes. Even if something in a project is IP/Proprietary there is still some piece of it that could be valuable to the community at large. Take that piece and open source it. Publish your prototypes and early stage projects for feedback and ideas. All major tech companies have an OSS presence, consumer companies have an opensource presence (Walmart, Target, etc). A quick search didn’t surface very many healthcare companies with an opensource presence (I’m not counting mirth, openemr). Healthcare organizations, START your Github organization and let your employees contribute and publish their projects.

  • Build prototypes - Innovation can be messy, fun and frustrating but I’ve learned being on long term innovation team, that showing prototypes early and often can really help build and refine ideas or make it obvious that something is to early. Show more prototypes, even if it’s not fully baked. There is so many utilities, services that can enable quicker innovation.

  • Embrace/Enable Yes Instead of a “No, but” response to ideas, always try and provide a “Yes, and” answer to newer tech, ideas, etc. We did this lot when trying to bring new ideas to market, working with legal, open sourcing tools, etc. It provides a better base that will allow people to work from the spot of motivation and a “let’s do this..” mindset

Communication Tools - I’ve seen alot of healthcare specific communication tools. There are plently of standard tools now, discord, teams, slack, etc that have widespread adoption. Use Them!!! as it brings in a whole additional set of developers that use them as part of their daily workflow.