The Biggest Challenges for Deploying Innovation in Healthcare Organizations

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Categories: Healthcare

Healthcare Innovation News recently reached out to healthcare providers and healthcare solution providers to ask what are today’s biggest challenges for deploying innovation in healthcare organizations. GlobalLogic’s SVP/GM of Medical Technology & Healthcare business intelligence solutions , Chet Kolley, provided this insightful answer:

From complex regulatory constraints and outdated technical models and mindsets to interoperability issues and rapidly changing business models, healthcare is foundationally challenged to handle transformative innovations.

The U.S. healthcare industry is multifaceted with competing, sometimes misaligned interests and forces: consumers, payers, providers, suppliers, technology, policy and government. For consumers, the complexity of choices along with changing regulatory environments is often confusing to the point of paralysis. Further complicating the issue is that well-worn channels by which industry players and technology providers reach consumers simply do not exist. On the technology side, the issues of policy, regulation and funding are equally daunting for payers, providers and suppliers. Additionally, business models are under constant pressure as healthcare evolves from fee-for-service to outcome-based economic models.

These interests and forces conspire to make innovation more difficult to achieve in practice than it should be. One of the biggest problems is the varied nature of interests with nobody effectively playing the referee. This environment introduces risk in the form of delay, legal or policy hurdles and uncertain funding. However, it’s clear these interests could benefit from innovation—not just in technology—but also with respect to how healthcare is consumed and funded.

It’s in the industry’s interest to foster innovation, but seemingly each innovator is left to find a uniquely successful path. Innovation needs to be addressed at the organizational level from a priority, process and accountability standpoint. Why not create a path for adoption of innovation across multiple dimensions: consumption, technical and business?