Innovation Pulse

Tech-savvy hospitals like Mayo, Kaiser and Christiana are always testing, recognizing cybersecurity threats could get scarier, and aiming to change mindsets to focus on infosec as a patient safety issue.

Hospitals spend so much money on EHRs that it makes them veritable tech vendors, whether they like it or not, and that creates the opportunity to deliver a better user experience for clinicians, staff and patients. 

The technologies are enabling early-adopter hospitals to transition from the art of medicine to the science of medicine. 

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital CEO Stephen Klasko is striking some surprising partnerships to advance a bold vision that disrupts care delivery and medical school, as well as the education of those who will be critical a decade from now.

Commonwealth Care Alliance and Penn Medicine are already putting Amazon Alexa to work in early-stage projects that promise to reshape the patient experience. 

Near-ubiquitous adoption of EHR platforms has created a foundation for innovation. And hospitals including Cedars-Sinai and Adventist are fostering emerging technologies, from cloud-based continuous monitoring to virtual reality for patient engagement. 

Interoperability has, well, interoperability problems. Standards are being developed but EHRs are still under-delivering. And once data sharing picks up, more challenges will arise than we can understand today. Multiple tipping points are ahead. 

Speak their language. Don’t talk too deeply about technology. But also remember to pitch the innovative ways that investing in security can improve the business, executives from Henry Ford, NIST, PwC, Texas Children's and others advise.

CIOs and innovation officers point to companies such as Ikea, Lego, Oxo -- and how they have conducted observational studies to effectively understand UX and deliver products accordingly. 

Here’s the rub: $50 billion might be hyperbole, but $5 billion is still a sizable enough market to drive innovations that health systems can harness to engage patients, better manage populations and ultimately improve care and the bottom line.