Preparing healthcare grads for innovation

 

When healthcare graduates enter the workforce, they often are unprepared to take on the challenges for innovation of 21st century healthcare, according to a blog post in Health Affairs.

Regina Herzlinger, PhD, professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, created the Global Educators Network for Health Care Innovation Education (GENiE) Group to introduce innovation into healthcare curricula.

Her research found that curricula all too often focuses on isolated theoretical subjects, such as analytics and quantitative problem solving, instead of team-oriented problem solving required for innovation. In interviews conducted in 2012, Herzlinger learned that many CEOs were dissatisfied with traditional healthcare education and put in place their own training programs. Overall, they preferred healthcare employees who could solve programs, work as part of a diverse team, understand and learn from failure, manage change and innovate through processes, systems and organizations, according to the blog.

“Most of the healthcare administration academics we surveyed agreed that schools are not educating students to be innovative,” wrote Herzlinger in the blog post. “Clearly change is needed, but for healthcare to change, the education of its leaders must change.”

GENiE includes more than 140 academic members interested in introducing innovation into their curricula, and CEO champions who share these interests, including the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson, the American Medical Association, Bessemer Ventures, athenahealth and others. 

After two annual GENIE conference, several courses and innovative services and programming were launched to advance innovation in healthcare. These include new coursework at Harvard Business School that focuses on innovating in healthcare and business innovations in global healthcare, as well as a series of videos on healthcare innovation. To date, 18 schools have implemented these programs and courses and more are expected to follow suit. 

“We welcome your participation and ideas on the content, format, research, and dissemination of ideas that could best foster teaching of innovating healthcare,” she wrote. 

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