Wil Yu: 'Think through a lens of innovation'
CHICAGO—Wil Yu, MA, senior advisor on innovation for the city and county of San Francisco and former special assistant of innovations at the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT, urged his audience at the 84th Convention & Exhibit of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) to “think through a lens of innovation.”
Yu told the audience of HIM professionals that their work will build an infrastructure that helps the U.S. undergo a substantial evolution “that will improve and save lives and change how Americans perceive their care and their health.”
All healthcare innovation efforts should begin with the patient, he said. “That is the driving reason why we innovate. Never lose sight of this, because it’s easy to talk about all the technology and lose sight of the patient.
Yu related the current healthcare system struggles to those experienced by travelers in the 1500s who often suffered from and died of scurvy. Although experimenters began learning in 1601 that consuming a small amount of lemon juice during their travels prevented the disease, it took more than another 250 years for that discovery to reach full diffusion through such developments as the British Board of Trade incorporating a requirement of citrus aboard all merchant vessels.
Today, “diffusion of innovation is vitally important to the improvement of healthcare delivery,” Yu said.
"If we can innovate new tools, services, applications and business models, we can contribute to better care for that patient who, too often, receives care that is just average or typical."
It’s vital to think about the time component of innovation, he said, and how we can reconcile the pace of technology development with the pace of healthcare innovation adoption and diffusion. He cited several obstacles:
"To navigate the current rate of change in the market, policy and technological environments, healthcare stakeholders will need to create accelerated pathways for innovation," he said. In fact, policies such as HITECH and the Affordable Care Act assumed a certain level of innovation that would support the requirements. "The government is serving as a catalyst and collaborator for innovation."
New technologies, such as data analytics, cloud-based services, decision support tools and health information exchange are producing new health data streams, Yu said, and we have yet to fully appreciate the new data streams arising as a result of all of these new data-gathering mechanisms.
Technology developers need to support the market environment with aligned programs and policies, he said, and cncourage and catalyze the movement of innovators through successive stages of the development timeline. The ONC is actively trying to develop the infrastructure for standards harmonization--they're "working furiously to support technology developers," he said.
Adopters and implementers must incentivize and facilitate the development of compelling pathways for existing stakeholders to adopt and scale, Yu said. He cited the Beacon community projects as a good example of federal support for the promise of innovation.
In the future, Yu sees a tiered process by which organizations can take risk and have a safe sandbox in which to adopt technology, as well as the government helping organizations work with each other in ways that are unprecendented "because it's in the government’s best interest for folks to innovate as quickly as possible."
With the advent of patient-centered medical homes, acountable care organizations, bundled payments and readmission reduction program, "IT innovations are needed," he said. That includes timely clinical data, decision support tools, care integration tools, technology to expand physician reach, consumer engagement tools and data mining and analytics.
Wrapping up his talk, Yu called for his audience to support the early stages of innovation. "Successful disruptive innovation requires a pathway. It doesn't happen spontaneously." Meanwhile, he said "it's never been more critical to our country’s health to innovate and it has never been a better time to be an innovator in healthcare."
Yu told the audience of HIM professionals that their work will build an infrastructure that helps the U.S. undergo a substantial evolution “that will improve and save lives and change how Americans perceive their care and their health.”
All healthcare innovation efforts should begin with the patient, he said. “That is the driving reason why we innovate. Never lose sight of this, because it’s easy to talk about all the technology and lose sight of the patient.
Yu related the current healthcare system struggles to those experienced by travelers in the 1500s who often suffered from and died of scurvy. Although experimenters began learning in 1601 that consuming a small amount of lemon juice during their travels prevented the disease, it took more than another 250 years for that discovery to reach full diffusion through such developments as the British Board of Trade incorporating a requirement of citrus aboard all merchant vessels.
Today, “diffusion of innovation is vitally important to the improvement of healthcare delivery,” Yu said.
"If we can innovate new tools, services, applications and business models, we can contribute to better care for that patient who, too often, receives care that is just average or typical."
It’s vital to think about the time component of innovation, he said, and how we can reconcile the pace of technology development with the pace of healthcare innovation adoption and diffusion. He cited several obstacles:
- Lack of a shared recognition of the need to innovate;
- Multiple stakeholders operating in silos;
- Lack of defined opportunities to take methodical risk;
- Lack of defined communication channels for knowledge exchange; and
- Lack of models for adoption and diffusion.
"To navigate the current rate of change in the market, policy and technological environments, healthcare stakeholders will need to create accelerated pathways for innovation," he said. In fact, policies such as HITECH and the Affordable Care Act assumed a certain level of innovation that would support the requirements. "The government is serving as a catalyst and collaborator for innovation."
New technologies, such as data analytics, cloud-based services, decision support tools and health information exchange are producing new health data streams, Yu said, and we have yet to fully appreciate the new data streams arising as a result of all of these new data-gathering mechanisms.
Technology developers need to support the market environment with aligned programs and policies, he said, and cncourage and catalyze the movement of innovators through successive stages of the development timeline. The ONC is actively trying to develop the infrastructure for standards harmonization--they're "working furiously to support technology developers," he said.
Adopters and implementers must incentivize and facilitate the development of compelling pathways for existing stakeholders to adopt and scale, Yu said. He cited the Beacon community projects as a good example of federal support for the promise of innovation.
In the future, Yu sees a tiered process by which organizations can take risk and have a safe sandbox in which to adopt technology, as well as the government helping organizations work with each other in ways that are unprecendented "because it's in the government’s best interest for folks to innovate as quickly as possible."
With the advent of patient-centered medical homes, acountable care organizations, bundled payments and readmission reduction program, "IT innovations are needed," he said. That includes timely clinical data, decision support tools, care integration tools, technology to expand physician reach, consumer engagement tools and data mining and analytics.
Wrapping up his talk, Yu called for his audience to support the early stages of innovation. "Successful disruptive innovation requires a pathway. It doesn't happen spontaneously." Meanwhile, he said "it's never been more critical to our country’s health to innovate and it has never been a better time to be an innovator in healthcare."
Beth Walsh,
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.