Year in Review: Focus on innovation grows

More and more healthcare stakeholders increased their focus on innovation over the past year, from providers to vendors to associations.

An investment company, Martin Ventures, announced plans to launch Lucro, a new marketplace that aims to accelerate decision-making for healthcare leaders, helping them discover, compare and collaborate with peers around innovative solutions.

“Until now, information on innovative, disruptive solutions for healthcare has been hard to find and even harder to trust,” said Bruce Brandes, CEO and founder of Lucro. “Healthcare can no longer afford to lag behind other industries in enterprise strategy and solutions decision-making. With Lucro, healthcare leaders can engage a community of colleagues and peers to accelerate decisions with greater clarity and lower risk.”

Cerner is teaming up with Truman Medical Centers (TMC) to pilot innovations using progressive health IT.

The two organizations will expand their existing relationship to promote opportunities to create and research advancements in technology to enhance cutting-edge patient care, and will further support TMC’s mission to provide quality, safe and customer-focused care in both of its hospitals and its growing number of clinics throughout the area.

A $50 million gift to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) will directly support a wide range of pediatric research and help establish CHOP as a global center for innovative pediatric study.

CHOP will establish the Raymond G. Perelman Campus, an eight-acre area that will serve as a hub of pediatric research and clinical innovation at CHOP.

The American Medical Association (AMA) got into the innovation business through a partnership with a recently launched healthcare technology incubator.

AMA joined with Chicago-based incubator MATTER to create the AMA Interaction Studio at MATTER, a simulated healthcare space for physicians and entrepreneurs to team up on the development and testing of new technologies.

New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System launched an entity to support companies working to revolutionize care. The organization also announced a three-year innovation challenge in collaboration with GE Healthcare.

innovationOchsner, or iO, focuses on the best ways to enable patients to collect their health data and impact their care. It will partner with other leading innovators both inside and outside of the healthcare industry to identify promising solutions and provide resources and support to develop concepts. iO will potentially provide an environment in which innovation for both patients and providers can be tested, and also may fund the future development and launch of successful ideas to the point that they are available to other patients and healthcare providers worldwide.

CVS Health officially opened its Digital Innovation Lab in Boston, a facility focused on developing digital services and personalized capabilities that offer an accessible and integrated personal pharmacy and health experience.

The Digital Innovation Lab will help with the CVS Health digital team's mission to run like a startup, accelerating speed-to-market and impact of digital innovation across the enterprise, by using the resources of the lab to rapidly test, improve and implement new programs.

Primary focuses of the lab will include the exploration of breakthroughs for digital health through innovation in mobile, personalization, multi-channel e-commerce, connected health and digital therapeutics. CVS Health will further its pace and breadth of innovation through partnerships with promising startups and mature companies alike in the digital and healthcare space. 

John Gallagher, practice leader of innovation at Simpler Consulting, said the focus on innovation will help organizations respond to all the changes thrown at them that traditional operational improvement can’t handle. “With all of the changes going on in the healthcare landscape, we need bigger jumps than those just traditional improvements can bring. I believe there’s recognition that innovation is needed inside the industry.”

There is plenty more to come in 2016.