Digital health innovation: Five lessons from the pandemic
Digital health innovation is important to hospitals and health systems, but competing priorities can shift an organization’s attention and resources away from innovation. Unfortunately, that can leave healthcare organizations with gaps in their connectivity infrastructure — just when they need it the most. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how important it is for healthcare organizations to have an infrastructure in place that supports innovation.
HIMSS, in collaboration with Spectrum Enterprise, conducted a three-part research series titled Anatomy of Innovation. The purpose of the research was to identify the foundations and challenges of digital health innovation in hospitals and health systems. HIMSS conducted online surveys of more than 600 individuals employed at U.S. hospitals or health systems with 26 or more beds. Respondents were employed in a mix of IT, business/administrative and clinical functions in management or staff-level roles.
While eight of 10 respondents (79 percent) reported being engaged in digital health innovation at some level — ranging from “experimenting” and “pilot testing” to “scaling out” initiatives — fewer than one of 10 (8 percent) reported having “fully executed” on digital health innovation initiatives. Less than one-third (29 percent) said they have scaled out these initiatives enterprisewide.
These figures take on additional significance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: Healthcare organizations need to be ready to respond quickly in a crisis. But if the appropriate infrastructure is not in place, innovative responses to a crisis can be challenging to implement.
It’s not too late for healthcare organizations to assess where they are with respect to digital health innovation and to address gaps in connectivity infrastructure. The following five lessons that emerged from the Anatomy of Innovation research can help organizations position themselves to meet both current and future challenges.
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