Mod 1 Idea Management

February 13, 2019

By Hayley McLaughlin

Idea management in Healthcare has entered a new era.

No longer are Med Tech companies just selling units or boxes of equipment, but they are looking evermore to find partnerships with hospitals and healthcare providers to develop solutions that benefit all parties and all ideas. Consequent solutions are focused on patient centricity.

At the same time, larger healthcare institutions are also employing their own internal innovation centers to drive ideas and improve healthcare effectiveness and efficiencies that can be modelled elsewhere.
There are many different layers to Idea Management in our organization. Our headquarters utilize a lab designed specifically for co-creation which has also evolved over time and now encompasses not only the design of products but transformative workflows too where co-creation can take place on site with a customer, in the hospital with dedicated healthcare transformative service professionals.
While conventional feedback systems for the reporting and documentation of customer feedback, wishes and complaints will always remain as a part of our quality and idea management system, the system is no longer as passive as it once was and entrepreneurship and innovation is being encouraged throughout all levels of the organization. Idea management in our organisation also ensures we clearly identify the WHY of what an idea is and WHY it is worth pursuing or prioritizing.

Externally, our organistation also collects ideas that can be submitted by global innovators through an innovation portal. Ideas are also sought for specific projects and this site is managed on a daily basis with ideas and concepts or already developed 3rd party solutions are filtered to product developers within the appropriate segment.

With our ageing population and the exponential number of players entering the digital health marketplace, I believe one of the greatest challenges facing society in the next 5 years will include being able to have objective evaluation of those solutions – which ones actually add value to our healthcare system & don’t create extra layers of burden on our already limited and stretched healthcare resources?

3 responses to “Mod 1 Idea Management

  1. This is fascinating in terms of that a whole sector is transforming! However, I do see that having a ‘customer’ centric perspective and digging into the WHY of each case makes this a decentralised approach. What I mean is that similar centres should perhaps exist across the nation that could deal with the more specific scenarios to account for user’s needs. In a way, this approach requires resources, and involvement of all stakeholders requires coordination, dealing with potential trade-offs etc. So a key element of this is that the value created in this process outweighs the resources spent (otherwise it risks of jeopardising the efficiency).

  2. Hi Alexandre!
    Is it really a decentralised approach by ensuring that the WHY is being addressed?
    For example, a hospital unit was told by a med tech firm to buy their devices to enable constant patient monitoring for those with cardiovascular disease, selling on the principle that it would reduce patient anxiety. Money was invested in such units, but the program “failed”, patienty anxiety increased… when the WHY were patients anxious was asked, it turned out that the solution was just to offer patients a phone number to call to discuss their symptoms…… This solution which was the result of the work by the innovation team members meant that such a simple solution of a phone number could be rolled out to other sites. The med tech firm involved (not the one I work for!) also failed the customers here by not addressing the WHY.
    I think the value of having health care professionals more involved in the idea generation and innovation process is vital in this sector because so those models that are developed centrally can be adapted and spread to more specific scenarios as you say.
    Thanks a lot for the discussion!

  3. Thank you for your really interesting blog. I quite envy your external innovation portal. Do you get a lot of input there?

    I’m also happy that you stress the WHY in all your work with innovations. That is one of my own main goals in my work – if the idea is to benefit either customers or employees the question why must be answered!

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