Becker's Hospital Review

26 INNOVATION are not done well — just like aerospace — those other approaches are not as appropriate. Q: Can you talk about an innovation initiative you're es- pecially excited about? PO: It's hard to pick your favorite child. We have pipelines of work; we have three domains: medical devices, drugs and digital health. We have interesting projects in each of those. Today there's more attention and investor interest in digital health solutions — that makes our medical device technologies feel less loved, but the fact is for people who are in- venting medical device technologies and for patients who are receiving the benefits of those medical devices, those are damn important things. A natural answer is to pick some digital health project in our pipeline and that might sound intriguing, but then if I compensate and pick some medical device just to zig when others are zagging, that may seem comparatively less interesting. So I'd rather not pick out an in- dividual one, because we have so many really interesting, potentially impactful projects. Q: Do you have a final piece of advice for other healthcare innovators? Anything they really need to know? PO: We receive inventions from people who are truly world-lead- ing experts in that clinical specialty, but that doesn't mean they're world-leading experts on how to bring that solution to market. Most of our technologies go to market through license agreements with ex- isting companies, and those existing companies oen have some kind of market-focus perspective. at's not unique about us, but it is certainly something that we empha- size and that distinguishes us from lots of people: As a commercialization office, and as an MIT aeronautical engineer who loves technology, we are market focused. No matter what you're innovating, no matter how clever or profound the technology is, you have to stay market focused. n How Apple helped inspire Stanford's new hospital By Mackenzie Garrity S tanford Health Care incorporated user ex- perience ideas from Apple to leverage tech- nology in ways that make its new Palo Alto, Calif.-based hospital more hospitable, according to The Wall Street Journal. The $2.1 billion hospital, which opened Nov. 17, has 368 private rooms and prioritized user inter- face. The former senior vice president of retail op- erations at Apple Ron Johnson helped advise the development of the new Stanford Hospital. Patients can choose entertainment options and control the temperature, lighting and win- dow blinds from their beds. Eric Yablonka, CIO of Stanford Health Care, said the technology used is designed to improve the patient and clinician experience. Specifically, the Stanford Hospital features robots that package prescriptions. There are automated guided vehicles to assist with laundry delivery and trash disposal. Sensors are also being used to track staff and equipment to enhance inventory control and efficiency. Physicians and nurses can leverage remote mon- itoring tools from a single location. The Stanford Hospital also plans to use two patient rooms to test a bedside computer-vision system. "We tried to build a technology infrastructure that would…make it easier and friendly to be a patient and clinicians, and support healing," Gary Fritz, Stanford Health Care's chief of applications, told WSJ. "It's like when you experience Apple iP- hone design or Amazon design. It's a natural way to do the things you need to do." n Malcolm Gladwell: 3 reasons for the 'lag' between innovation and adoption By Andrea Park T he years-long gap between developing the technology to im- prove a product, service or process and actually implement- ing the technology and reaping the benefits is "one of the great puzzles of our age," according to Malcolm Gladwell. During a keynote address at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Flor- ida on Oct. 23, the best-selling author and journalist discussed the persistent lag between innovation and implementation in nearly ev- ery industry, PC Magazine reported. Mr. Gladwell offered three possible reasons for this "puzzlingly long lag time": 1. Generational lag: In some cases, even if the technology exists to improve an existing entity, society may not be ready to abandon tra- dition and embrace the new method for quite some time; Mr. Glad- well reportedly offered as an example ATMs, which were invented in the 1960s but were not accepted as the norm for cash withdrawals until the 1990s. 2. Incorrect marketing: It took 60 years for the telephone to catch on as a widely used mode of communication in the U.S. since, ac- cording to Mr. Gladwell, for its first several decades in existence, it was marketed purely as a business device only available to men in urban areas. In short, he said, the telephone business initially "got it completely wrong," and had to learn by trial and error. 3. Lack of "strategic home": Finally, some innovations are widely accepted as beneficial and have a clear purpose, but are not need- ed by society at the moment they are invented. Though invented in the U.K. decades prior, the tank was not used to its fullest extent until World War II simply because British forces preferred riding horses. The first two factors are difficult to avoid, but gaps caused by the third of Mr. Gladwell's reasons can be bridged with the right mind- set. "If we want to close the lag between invention and adoption, the only real way to do it is to open our imaginations," he said. n

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