Becker's Hospital Review

Sign up for the COMPLIMENTARY Becker's Hospital Review CEO Report & CFO Report E-Weeklies at www.BeckersHospitalReview.com or call (800) 417-2035 19 How Ideas Become Innovations: Roundtable With Healthcare Innovation Leaders From UCLA, Ohio State By Molly Gamble I nnovation is increasingly becoming an important discipline for many of the country's hospitals and health systems. Leaders are dually tasked to build a culture that promotes the sharing of ideas and a willingness to learn, but they must also ensure the creative process is formalized and methodical. Here, four leaders from two of the top academic medical centers in the country share their approach to innovation. Los Angeles-based UCLA Health System has and continues to deliver a range of innovations, from how employees answer the phone to the integration of military veterans as primary care coordinators. Molly Coye, MD, MPH, is chief innovation officer for the system and oversees the UCLA Institute for Innovation in Health. David Feinberg, MD, MBA, is president of UCLA Health System and CEO of UCLA Hospital System. Both participated in the roundtable. The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus launched its IDEA Studio in Healthcare and Design in 2013. OSU's medical school also launched a new curriculum last year, and the hospital recently partnered with GE Healthcare for design thinking. Clay Marsh, MD, chief innovation officer for OSU Wexner, and CEO Steven Gabbe, MD, both participated in the roundtable, as well. Below are excerpts of participants' responses, lightly edited for clarity. Q: Are there any misunderstandings around innovation you'd like to address? Dr. Coye with UCLA: There are two major things. First, a lot of people think innovation is all about technology. That's not true. Almost all innovations are enabled by technology, but the cultural change and implementation are much more critical to innovations' success than technology itself. Secondly, I think a lot of people confuse invention with innovation. At UCLA, our scientists invent new things every day, but turning those inventions into services that can be adopted at scale and affect people's care — that's what innovation is about. I would define innovation as taking great ideas and pilots and turning them into major changes that accelerate the transformation of a health system. Dr. Marsh with OSU: To us, innovation is a fairly specific term that implies value creation, value capture and value dissemination. We really want to be disciplined in our ability to deliver solutions in a timely way. We've created our innovation enterprise, the IDEA (Innovation, DEsign and Application) Studio in Healthcare and Design to challenge the current paradigm of healthcare. Part of design is trying to understand the greatest gaps for people and target our solutions specifically to address these problems. Q: How formalized are innovation efforts in your organization? What does the innovation process looks like in terms of decision-making, resources and processes? Dr. Gabbe with OSU: We have goals to understand problems people face, apply solutions to those problems and deliver those solutions. We look at this as a fairly structured process. We've agreed to a relationship with GE Healthcare for design thinking. In this world of multiple voices and choices, it becomes very noisy [and difficult] to figure out what really matters. We want structured processes in our industry. We're trying to promote evidence-based and personalized medicine. We are one of the founding members of the P4 Medicine Institute, which stands for predictive, preventive, participatory and personalized health. We take a population and understand more precisely who needs what. As we look at design thinking, we think it blends beautifully with [this] next phase of medicine. Design thinking allows us to understand big gaps and what gaps are specific to certain populations. Dr. Marsh with OSU: We've also had great engagement from the state. [Ohio Gov. John Kasich] brought together a group he calls the Medical Corridor, which is made up of major health systems in the state. As part of that, there's the [Choose Ohio] initiative. As major academic medical centers within the Medical Corridor, we've committed that if an innovator has an idea he or she would like to try, we will give that invention a trial in our systems. The state also has the Ohio Third Frontier, which [funds] new inventions that can lead to new businesses and jobs. Right now, the state is interested in our neuromodulation program, which is one of the country's leading programs and led by neurosurgeon Ali Rezai, MD. We're aligned with the state and Ohio Third Frontier funds to create excellence in biotechnology and healthcare innovation to develop new treatments, businesses and technologies. Dr. Feinberg with UCLA: There are a lot of paths into our innovation center. Some ideas come from those working directly in innovation. They might have a brand new idea, or they might have seen something somewhere else that might make sense [at UCLA], so they bring it into the council. Or it could come from anyone in the workforce. We try to really be out there, looking for ideas from the frontline. Dr. Coye with UCLA: It's our job at the Institute for Innovation to scan for innovations that can advance our organizational strategies for transformation. When we identify a potential innovation, we bring it to our innovation leadership council, which is our advisory group that includes senior leadership and program leaders. We ultimately bring the idea to our executive group and ask them to charter it. What that means is for them to actually tell us that if this innovation is adopted at UCLA and the first pilot is successful, they will commit to deploying it at scale across the system. This ensures we don't waste our resources by piloting lots of things that will never be brought to scale.

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