Extraordinary Stories of Healthcare Innovation

John Paganini and I have this uncanny tendency to “accidentally” meet at various industry events -- and every time we meet, magic happens.  One such accidental meet was at the HIMSS 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida where Paganini also informed about his contribution to the Voices of Innovation: Fulfilling the Promise of Information Technology in Healthcare book edited by Edward Marx, CIO of Cleveland Clinic.  Healthcare is a fascinating ecosystem ripe for innovation in ways that can impact the daily lives of individuals of you, me, Paganini and everyone else!  The title itself was an attention getter and the fact that Paganini had contributed to it along with other distinguished leaders made it too tempting to resist.  And thus, it came about that I read the book -- a page turner -- and was fascinated by the compilation of stories and applications of the 8 factors developed by the HIMSS Innovation Pathways Workgroup to illustrate various elements that can enable innovation within the organization.  This approach from Marx as the editor of the book was so interesting that I had to bring forth my own story for each of these factors.  Join me as I walk through how Open Source can be a terrific catalyst in every case. And in the end, I will also explain why I label this book as Extraordinary Stories of Healthcare Innovation!

What follows is a brief description of each of the Innovation Factors and how Open Source is a fantastic catalyst in every case.  At the same time, I humbly acknowledge Ed Marx, John Paganini as well as every one of the contributors in this book -- because these are industry leaders who have taken the time to share their experience based insight in the context of each of these innovation factors.  This book is a must-read for every healthcare company looking to make its mark by taking action today to impact the future of healthcare in the years to come.

1. Blend Cultures – Include the organization’s larger community and ensure that institutional leaders are engaged and supportive of the proposed innovative strategies. “Cleveland Clinic considers all 55,000+ employees caregivers with all of us having the opportunity to improve the way the hospital delivers care to patients,” says Peter O’Neill in this section.  The global Open Source community shares a common passion to innovate software across geographies, cultures, mindsets and perspectives 24x7. Moreover, the community members evolve across various levels of maturity and experience with active contributors being recognized for their competence and well-honed skill sets.  This dynamic inherent to Open Source lends itself to blend cultures as advocated by this innovation factor.
2. Use People with IT – Do not create an over reliance on people or on technology; use both resources in concert. “The area of AI is one of the most exciting aspects of Health IT,” says John Paganini.  Artificial Intelligence can manifest itself as a unique digital citizen of the Open Source community.  Say hello to the "Supermind" of Open Source -- an ecosystem where AI can automate the continuous engineering of Open Source projects with a goal to ensure the right projects gain the traction and adoption they deserve.  More importantly, AI can also detect early warning indicators of failing fast and thus, being more efficient overall.
3. Create Roadmaps – Develop a plan for the functions required to innovate and encourage effective communication between functional experts for strategic clarity. Into the Great Wide Open: Building a Digital Innovation Roadmap is the title of the section authored by Paddy Padmanabhan.  â€œThere is no template out there for a Digital Innovation Roadmap,” concludes Padmanabhan and goes on to assert “Build it we must, and build it by leaning on our capabilities and the experience and expertise of our peers and partners.” The Open Source community is an environment that churns out millions of ideas and projects -- however, to Padmanabhan’s point -- the time is ripe for enterprises to take the lead in streamlining these projects into products with a roadmap that is refined by the pulse and sentiment of the community.
4. Collaborate and Listen – Listen for ideas that will potentially solve a problem or present an opportunity to collaborate with stakeholders and galvanize your network. Kathy Ray and Amy Szabo call out the Our Voice : Healthcare Partner Council.  What is fascinating about this council is the open and direct engagement of the affected parties -- the patients.  The MeetUps that the Open Source community champions is just that -- a way to get the contributors and consumers of the open source projects as well as enterprise products together to collectively share the knowledge and continue to evolve the solutions and collective experience.  And why does it work -- because they collaborate and listen.
5. Communicate and Eliminate Barriers - Cross communication is essential to promote innovation.  By stripping virtual or physical barriers to communication, ideas have a better chance of being realized.  It takes a healthier approach to open data with technology as I outline in this article that calls out how technology can overcome cultural barriers of communication.  That said, the open source ecosystem champions not only the technology but also the open mindset and collaborative culture that breaks down historical communication walls.
6. Stress Simplicity – Do not over-complicate a solution to a problem; keep the following principle in mind: “When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one” is better to implement. (Occam’s Razor). “At the root of all innovation is need,” says Marc Probst.  Marc goes on to highlight key tenets for how an ecosystem of innovation has been instrumented at Intermountain Healthcare.  For each tenet Probst calls out, there is a telling Open Source equivalent. We seek to solve the problems for people ( Open Source seeks to provide solutions for innovative developers).  We have built a Platform for Innovation ( Open Source has made its mark as the foundation for continuous and sustained technology innovation ). We collaborate with others for success ( All software code is accessible to everyone and the open source community members are not shy about voicing their disagreement! They collaborate to succeed ).  We share Results for Posterity and the Greater Good ( Adoption of the right projects serves as meaningful validation across the software development community ).
7. Recognize and Reward – Recognize or reward the efforts of stakeholders to innovate even at the smallest levels. “Your culture will determine what kind of reward and recognition is appropriate and you can lever up and down as needed.  But you must do something. Especially if innovation fails,” says Edward Marx himself. The Open Source Community is built on meritocracy.  You earn the respect of your fellow members because of the type of work you do and the skills you clearly demonstrate. Meritocracy is an effective paradigm for peer recognition.  At the same time, mentorship is widely respected as well across the open source community which is where perceived failure can be translated into an inherent advantage.
8. Co-Create Solutions – Appreciate the complexity of attention that innovation requires and expose the organization to demands from all stakeholders. It is high time the Citizen Developer paired up with the Open Source community to co-create solutions that have a business impact leveraging next-generation technologies for purposeful outcomes!

There you have it.  The many ways Open Source can be a catalyst for every one of the 8 innovation factors of the HIMSS Innovation Pathways Workgroup.

I am actually not surprised by the approach Marx took for this book because it reminds me of the other book that he has authored Extraordinary Tales from a rather Ordinary Guy in which he has narrated an anecdote for every one his 14 maxims.  A chapter per maxim.

Having read both books, I suggest an alias for Marx’s latest compilation -- Extraordinary stories of healthcare innovation.  This is because every one of the anecdotes shared by the industry leaders and practitioners are simply fascinating in their impact on the real life of patients! And the manner in which Marx has gone about compiling them is extraordinary.  However, as a TeamUSA athlete, Marx is very likely to assert that this was an effort by a Team of Teams -- another reason why he is extraordinary !!

Here is to the health of Open Innovation !!

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