Healthcare Innovated: Small Changes, Big Impact
Jodie Granger
Executive Advisor | NED | Healthcare | Innovation | Strategy | Growth | Change | Digital | Design Thinking | Advisory - Talks about #Innovation, #Health and Aged Care, #HealthcareInnovated, #adaptiveleadership
In this edition of Healthcare Innovated, we explore how guiding principles shape effective operating models, how small but targeted innovations are making a big impact at Ambulance Victoria, and how redefining women’s health with innovation is long overdue. We also take a moment to reflect on the key differences between business-as-usual (BAU) and innovation. Understanding these distinctions is crucial—because treating innovation like BAU often leads to frustration, stagnation, and missed opportunities.
In this edition:
Designing with Purpose: Guiding Principles for an Effective Operating Model
Redesigning an operating model isn’t just about fixing inefficiencies—it’s about designing for the future. To ensure the new model supports both current needs and long-term growth, it must be built on a foundation of clear guiding principles.
These principles serve as a North Star, helping leadership teams navigate complex decisions and trade-offs. When uncertainties arise—such as whether to prioritise customer experience over scalability—these principles provide clarity and direction. But to be effective, they must be agreed upon upfront and understood across the organisation.
Why Guiding Principles Matter in Operating Model Design
A strong set of design principles ensures:
? Consistency in decision-making – When different priorities compete, principles guide trade-offs.
? Alignment across teams – Everyone works toward the same goals, reducing confusion and resistance.
? A future-proof foundation – Principles focus on what matters most, ensuring the model evolves effectively.
Balancing Trade-Offs: The Tension Between Priorities
One challenge in defining these principles is that they can be at odds with each other. For example:
Rather than seeing these as barriers, the best organisations acknowledge and test these tensions early. Running scenarios and trade-off discussions helps leadership prioritise principles where necessary and understand the impact of different choices.
How to Establish and Apply Guiding Principles
1?. Align Leadership Early – Agree on 4–6 core principles before making any structural changes.
2. Test Principles Through Scenarios – Use real-world situations to see how they guide decision-making.
3. Co-Design with Key Stakeholders – Bring teams into the conversation to refine and embed principles.
4. Use Principles as an Anchor – Return to them whenever there’s ambiguity or disagreement in the redesign process.
Making It Real
One organisation we worked with aimed to scale home-based aged care services while maintaining high customer satisfaction. Their guiding principles included:
By testing these against real decisions, leadership gained clarity on where compromises were necessary and what non-negotiables should remain.
Guiding principles ensure an operating model is not just an operational fix, but a strategic enabler. They help organisations stay focused, aligned, and adaptable—critical in industries like healthcare and aged care, where both efficiency and compassion must co-exist.
Next time you think about redesigning your operating model, start with the question: What are the principles that will define our success?
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When we think about healthcare innovation, it's easy to focus on grand technological breakthroughs. But sometimes, small, practical innovations make the biggest difference—especially in high-pressure environments like emergency services.
Ambulance Victoria (AV) has been facing a record surge in emergency calls, with nearly 100,000 Code 1 emergencies in the last quarter of 2024. That kind of demand puts immense strain on paramedics and response times. While workforce expansion has been a key strategy—bringing in 84 new paramedics and recruiting from interstate and New Zealand—technology and process improvements are playing an equally critical role.
One of AV’s most impactful innovations has been the rollout of digital radios and iPads for all crews across regional Victoria. These might seem like small changes, but they significantly streamline communication and patient care. With digital radios, paramedics can relay information more efficiently, reducing delays in coordination. The iPads allow for faster, more accurate electronic patient care records, enabling paramedics to complete documentation on the go and return to service sooner.
Another quiet but powerful innovation is AV’s secondary triage system. Instead of sending an ambulance to every call, paramedics and nurses assess and redirect non-urgent cases to more suitable care options. Over just three months, nearly 44,000 patients who didn’t need emergency transport were connected to alternative care, freeing up ambulances for life-threatening cases.
These improvements aren’t headline-grabbing AI or robotics, but they show how incremental, targeted innovations can have an outsized impact. By optimising processes, leveraging technology, and improving triage systems, AV is proving that even small innovations can help save lives.
Source: Kyabram Free Press??
Redefining Women’s Health with Innovation
A recent report by Monash University has once again highlighted a deep and persistent issue in healthcare: gender bias in clinical guidelines. Despite decades of progress in medicine, women continue to experience poorer health outcomes due to systemic oversights that fail to consider sex and gender differences in research and practice. This gap leads to delayed diagnoses, ineffective treatments, and ultimately, worse health experiences for women.
Gender bias in medicine is not new. Historically, clinical research has centred around the male body as the default, leaving women’s health considerations as an afterthought. The Monash study found that of 80 clinical practice guidelines reviewed, more than half failed to consider gender, and 40% misused the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender.’ This isn't just an academic issue—it translates to real-world consequences, where women presenting with heart attack symptoms are more likely to be misdiagnosed, and conditions like endometriosis take years to be properly recognised and treated.
If we truly want better healthcare outcomes, we must move beyond outdated models and apply innovation to redefine how we approach women’s health. Innovation can help in redesigning systems, questioning biases, and using data intelligently to improve care at a lower cost.
So, what does innovation in women’s health look like?
As healthcare leaders, we must challenge outdated structures and embrace innovation to close these gaps. We know that better, more inclusive health outcomes don’t just benefit women—they create a more sustainable healthcare system for everyone.?
The Other Side of Innovation: A ready reckoner of the key differences to consider from BAU
Innovation and business-as-usual (BAU) often feel like two completely different worlds—because they are. While core operations prioritise efficiency, predictability, and risk mitigation, innovation demands investment, learning through iteration and embracing uncertainty.
The table, adapted from The Other Side of Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, highlights key differences between BAU and innovation approaches. It’s a useful reminder that applying BAU principles to innovation can stifle progress, just as treating core operations like an experiment can create chaos.