How to drive effective transformation: The 3rd Fundamental: Curiosity: "There is a better way to do it--Find it!"

Clay Christensen said, "Great questions create space in the brain for a solution to land." Curiosity is the underlying principle of a question. A question embodies curiosity and humility when asked with the right mindset. Both are great fundamentals of innovation that drive transformation. In addition, one has to hold the mindset that "There is a better way to do it--Find it!"To bring this to life, I will share a successful outcome that my team and I had regarding kidney care.

My team and I were always learning about new technologies and solutions. However, we would keep them on a list (call this a potential solutions list) versus calling every clinician we know to ask them if they would be interested. We deeply collaborated with our clinical and administrative colleagues to fully understand struggles in the business model overall and struggles in the context of the actual problem.

In this case, my team and I had researched Acute Kidney Injury. We analyzed these codes and their associated data from Definitive Healthcare Definitive Healthcare :

1. N17.0
2. N17.1
3. N17.2
4. N17.8
5. N17.9

We immersed ourselves in operating rooms and intensive care units to observe kidney management. We found an opportunity to innovate effectively for the clinical team and the patients. We observed :

• The kidney is still predominantly manually managed,
• Detecting kidney function impairment still relies on a serum creatinine score,
• Manual work is still needed to remove dependent loops in gravity-fed foleys: the practice is called milking the foley,
• What seemed to me an outdated way of episodically understanding intra-abdominal pressure.

What amazed me was that the heart, brain, and lungs were constantly monitored for related vital signs and inputs. However, with the kidney's vital sign, which some offer is urine, there wasn't an automated solution, and serum creatinine labs can lag kidney insult by up to 33 hours. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053077024003963

Our clinical collaborators, in essence said "There is a better way to do it--Find it!" Find something that will:

• Automate urine flow with zero harm to the kidney, which would also help prevent large amounts of retained urine in the bladder,
• Prevent dependent loops in the gravity-fed foley,
• Send the urine data automatically to the EMR to prevent laborious documentation,
• Monitor intra-abdominal pressure much more straightforward than what was available at the time.

With the hundreds of hours we spent, we had an alliance around the problem in context; the business model problems caused for the system, and clarity in what to solve. At the request of our clinical teams, we went on an extensive hunt and found Accuryn Medical's device!

When innovation teams set out to transform a practice and business model to move a current approach from highly variable to highly reliable, they must remain empathetic to the people in their circumstances and maintain an inquisitive mindset. We also remember "There is a better way to do it--Find it!" Great things happen when those fundamentals of transformation are followed, along with making evidence-based decisions. Accuryn Medical is an excellent solution to the struggles mentioned above. You can learn more about the solution here: https://accuryn.com/medical-knowledge-hub/