Evolutionary Innovation In Healthcare: Helping Providers Deliver The Best Possible Care – Forbes

Technology solutions must make care delivery easier not frustrate providers.

If you take a close look inside todays health information technology (HIT) environment, youll encounter a fundamental frustration by providers struggling to master the technology that is intended to ease the delivery of patient care.

Simply put, we need ways to remove the technological frustration that pervades the healthcare world.

As the chief technology officer of a leading healthcare IT security company, I regularly see this frustration firsthand. I have an operating model, which I call QS4, that helps HIT leaders address this challenge. Its been my North Star when conducting IT operations.

To break down QS4, quality is at the top, supported by four S's representing stability, security, speed and simplicity, in order of priority.

Speed, in this case, refers both to the speed of compute and the speed of deployment, leaning more toward deployment.

Stability, security and speed are all built on the foundation of simplicity. The simpler you can make things, the more stable, secure and speedy they will be.

Using the theory of QS4, I believe HIT leaders can improve IT operations and innovation processes.

Navigating Innovation In Healthcare

I believe there are two types of innovation: evolutionary and revolutionary.

Im not a revolutionary kind of guy I just dont have the right thought processes for it. I am, however, a huge fan of evolutionary innovation. Ignore thoughts of Darwin that slow generational timeline think about the type of evolution that happens quickly. Evolutionary innovation involves the kind of rapid change that, in a business setting, new technologies can bring to bear on how companies are run. Sometimes it appears an industrywide disruption, or it can be simply new software that completely changes almost overnight how certain business practices are run.

Within evolutionary innovation, there are two subcategories: operational and strategic. I think QS4 is well suited for use in operational evolution because it is, at its core, an operating model. It also plays an important, although smaller, part in strategic evolution. But its fundamental utility is helping improve operations.

Processes and practices dont just evolve, though. Theres a trigger or catalyst for that evolution. In healthcare, that catalyst should derive from observations done at the point of patient care. Healthcare providers are, almost without exception, laser-focused on patients when theyre delivering care. They dont have time to examine new technologies that may help them deliver more value to their patients and families, nor do they have time to suggest ways to remove the technological friction that exists in todays HIT environment.

Indeed, this friction reflects the increasing burden routinely placed on doctors and nurses, creating challenges for clinical staff that are truly immense. When our healthcare system reaches a point where clinicians feel that technology is the problem, the entire healthcare industry should take notice.

For HIT vendors, the key is to realize that no matter how small our contribution, we can and must play a central role. We are perfectly positioned to bring evolutionary innovation directly into the marketplace, and help it work across health networks. How?

Vendors must first fully understand the form, function, application and significance of clinical workflows. By engaging directly with clinical staff, vendors can ideally support and streamline those clinical workflows all under clinician guidance.

Doctors and nurses will always do whatever it takes to complete their work and care for their patients this is their mission. This commitment to care is so prevalent that if healthcare administrators arent careful, care providers can get dangerously overworked. HIT leaders can protect against this possibility and avoid taking advantage of the mission-based devotion to care by providing clinicians with tools that let them fulfill their ethical commitments. At the same time, this investment will help these dedicated providers maintain a sustainable life balance.

As HIT leaders, we must step up to this challenge. We must work alongside caregivers to find evolutionary innovations that remove technological friction, or, if we cant do that, provide more value for the friction that cant be eliminated.

We must stop expecting technological innovation from our clinical and business partners because they're focused on working in the business and have no time to work on the business. I depend on them to provide great patient care and outstanding support; they should rightfully depend on people like me to bring them technological innovation.

Its important to look beyond titles that serve only to separate us from working together. Thats why my favorite title from my various workplaces is partner experience and innovation. It describes exactly what the old desktop titles are evolving into. Im also stuck on calling the clinical and business folks we support partners rather than "customers."

The QS4 model comes in handy for partner experience and innovation teams. They already know, from an operational perspective, how they support their business and clinical partners on a day-to-day basis, and how the QS4 model helps separate the wheat from the chaff in operational priorities. They know that if they work on simplicity, theyll be able to affect the stability, security and speed of the service their partners are depending upon.

All we need to do, HIT leaders, is give our folks the time to focus on using QS4 for something other than break-fix operational prioritization. That just perpetuates the current friction and doesnt increase value.

Instead, use QS4 to advance the kind of evolutionary innovation described above and (hopefully) experience what delighting your partners feels like! Thats the best way we can help our clinical and business partners deliver the highest-quality, most compassionate care to our patients and families.

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Evolutionary Innovation In Healthcare: Helping Providers Deliver The Best Possible Care - Forbes