Want to Innovate? Plan to Disrupt

Advancement in any health care organization is rarely linear. And innovation doesn’t happen without a mindset shift and significant change. This may seem intuitive, but it’s a leap many executives never quite make, opting instead for safer, incremental progress. That won’t cut it if you’re intent on innovating.

“There is no innovation without disruption,” says Linda Bernardi, a former IBM chief innovation officer and Watson co-lead who will be a keynote presenter at the AHA Leadership Summit July 25-27 in San Diego.

Bernardi, a strong believer in the positive impact disruptive technologies can have on health care, argues that health care executives should embrace this as an era of opportunity. Making this mindset shift is the first and most critical step toward enabling any health care organization to create new services or radically improve processes.

“We need to embrace change and allow agile experimentation of connecting with, delivering services to and keeping patients happy,” Bernardi says. “Let’s realize that tech orientation is now far beyond portal capacity or running a mobile app. [Focus on] patient expectations, be risk-tolerant and realize that tomorrow a patient would like to issue voice commands and have magic happen. Health care needs to embrace Alexa-like technologies and connectivity, as we have all accepted [these devices] into our homes!”

Bernardi says the greatest opportunity and form of disruption will emerge from widespread digitization of all services, the most visible of which is the doctor-patient interaction. Organizations that recognize this and focus on the patient experience vs. services will be the big winners, she adds.