Opening up healthcare innovation: Innovation solutions for a 21st century healthcare system

Abstract

Healthcare systems in the early 21st century face a crisis. Rising demand and expectations are increasingly out of step with the funding models available.Without radical innovation it seems unlikely that we can sustain the kind of healthcare which we associate with highly developed societies. The healthcare sector has always been characterised by innovation – in treatments and drugs, in hospital and care systems, in primary and acute care pathways and in chronic disease management. But arguably the system suffers from the problem facing all kinds of organisations – a recognition that, despite huge commitment and investment in generating innovation, ‘not all the smart guys work for us’. The ideas behind ‘open collective innovation’ essentially involve finding ways to spread the knowledge net much more widely, bringing into the innovation process a wider range of players and mobilising their experience and creativity in the search for novel and sustainable solutions. One key direction in which healthcare innovation can open up lies in harnessing the innovation potential of patients and their carers.We already know of many examples where patients have been a key source of innovation; in today’s environment the challenge is to find ways of scaling this to help deal with the innovation crisis. One powerful route is opened up via interactive web-based platforms which build and mobilise communities with common interests. This report discusses the potential of Web 2.0 interactive platforms and provides examples of several which appear to offer considerable additional traction in developing innovative solutions to the healthcare issues faced by such patients.