Why is Innovation in Healthcare So Hard?

Overview

Healthcare is notoriously slow to change and accept innovations compared to other industries. Even though the COVID-19 pandemic made the adoption of technologies necessary in healthcare and proved that they could offer some impressive outcomes in implementation, many healthcare organizations are hesitant to embrace new ideas. But why is it so? And what is it going to take to change this pattern? 

Take, for example, the controversial Knees Over Toes Guy, Ben Patrick. His avant-garde philosophy and regimen for regaining and maintaining knee strength goes against everything a physical therapist advises you to do. Yet, his program works! Through his protocol, Ben has saved thousands of people’s aching and injured knees. 

Ben’s training program has become wildly successful, yet the traditional healthcare model still rejects his methodology (while scientifically sound). A huge factor in this lack of adoption is that Ben is considered a ‘black sheep’ of sorts. He was one random guy with a theory on improving knee health who tested it for years, and it went viral. This doesn’t align with traditional medical research models.

In the words of Meta CIO, Tim Campos, “Data wins arguments”, and the same should be true in healthcare. Fortunately, healthcare stands at a huge turning point for supporting the ‘data wins arguments’ argument. Due to massive improvements in technology, namely digital records and Artificial Intelligence, healthcare now has access to incredible amounts of data that can be organized, sorted, and classified in myriad ways. This previously unheard-of visibility into the operations of every sector of a healthcare entity is poised to transform the industry and how we evaluate innovations, from research to technology. In the future, this should make innovation in healthcare easier to adopt as the reasoning behind adoption will be backed by sound and objective assertions proven by data rather than subjective experiences and emotions. 

While we love to see and will always support the wild cards, the future of the healthcare industry cannot rest on these brave black sheep. Data will always win, which is the key to driving faster and more effective healthcare innovation.