Innovate4Outcomes: Thought Leaders Come Together to Brainstorm on Healthcare’s Most Pressing Issues

The onset of COVID-19 in the first quarter of 2020 forced the health industry to quickly adapt to a rapid expansion of health solutions to manage patient care in the face of a global pandemic. These solutions needed to be centered around patient access, a holistic care approach, and overall patient safety and treatment. They also had to account for urgent care emergencies, manage comorbidities, treatment adherence, and follow data sharing and HIPAA guidelines and restrictions. That meant rapid, sweeping changes across the board in our industry. 

"As health care providers continue to adapt practices to suit this “new normal”, it’s deeply important for us to collaborate with our colleagues to ensure that we are not only supporting, but cultivating innovation to solve challenges."

This past December we partnered with leading healthcare news organization, FiercePharma, to offer a unique chance for thought leaders across the healthcare sector to collaborate and brainstorm solutions to the industry's most pressing challenges:  

• With face-to-face interaction off-the-table until at least the middle of 2021, what more can be done to ‘virtually' support providers in delivering appropriate care?  

• What role can clinicians play in directing digital strategies to further engage patients to follow recommended courses of treatment to achieve positive outcomes?  

• Patient support programs are largely unadopted but providers report that they are successful to promote patient outcomes. What can be done to further empower patients to utilize support programs?  

• Social media can have a huge impact on patients. How can social media, and other channels, be harnessed to shape authentic engagement experiences for patients that improve health outcomes?   

The event was created as a design thinking workshop, kicking off with a keynote from David Rose, a world-renowned healthcare futurist. Rose set the stage to challenge individually held beliefs in what is possible to create new solutions. Following, attendees were broken into small working groups of 10, led by industry leaders with strong experience in design thinking strategies to formulate solutions to challenges in a set amount of time. Participants included everyone from registered nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians and healthcare innovation partners to vice presidents of clinical programs and patient advocacy as well as several CEO’s across the broader healthcare spectrum. Industries represented included life sciences, hospital systems, and leading IT companies.  

Teams were broken into breakout sessions and invited to discuss in-depth the challenges presented and create action plans and plausible solutions to the challenges.  Incredible conversations and exploration of ideas and solutions were cultivated in the 2 hour working groups (with the biggest request post-event for more time to spend together!). The breakout sessions culminated with each team presenting their solutions to the entire audience, which led to an audience choice award for the most innovative solution.  

The final presentations showcased innovative solutions that combined technology with robotics, to virtual communication and social media in ways that had previously not been explored. The depth and insight into the solutions and challenges, underscored the immense design thinking leadership that was led by our team leads and outstanding engagement by the attendees truly focused on solving challenges for frontline clinicians.    

Stay tuned as we share more on these issues and solutions in future discussions as each presentation deserves a blog of their own – to showcase the incredible knowledge, insight and innovative solutions that were created. We can’t wait for our next Innovate4Outcomes event and a special thank you to all who participated!