Rowan Gibson shares his thoughts on innovating healthcare in his latest online column

Rowan Gibson is a global business strategist, a bestselling author and an expert on radical innovation. He is also one of world’s most in-demand business speakers. Rowan’s books have been translated into over 20 languages. His new book Innovation to the Core (co-authored with Peter Skarzynski) was published in March 2008 by Harvard Business School Press.

Below is Rowan’s latest online column looking at innovating our healthcare systems and rethinking and improving the way things are done.
Innovating Healthcare

The first modern hospitals were founded in Europe and America in the 18th century. About a hundred years later, both the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry began to emerge. So it’s safe to say that, in much of the developed world, the healthcare business has been around for about two or three centuries. And, over time, like most other businesses, it has become bigger, better and faster. But has it actually become different in any essential ways? Not really. Yet that’s about to change. In a world of hyper-accelerating change, global competition, rapidly commoditized products and services, and unprecedented patient primacy, the industry is waking up to the need to reinvent itself from top to bottom for a whole new era.

Over the last few years, I’ve been spending a disproportionate amount of time with healthcare people. Not because I’m sick (thankfully!). But because there’s a growing recognition right across the industry that the strategies and business models of the last couple of centuries may no longer be fit for purpose. The world is simply changing so much, and so quickly, that the old ways of doing things (and they are very old) are looking increasingly archaic, perhaps even obsolete.

As regular readers of this column will know, my approach to radical rethinking and renewal is centered on a set of strategy tools called the “Four Lenses of Innovation”. Briefly, they are: challenging orthodoxies, harnessing trends, leveraging resources in new ways, and addressing unmet customer needs. And if we look at what is happening in the healthcare industry around the globe, we can see numerous and very exciting examples of these four “lenses” in action. Here are just a few.

One of the stubbornly enduring orthodoxies in hospital management is the age-old notion that we all make mistakes – “to err is human”. Everyone has heard horror stories of people having the wrong leg amputated, or getting an operation that was meant for the patient next door. Every year in the U.S., for example, millions of hospital patients suffer injuries – about 100,000 of them fatal! – from things like false medication, incorrect dosage, inefficient diagnostics, duplicated procedures, and so forth. Yet in healthcare, people have long accepted these medical errors as “part of the system”. This is clearly an orthodoxy that must be challenged. When IBM took a good look at what was going wrong – and all too often it was stupid things like illegible handwriting, misplaced decimal points, missed drug interactions and allergies – they realized they could alleviate the problem. They offered to use IT to help hospitals manage their patient data a lot more effectively, in much the same way that companies manage their supply chains. This was the birth of IBM Life Sciences, which has grown from a 2-person unit in 2000 to a multi-billion dollar, 1500-employee business today.

Consider another orthodoxy – this time in the pharmaceutical industry. The traditional pharma model is based on drug discovery – testing thousands of compounds to see if any of them makes a measurable difference. It’s a model that has essentially remained unchanged since the industry got started in the 19th century—the only difference being the scale and efficiency with which today’s pharma companies can manage the compound-testing process. Today, however, a new set of players has emerged – companies like Amgen, Genentech, and Genzyme – where the business model is focused on understanding disease mechanisms (i.e., genetic diseases, immune system disorders, heart disease, cancer) and creating targeted products that address those mechanisms. Their promise is “personalized medicine,” in which the therapy can be matched to an individual’s own unique genetic makeup, as opposed to big pharma’s “mass medicine” model. By innovating around gene-based therapy, which is based on completely different skills and assets from conventional drug-making, this new breed of pharma companies is fundamentally changing the game. Which explains why Swiss pharma giant Roche was recently so focused on swallowing up biotech pioneer Genentech.

Now think about trends. Look at what’s happening in the technology field alone – from e-health to handheld scanners, mobile information devices, telemedicine, surgical robots, remote diagnostics, “integrated digital hospitals”, 24/7 access to full medical records, and the list goes on. Or consider the parallel trend “from high tech to high-touch”, where design elements such as nature, color, lighting, noise reduction, and so forth, are being used by a few cutting-edge hospitals to promote what is known as a “healing environment” that treats both body and soul.

Then there are healthcare providers that leverage their resources in novel ways to create new value for customers. India’s Apollo Hospital Group, for example, which is the largest healthcare provider in Asia, and the third largest in the world, uses its expertise to offer medical business process outsourcing – i.e. writing of diagnosis reports, medical coding, billing etc. – to hospitals right across America. And for many of these hospitals, Apollo take cares of radiology, X-rays, ultrasound, CTs and MRIs when it’s nighttime in the U.S., taking advantage of the time difference. The company’s IT-enabled services already generate tens of billions of dollars.

And what about unmet customer needs? Again, there are great examples. Like Florida Hospital, where staff did “day in the life” profiling of patients so they could better understand and address their problems and frustrations. Or California’s Fresno Surgical Hospital, which has modeled itself on the Ritz Carlton hotel to offer a “5-star patient experience” –including luxury rooms, mini-bars, art on the walls, and food prepared by a Ritz-Carlton chef.

True, many of these examples are still about improving what has always been done. But as all this exciting innovation activity continues, I believe we’ll soon see the healthcare industry doing things it has never done before.

A leading speakers bureau sourcing after dinner speakers, motivational speakers, keynote speakers and conference speakers for corporate events around the world

Healthcare Risk Management: What’s Your Biggest Exposure?

Healthcare Risk Management: What’s your biggest exposure?

If we think about a comprehensive healthcare risk management solution, what are some of the things that come to mind? If you look up this topic on the internet, you’re sure to receive a litany of different answers. Healthcare risk management could mean managing the risks of who is going to pay you, managing privacy issues, or handling the risk of security breaches – the list goes on and on. I sat down with one of the most experienced healthcare professionals I know to give me her perspective on risk from the top. Her name is Marsha Burke, and she was most recently the Chief Executive Officer of WellStar Health System, one of the largest health systems with over $1 billion in annual revenue and over 1,300 hospital beds.

Identifying a Proper Risk Management Solution

One of the biggest healthcare risk management issues on her mind was patient safety. This topic has garnered lots of attention in the news, and multiple groups have dedicated teams reviewing this initiative. I asked Marsha Burke about all the advancements that hospitals have made with respect to patient safety, and if it was still possible to walk in to a patient’s room with unvetted access. The answer was yes. “Certain areas have more security than others, such as the baby ward and the intensive care units, but it would be very difficult to try to secure all rooms of an entire hospital,” mentioned Marsha. It is true that security can at times collide with commerce, but hence the term risk management…not risk elimination.

The biggest concerns around healthcare risk management security issues seem to still involve people. We see it all the time where doctors whose medical licenses have been revoked are still practicing or where a nurse who isn’t certified somehow gets through the system. How do you fix this problem? Marsha said that “if there was a healthcare risk management solution that could constantly monitor any changes in criminal history or licensure status and instantly alert the employer if there has been a new incident, that tool could be immensely helpful.” Again, all of this boils down to cost.

Supply chains have also become a major healthcare risk management issue for many industries. Many new laws now require that contractor employees be screened almost to the same degree as any new employee beginning work. With this amount of new work, it is almost impossible to operate without getting new funding. In the healthcare field, securing new funding, particularly for non-profits, can be difficult. “It always helps to be able to draw a parallel between outgoing costs and securing new revenue,” said Marsha.

Ensuring Patient Safety & Other Concerns

Being as risk-conscious as a CEO of a major healthcare chain needs to be, Marsha successfully implemented a healthcare risk management solution powered by the latest technology. Healthcare is a technologically-driven enterprise, but even with all the advancements in the world of MRI’s, CT scans, and robotic surgeries, it’s still a very service-oriented business, and service requires people. You still have lots of people coming and going. It’s pretty easy to make sure your machines are secure, but the biggest risk is still people. That’s what a hospital’s most important asset is. “Managing the risk between patients, employees, suppliers, sales reps and everyone else coming onto the property can be daunting, but it is still the most important part of a healthcare enterprise,” Marsha re-iterated in closing.

Finding a risk management solution that works, while keeping to financial constraints, is a necessity. Fortunately, there are healthcare risk management systems that exist to assist with all of these different issues. Some may do everything, or nothing, or anything in between. The important issue to remember when it comes to finding a healthcare risk management solution is DO NOT DO NOTHING. Patient safety isn’t an issue that is going to go away and, with all the political discussions regarding healthcare, now is not a time to be on the front page news explaining a lack of a risk management solution. As Marsha mentioned, there are many facets of risk, but people are still the biggest one.

Robotic prostate surgery in India with modern healthcare protocols

Robotic prostate surgery in India with modern healthcare protocols is providing excellent results to the patients who come to India to get their robotic prostate surgery. It is proving to be beneficial for the foreign patients who want robotic prostate surgery at less price. Robotic prostate surgery in India is done in cities like Mumbai and Chennai which has world class hospitals equipped with necessary medical infrastructure with 24 hours service support. The surgery is conducted by Indian surgeons whom are regarded among the best in the world. All in excellent medical services are offered to the patients at an affordable price.

Prostate cancer is cancer of the small walnut-shaped gland in males that produces seminal fluid, the fluid that nourishes and transports sperm. The diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer have gotten much better in recent years. Therefore robotic surgery is the best option for prostate cancer. Robotic prostate surgery takes about two hours and with only about 50 cc blood losses, Robotic surgery is superior to other forms of surgeries to remove prostate cancer, as it reduces blood loss. As a surgeon can see all the nerves and operate precisely, complications, such as leakage of urine, sexual dysfunction and pain are also reduced; Robotic surgery is the most advanced form of laparoscopic surgery wherein a robot is used to manipulate the surgical instruments while the surgeon controls the robot’s movements.

Robotic prostate surgery at the most advanced cancer surgery hospitals of Mumbai and Chennai is available at an affordable price. Medical tourism in India has helped many global patients to recover from prostate cancer with a cost effective robotic prostate surgery in India. Now you can get the robotic surgery for prostate cancer in India at affordable price with the best medical treatment and facilities. To know more about robotic prostate surgery in India visit http://www.forerunnershealthcare.com or mail us at enquiry@forerunnershealthcare.com