Experts at Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania suggest that healthcare innovation means testing a lot of ideas quickly, cheaply and contextually. The New England Journal of Medicine published the perspective, according to News Medical.
Here are five points of advice:
1. Co-authors David A. Asch, MD, MBA, and Roy Rosin, MBA, shared business techniques for healthcare organizations to learn quickly at low costs.
2. Vapor tests are when companies try to sell non-existent products to measure the demand before investing. The authors warn that vapor tests require deception, which might not fare well in the healthcare industry.
3. "Fake front ends" involve the creation of non-functioning prototypes to see how people might use them.
4. "Fake back ends" involve creating temporary structures to discover how new ideas would work, before spending money on something that might not work.
5. The authors said that innovation is about a "culture of experimentation" that does not waste much time or money, and moves far beyond just building apps.
"Healthcare innovation is not about iPhone apps. It's about disciplined approaches to rapidly testing new ideas to promote better patient care," said Dr. Asch, executive director of Penn Medicine's Center for Health Care Innovation.
