5 Big Ideas in Healthcare Innovation

From their thoughts on predictive analytics to how they define digital transformation, here are five quotes about the role of innovation in healthcare that hospital executives shared with Becker's Hospital Review in October:

Editor's note: Responses have been edited for clarity and style.

Andy Lehman. CIO at Kettering (Ohio) Health: Transformation implies an order of magnitude improvement in performance, as opposed to incremental improvement. Digital implies the convergence of technologies in which the total is greater than the sum of the parts. Thus, digital transformation unlocks breakthrough or innovative business performance through the synergistic use of technology. Said another way, digital transformation is what turns the lead into gold.

Daniel Durand, MD. Chief Clinical Officer at LifeBridge Health (Baltimore): The greatest health innovation of 2021 was unquestionably the mass vaccination efforts worldwide utilizing the world’s first mRNA vaccines. It was also the year that health equity truly became our industry’s "fifth aim," taking its rightful place beside improved outcomes, reduced costs and enhancements to the patient and provider experience. 

Deb Muro. CIO of El Camino Health (Mountain View, Calif.): As a healthcare industry, we have focused for years upon the creation of EHR platforms in support of interoperability. The outcome of automating vast amounts of patient information has resulted in expansive and at times unwieldy "data lakes" fraught with challenges to bring value or drive actionable results. It is important now, more than ever, to realize the benefit of the tremendous investments in data automation to harness the power of information to predict and forecast aspects of the patient experience and care.