Healthcare innovation – design thinking

What’s the future of healthcare, particularly in rural areas? “What we see is that every hospital, every clinic, every vertical healthcare practice actually represents a technology company,” said MEK’s managing principal Michael Snyder. “You will see those emerging innovative solutions that are born out of necessity, where CEOs are able to innovate across borders without labels.” Snyder was privileged to join a panel of experts for a national healthcare podcast at the Indiana Rural Health Association’s annual conference this summer. Speaking at the final session of the IRHA gathering of healthcare experts and hospital administrators, Snyder noted that hospitals, particularly rural hospitals, needed to remember that if “you don’t stand out, you don’t stand a chance.”

Design Thinking

In addition to talking about how hospitals and clinics can more effectively leverage marketing (especially digital marketing) to stand out, Snyder also discussed how healthcare could leverage the principles of design thinking to quickly innovate and move a hospital or clinic forward. Such principles include: the deliberate focus and acquired ability to empathize (truly seeking to understand a problem or challenge), a concerted effort to fully define a challenge or desired objective, the capacity to ideate – to create new ideas, approaches and solutions, the ability to quickly prototype a solution and put it into action, and finally to test the solution, idea or approach in a real-time setting.

Read more and listen to the national podcast at https://rhlradio.libsyn.com/#lXpSODjReZLiRwYK.99