Symposium Spotlight: Innovation
HIMSS13 pre-conference symposia and workshops invite a diverse and growing audience of professionals to participate in specialized and highly interactive education sessions in the days leading up to the Annual Conference. In this article, we take a look at the Innovation Symposium: The Science and Practice of Innovation, on Sunday, March 3.
This Symposium will focus on the science and practice of innovation featuring leading experts that will help you understand and apply proven innovation principles to create value in your organization. After attending this program, attendees will assess different perspectives on the innovation process; identify ways to inspire innovation and creative thinking at any level in an organization; and recognize practical ways to operationalize innovation.
Speaker Bob Eckert says the Symposium will focus on the blocks and barriers to innovation, and then best practices at the individual, team and organizational levels to increase the speed, pace and quality of innovation and creative problem-solving efforts. He notes that there is great research on making individuals and organizations more innovative, it’s not well known.
“Well-developed innovation skills allow a person to reach wise solutions more rapidly, implement them more effectively, and adapt to changes on the way more gracefully,” he says. “Elegant solutions become more available to the effective innovator. Creative problem solvers define problems more effectively, thereby leading to more accurate effort in problem resolution. The skill-sets in this area, once learned, cross every life boundary, improving the life of the innovator across all key life areas.”
“Traditionally innovating in healthcare is very difficult due to a wealth of regulations and a dearth of funding and risk taking behavior. Successive waves of legislation producing CCHIT, PPACA, and now the JOBS Act have conditioned healthcare to rapidly change and it has produced a sea change in healthcare innovation and expediting adoption cycles,” says speaker Alex Fair. “There are new tools that help institutions and entrepreneurs connect and test ideas prior to adoption, navigating the traditional hazards of driving change in healthcare. Understanding these new tools that have helped new ideas gain massive adoption and awareness in record time and navigate to the new normal in healthcare innovation. This symposium introduces these tools and helps all learn how to use them to drive innovation faster and better than ever.”
Eckert hopes that attendees leave the Symposium with the understanding that creativity and innovation skills are learnable and can be improved with intention, training and systemic support. “A lack of attention in this area is dangerous for patients and health care delivery systems,” Eckert says. “It is not just a commercial competition that should drive this interest, but a basic moral imperative to become more effective creative problem solvers. In healthcare, our efforts increase the fundamental quality of life for human beings. Were we to get as fluent in our creative problem solving and innovation skills as have other industries, we will have an incredibly positive impact on our world.”
Fair hopes that the Symposium will show attendees how traditional barriers can be overcome and enable more creative innovations to succeed in healthcare. “I hope every professional and organization leaves with the understanding that by reaching out to the crowd of patients, providers, institutions and partners with a well-crafted message about their innovation, that they can get just what they need to reinvent healthcare in ways that are produce better outcomes with less resources than ever.”
Visit the HIMSS13 website for more details on these and other sessions, and to register. Network with professionals with similar interests on Twitter: #innovation and #HIMSS13.