Classifying Healthcare Innovations 2021

Box 3.4 EXERCISE: Classifying healthcare innovations

All the examples here have been recognised as ‘healthcare innovations’. Two can be
described as hard technology innovations and two are soft technology innovations.
Scan the material and answer the following:

• Why do you think these have been described as innovations?

• What is innovative about them?
• Try to categorise them according to
— their degree of novelty (how new?);
— their form or application (product, process, service);
— their ‘innovativeness’ (radical, incremental, architectural, modular).
• How easy do you think it will be to ensure the innovation is widely adopted? What
are the organisational, cost-benefit and other acceptance issues?

Hard technology innovations

1. Robotic heart catheter. Robotic surgery involves a system that can be
programmed to aid the positioning and manipulation of surgical instru-
ments to surgeons to carry out complex tasks more efficiently or remotely.
It is beginning to become widely used for certain procedures, especially
those involving minimally invasive surgery in the thoracic cavity and the
abdominal cavity. Robotic surgery requires a different set of techniques to
be adopted, with the surgeon operating from a remote console to control
the equipment rather than physically operating on the patient him or her-
self. As well as potential benefits the patient, such as decreased risk and
shorter recovery time, the wider health benefits include fewer human
errors and a faster learning curve for surgeons in training. One area where
robotic devices have been developed for surgical procedures is the inser-
tion of catheters such as Hansen Medical’s robotic catheter system. This
allows surgeons to remotely guide a heart catheter with hand movements,
while seeing a 3D view of the operation. The device allows more precise
catheter movements inside the heart.
Sources:
http://www.hansenmedical.com/us/en/cardiac-arrhythmia/sensei-robotic-
system/product-overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e1aV34vlN0Q

2. Diagnosing cataracts by smartphone. Diagnosing cataracts typically requires a

USD 5,000 piece of equipment and a physician to interpret the test results. Neither is
easy to come by in rural areas and lower-income countries. A team of MIT
researchers has developed a simple device, Catra, that can clip onto an ordinary
smartphone and provide a diagnosis of cataracts within a few minutes. ‘I like to think
of this as a radar for the
human eye’, said one researcher. The system sweeps a beam of light across the eye
to detect the cloudy patches resulting from cataracts and creates a map showing
their position, size, shape and density, more detail than needed to make a decision
whether or not to surgically remove the lens. Inexpensive and portable diagnostic
devices such as Catra could an important part in helping provide care for the 250
million people in the world who are blind because of preventable causes.
Sources:

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 Classifying Healthcare Innovations 2021
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/netra-cataracts-app-0701.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V2BXSWuQO0M

Soft technology innovations

These are both from the Health Services Journal (HSJ) Best Practice Awards
2011.
1
3. Bupa Care Services: Improving residential care by digitalizing quality processes. In 2010,
the English health and social care regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), changed
its methodology for assessing quality processes in residential care homes. Bupa used this
opportunity to review how they monitored its care services and re-engineer its quality
assurance (QA) processes. It aimed to ensure that all QA processes were internally
integrated and aligned with external regulation, to make QA simpler and less burdensome
for care home managers, and to drive improved quality through better governance and more
transparent reporting. Bupa moved from a paper based QA process to an online model,
where compliance assessments were fully digitalised. By using a free-to-market version
of Microsoft Sharepoint, Bupa was able to develop the system on a tight budget. After
introduction of the system, care home managers spent less time providing their compliance
assessment reports to the CQC, which meant they concentrated more on the residents and
their needs. Regional managers were able to see reports before they were submitted to the
CQC to ensure their accuracy. The system also resulted in more useful and actionable
management information, quickly identifying concerns and allowing managers to track
improvement actions between their visits.

4. University Hospitals Southampton: Finding the missing millions and reducing

admissions through medical intelligence. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is
the fourth leading cause of death in the UK, with enormous social and economic
implications. It is the second most common reason for an emergency hospital admission.
The British Lung Foundation report Finding The Missing Millions highlighted the fact that the
city of Southampton is a hotspot for COPD, yet the disease is significantly under diagnosed,
leading to a higher admissions rate. It was clear that a strategy to identify undiagnosed and
misdiagnosed COPD was needed.
Using medical intelligence, GP practices were prioritised according to estimated
undiagnosed COPD prevalence and hospital admission rates. A team from the hospital then
visited and educated each GP practice. This was supported by wider educational meetings,
an education package, and websites for health professionals and patients. The hospital
employed a dedicated respiratory nurse to deliver the project and work closely with primary
care. An audit of hospital attendances revealed that 34 patients were admitted more than
three times the previous year and were responsible for 22% of admissions. These patients
were looked after exclusively by the respiratory teams — reviewed in their homes by a con-
sultant and specialist nurse to look at their health needs, optimise their current treatment and
investigate the reasons why they needed to come into hospital. After implementing the
project the rate of diagnosis increased from 1.5% to 2.3%, compared to an estimated 6%
prevalence rate in the city. There was a 19% reduction in hospital admissions due to
COPD exacerbations, and hospital readmissions within 30 days were reduced from 13% to
1.7%. Net financial savings in the first year were
estimated to be GBP 301,800.

James Barlow. Managing Innovation In Healthcare pages 78-81

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