Supporting Internal Innovation Through Dynamic Partnerships

HX360admin

Guest Post By Intermountain Healthcare and Healthbox

 

As pressure escalates in healthcare to provide high quality patient care while reducing costs, it is more important than ever to push the boundaries of established practice. A critical component to remaining competitive comes from harnessing an organization’s internal creativity - leveraging ideas from employees who are in the best position to see what’s working in healthcare, and what isn’t.

Intermountain Healthcare, an internationally recognized, not-for-profit healthcare system, has a strong commitment to innovation, from its cutting-edge research and a dedication to medical informatics, to its unique care coordination methods across ten clinical programs. Despite this legacy of innovation, there still remained a gap in their innovation capabilities: there was no clear, coordinated way to source, evaluate and support employee ideas. Many employees didn’t know where to take ideas - or if they did try to seek help, it would take a heroic effort to see it through!

In 2013, Intermountain Healthcare partnered with Healthbox to solve this innovation challenge. The Intermountain Foundry program was developed to equip the organization with a structured, timely and transparent process to advance internal innovation.

The Intermountain Foundry became a turnkey solution, expanding the organization’s bandwidth to support physician and employee entrepreneurs without distracting from the core business. The end goal of the program is successful development and commercialization of high potential innovations to transform healthcare within Intermountain and beyond:

+ A customized internal marketing plan drove awareness of the Intermountain Foundry program and generated idea submissions from across the system and employee base

+ Ideas were carefully evaluated and the highest potential ideas were selected based on strategic alignment and market potential

+ Four employee “Innovators” were chosen to complete an eight-week, market-tested commercialization program to refine their business concept, validate the market opportunity, identify product development or service needs and develop a plan for further growth

Following the Foundry program, an Intermountain “Innovator” shared how the program influenced his business idea:

“We were dead in the water. I came up with the idea back in 2007 - and to our credit, we did the best we could. But for the last few years, we have been spinning our wheels. The Foundry helped us get unstuck...we're finally moving forward!” 

On Monday, April 13, 2015, 11:45am-12:45am, please join the HX360 session “Unpacking Innovation with Intermountain Healthcare and Healthbox.” Nina Nashif (CEO, Healthbox) and George Hamilton (Vice President, Business Development, Intermountain Healthcare) will partake in a dynamic conversation, sharing insights on the inaugural Foundry program. Areas of discussion will include the Foundry’s evolution from idea to reality, the return on investment for Intermountain, as well as the challenges faced along the way and how Intermountain and Healthbox plan to collaborate moving forward.

We hope to see you there!

Click here to learn more about how to register for the HX360 Inaugural Event