You too can innovate for health

If you look around, you will see novel innovations in healthcare that are changing the way your care gets delivered. The list of innovations is long, ranging from gadgets to health delivery processes. But who drives such innovations? It shouldn’t surprise you to know that healthcare consumers, that means you, play a big role in medical innovations.

As a healthcare consumer, you have ample opportunities to analyze what gets done well, and what could be improved to enhance your service experience. It doesn’t take much to see flawed processes, opportunities to improve diagnostics and treatment tools, scope for optimized human recourses, and much more. You don’t have to come up with an abstract innovation, but you could if you stumbled upon a really novel idea. Simple innovations based on existing tools can sometimes make the difference.

But where do you start, especially as a lay consumer of health? Look closely at the gaps that you have observed over time in your healthcare interactions. Anything continually bothering you implies a need to be bettered. You can then rack your brains for a simple solution. Beyond that, you’ll be looking for steps towards eventual implementation, and consequent rewards in terms of better patient experience. Who knows, you may end commercializing your ideas into a viable entity, and rake in some financial profits as well.

Healthcare providers are always looking to getting things done better. Look for a way of partnering with them to improve service provision. They may help move your ideas forwards by adding in some technical bits that you may not be well versed with. There might even be a research and development fund that you could access from the healthcare facility to help move things forwards. Don’t shy away from building collaborations, with the eventual goal being focused on improving care.

Am sure you have heard of innovations that came from very unlikely sources. Think of the ubiquitous Coke soft drink. You can find it in the remotest of places. But why can’t you find simple things like rehydration salts or even vaccines in the same remote places? Well, somebody noticed and came up with a solution of using Coca Cola distribution networks to deliver healthcare supplies to needy children. A seemingly simple, but very effective innovation.

Never for once think that you are far removed from the business of healthcare. You are as much a player as anyone else involved in healthcare delivery. You could make valuable contributions by pitching your ideas forwards. What you think of as an innovation could be very simplistic, or as complex as you want it to be. All you want is to make a difference in peoples’ lives. What you are sitting on could be the next big thing in medicine.