Table 1.

Potential upstream solutions to address care delivery ethos

I. Incorporate clinical innovation training programs into academic medical and other health professions education. Example: “Accelerating Change: Fostering Innovation in Healthcare Delivery at Academic Medical Centers” by Ostrovsky and Barnett (2014). Authors outline two initiatives that promote innovation training in academic medical education: (1) an institutional innovation incubator program would function to facilitate the development of new care delivery products or services for patients and providers. These incubators included personnel experienced in entrepreneurship, software development, financing, legal advising, and those in innovation network tracks, all of which would support clinician innovators. Several innovation incubators at major academic medical centers are also cited. (2) a clinician-innovator career track that would allow training clinicians to develop projects that lead to new innovations and products.

II. Utilize academic medical centers (AMC’s) as settings for new mHealth design and implementation studies. Example: “Building Digital Innovation Capacity at a Large Academic Medical Center” by Mann et al. (2019). This case study by Mann et al. reviews the formation and evaluation of the Digital DesignLab at NYU Langone Medical Center. The initiative consisted of a cross-functional team of experienced faculty with backgrounds in academia, clinical practice, and digital solution fields. Digital Design Lab developed a selection process for new digital health innovations projects that are likely to see practice integration. The initiative served as an AMC-centralized process for evaluating and supporting projects trying to develop novel digital health solutions.

III. Promote innovation culture and adoption of novel digital health technology through top-down leadership within medical academia. Example: “Tradition Meets Innovation: Transforming Academic Medical Culture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine” by Pati et al. (2013). Guided by principles from business transformation models and workforce environment innovation, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania implemented the NIH-TAC (Transforming Academic Culture) in 2009. The purpose of this initiative was to drive institutional culture changes within academic medicine by faculty leadership to foster more innovative career paths and programs that align with the rapidly increasing demands for innovation in medicine.