Background: As consumers, hospitals, and health systems have rapidly adopted health technology, entrepreneurs have begun to focus more in this space. Hospitals and healthcare systems can shape entrepreneurial activities, and positively influence new technologies, by developing their own internal innovations and by fostering partnerships with external entities. However, many physicians lack expertise and training in how to approach technology development.
Purpose: To create a medical-center based, digital-health innovation center focused on streamlining the development, evaluation, and adoption of new health technologies.
Description: In May 2013, the Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI) was established at a tertiary-care academic medical center. Our program supports internal innovators developing technologies at our institution and facilitates partnerships with external companies looking to create, evaluate, or integrate new technologies in existing ecosystems. The program is lead by the medical center’s Chief Medical Information Officer and Associate Vice Chancellor for informatics, and includes physicians (a team of five, of whom three are hospitalists), technology transfer officers, information-technology group members, and security experts. To streamline technology development, we have established a framework for technologies being developed or evaluated, focusing on issues including expedited screening of opportunities using a multidisciplinary team, technology governance (i.e. how to introduce a new technology thoughtfully into the clinical enterprise), intellectual property and licensing, and privacy/security (see Figure 1). A clinician champion is necessary for any project to succeed, and CDHI provides funding, expertise, and guidance to these clinicians. CDHI has additionally created formal mechanisms for funding internal innovators on campus, working jointly with the medical center’s clinical trial center. During the first 18-months of operations, CDHI has supported technology development via four internal portfolio projects lead by innovators on campus, and in collaboration with two external companies (see table 1). Three of these technologies have pilots or trials underway.
Conclusions:
The CDHI is a successful medical-center based endeavor to foster the hospital and medical center’s engagement in influencing the development, evaluation, and adoption of new health technologies. Major lessons learned include the 1) need for broad stakeholder support, especially from clinicians, the information-technology group, technology transfer office, and privacy and risk groups, and 2) the need for funding to support this nascent field of work within academic medicine as a way of recruiting faculty members to lead projects.