The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman quotes Chuck Vest, former president of MIT, about what seemed to be missing from the current presidential election campaign:
Both candidates have spoken a lot about ‘change,’ but in most areas of need, innovation is the only mechanism that can actually change things in substantive ways. Innovation is where creative thinking and practical know-how meet to do new things in new ways, and old things in new ways.
I totally agree -- all of our politicians seem to talk about change but few refer to innovation which is the most important change engine. This idea got me thinking about the following question: what have been the most important recent innovations in diagnostic medicine and healthcare delivery and how does one recognize innovation when one comes upon it? At least for me, the "what" of this question is easy. The most significant innovations have been the ones that attracted my attention for blog notes. The list include the following in very rough order of their significance, at least in my mind:
- Multiplexed biomarker assays
- Early health model, defined as (pre-symptomatic, pre-clinical diagnosis)
- Integrated diagnostics and the possible merger of pathology, lab medicine, and radiology into the new field of diagnostic medicine
- Personalized medicine and companion diagnostics; cancer treated as a chronic disease
- The web as new tool for health education (Health 2.0); the emergence of more educated and engaged healthcare consumers
- Increasing importance of wellness and preventive medicine
- Evolution of the digital pathology department; emergence of searchable image databases for clinical support and research
- Molecular imaging and other non-invasive imaging techniques for providing more accurate diagnoses
- Web-based personal health records (PHRs); entry of innovative companies such as Google into the medical record field
- Walk-in clinics located in retail pharmacies and big-box stores; greater transparency in the cost of medical services
How does one know when true innovation is encountered -- the "how" of the question? It's simply the fact that all of the key issues listed above set one's mind spinning as to their possible consequences. The irony of this discussion is that I was not tempted to place any aspect of hospital EMR and LIS technology on the list. Any changes associated with these products have been mainly evolutionary rather than revolutionary for the past two decades or more. The biggest story in the LIS world recently has been middleware which can hardly be referred to as a radical breakthrough. We have been using instrument interfaces and rules for three decades or more.
Comments