Innovation

South Aus­tralia is well posi­tioned on a glob­al scale to take advan­tage of the enhanced focus on inno­va­tion. Our size, economies-of-scale, and our infra­struc­ture offer a fer­tile envi­ron­ment for exper­i­men­ta­tion, research-trans­la­tion, and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. Explor­ing, enabling, and adopt­ing inno­v­a­tive prac­tices indus­try-wide, promis­es to unleash new mod­els of care that embrace the breadth of con­tem­po­rary oppor­tu­ni­ties and tech­nolo­gies avail­able. Infil­trat­ing exist­ing prac­tices, facil­i­ties, and pro­to­cols with inno­va­tion is arguably the most ratio­nal and sus­tain­able response to lift­ing the effi­ca­cy and effi­cien­cy of health­care pro­vi­sion in this state.

Our Def­i­n­i­tion of Innovation

Lit­er­a­ture remains incon­clu­sive about a stan­dard­ised def­i­n­i­tion of inno­va­tion, how­ev­er con­sis­tent key themes emerge that sug­gest, for inno­va­tion to exist, to vary­ing degrees, it must:

• Be nov­el or new and involve an idea or cre­ative genesis
• Respond to, or address, a well-defined issue, prob­lem or challenge
• Have rel­e­vance to, and res­onate with, the cus­tomer, client or consumer
• Add val­ue and make a dif­fer­ence to an indi­vid­ual, an agency, an indus­try or a system
• Entail view­ing a top­ic from a non-tra­di­tion­al per­spec­tive using ​‘out­side the square’ thinking
• Ulti­mate­ly and fun­da­men­tal­ly, change some­thing for the better

Why Inno­va­tion in Health­care Matters

The dri­ve to think crit­i­cal­ly and cre­ative­ly, by delib­er­ate­ly and method­i­cal­ly adopt­ing an inno­va­tion-led cul­ture can change the way soci­eties, and more specif­i­cal­ly, the health sys­tem oper­ates. Adopt­ing inno­va­tion prac­tices pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to solve big prob­lems and improve sys­tem effi­cien­cies for greater health out­comes for all. While inno­v­a­tive approach­es are not a replace­ment of pub­lic health best prac­tices, but rather, a part­ner to work col­lec­tive­ly to enhance process­es, tai­lor inter­ven­tions, and offer fresh solu­tions, which can be applied in impact­ful and sus­tain­able ways.

Sys­tem-wide aware­ness of inno­va­tion approach­es to health­care is nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue evolv­ing with the demands of soci­ety. In order to facil­i­tate imple­men­ta­tion, the goal is to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that advo­cates for inno­va­tion and its inte­gra­tion into the health­care sys­tem from the begin­ning of the process. Pro­gress­ing a cul­ture of inno­va­tion through­out the health sys­tem ecol­o­gy, requires a proac­tive recog­ni­tion of the con­texts in which inno­va­tion must be acti­vat­ed, nur­tured, and enhanced. For the full poten­tial of inno­va­tion to be realised, sys­tems, process­es and prac­tices need to be designed in ways that autho­rise, per­mit, and facil­i­tate its pres­ence and growth through­out the inno­va­tion ecology.