BACKGROUND Digital innovation, introduced across many industries, is a strong force of transformation. Some industries have seen faster transformation, whereas the health care sector only recently came into focus. A context where digital corporations move into health care, payers strive to keep rising costs at bay, and longer-living patients desire continuously improved quality of care points t...

This article is based on the strategic reflection and discussion that took place on occasion of the first conference on innovation and technology transfer in the health sciences organized by the REGIC-ENS-FENIN-SEMICYUC and held in Madrid in the Instituto de Salud Carlos III on May 7th, 2013, with the aim of promoting the transfer of technological innovation in medicine and health care beyond t...

Much of the current debate on health care goals, medical innovation and trade rules focuses on the misalignment between the need to provide incentives to innovation – mainly through a tight intellectual property (IPR) regime – and the resulting negative consequences in terms of access to medicines. While this clash is certainly crucial, this contribution focuses on a different aspect of the mis...

BACKGROUND Service delivery innovation is at the heart of efforts to combat the growing burden of chronic disease and escalating healthcare expenditure. Small-scale, locally-led service delivery innovation is a valuable source of learning about the complexities of change and the actions of local change agents. This exploratory qualitative study captures the perspectives of clinicians and manage...

ONGOING DEBATES IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR ABOUT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, PRICING AND REIMBURSEMENT, AND PUBLIC RESEARCH INVESTMENTS HAVE A COMMON DENOMINATOR: the pursuit of innovation. However, there is little clarity about what constitutes a true pharmaceutical innovation, and as a result there is confusion about what kind of new products should be pursued, protected and encouraged through h...

In recent years the proliferation of a new technological evolution has aroused great interest from science and practice: social media. Subsuming different types of online applications where users can create, edit and share content, social media enables new forms of interaction with others. Organisations already recognise its relevance and start leveraging on it. Furthermore, organisations ident...

BACKGROUND There are significant differences in the meaning and use of the term 'Reverse Innovation' between industry circles, where the term originated, and health policy circles where the term has gained traction. It is often conflated with other popularized terms such as Frugal Innovation, Co-development and Trickle-up Innovation. Compared to its use in the industrial sector, this conceptual...

BACKGROUND The United Kingdom (UK) lags behind other high-income countries in relation to technological innovation in healthcare. In order to inform UK strategy on how to catalyse innovation, we sought to understand what national strategies can help to promote a climate for innovation in healthcare settings by extracting lessons for the UK from international innovators. METHODS We undertook a...

BACKGROUND Despite considerable attention currently being given to facilitating the use of research results in public health practice, several concerns remain, resulting in the so-called know-do gap. This article aims to identify the key tensions causing the know-do gap from a broad perspective by using a systemic approach and considering the public health sector as an innovation system. METH...

Organizations are beginning to experiment with the use of the “crowd” to complete tasks commonly performed by employees or designated agents. While “crowdsourcing” is growing, we know little about common uses of the crowd and the challenges such initiatives present. Findings from a grounded theory study reveal four common uses by established organizations: productivity, product/service innovati...