Pre-emptive Innovation Infrastructure for Medical Emergencies: Accelerating Healthcare Innovation in the Wake of a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Healthcare innovation is impeded by high costs, the need for diverse skillsets, and complex regulatory processes. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed critical gaps in the current framework, especially those lying at the boundary between cutting-edge academic research and industry-scale manufacturing and production. While many resource-rich geographies were equipped with the required expertise to solve challenges posed by the pandemic, mechanisms to unite the appropriate institutions and scale up, fund, and mobilize solutions at a time-scale relevant to the emergency were lacking. We characterize the orthogonal spatial and temporal axes that dictate innovation. Improving on their limitations, we propose a “pre-emptive innovation infrastructure” incorporating in-house hospital innovation teams, consortia-based assembly of expertise, and novel funding mechanisms to combat future emergencies. By leveraging the strengths of academic, medical, government, and industrial institutions, this framework could improve ongoing innovation and supercharge the infrastructure for healthcare emergencies.

Kirkpatrick's evaluation of the effect of a nursing innovation team training for clinical nurses

“…Nurses are required to effectively improve nursing innovation to meet global public health needs in the context of COVID‐19 (Ramadi & Srinivasan, 2021). In this study, we developed a nursing innovation training programme and verified its effect on nursing innovation among nurses at reaction, learning, behaviour, and results levels of Kirkpatrick's model.…”

“…It is the key to overcome the challenges ahead and to meet the growing demand with limited resources (Patterson & Zibarras, 2017) as well as the soul of the development and reform of large hospitals. It is widely emphasized that ongoing innovation in health care is critical to the arising needs during the COVID-19 pandemic (Ramadi & Srinivasan, 2021). Furthermore, the key to the construction of innovative hospitals lies in the training of innovative medical and nursing personnel.…”