The Top Ten Disruptive Health Care Innovators

The term “disruptive innovation” has been around 7 years, since Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen introduced it in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma in 2003. A disruptive innovation is cheaper, more convenient, and easier to use than existing approaches and changes the world for the better.

Here, according to Fiercehealthcare.com, are the top ten health care innovators.

1) Asif Ahmad - Duke University Health System- - VP of diagnostic services and CIO, who designed and implemented a Computerized Physician Order Entry System for entire Duke System, reducing potential harmful events by 45%.

2) Donald Berwick, M.D., Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services- Administrator, who in 2004 as CEO of Institute of Healthcare Improvement launched a safety campaign that was said to have saved 122,300 lives in hospitals. He is now engaged in promoting “meaningful use” of EHRs, which , he believes, will save millions of more lives.

3) Jonathan Bush - athenahealth- Chairman and CEO. He and his team have developed a web-based model based on health plan rules that that helps physicians understand how to collect more money faster from insurance companies.

4) Ryan Howard - Practice Fusion - He founded EHR company in 2006 that produces a “free” EHR to physicians who agree to have advertising appear on EHR screen. The EHR is designed for small practices and claims 40,000 users.

5) Don Jones - Qualcomm – VP of business development. Jones has pioneered wireless health care. He has commented that 50% of primary care doesn’t need to be delivered face-to-face and asks,”Why leave home? Why leave your desk when you don’t have to?”

6) Edward Marx - Texas Health Resources – Marx has embraced social media – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – as vehicles for health information exchange. He believes the social media will be the saviors of independent practices.

7) Deborah C. Peel, M.D - Patient Privacy Rights Foundation – Doctor Peel is nation’s best known advocate of privacy of health information, even if it holds back national push for EMRs. She is fixture at Congressional hearings and on Health IT speaking circuit.

8) Patricia Skarulis - Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center – VP and CIO. She has helped develop the largest single data warehouse of any organization. It contains 1 million cancer patient records. She has also implemented wireless speech enabled communication network throughout organization.

9) Evan Steele - SRSsoft- CEO. He has developed and marketed his main product, SRS Hybrid EMR, to “high performance” specialties like cardiology, orthopedics, and ophthalmology. He believes most current EMRs are too skewed to primary care and have reduced physicians to entry clerks.

10) Allen Wenner, MD. - Primetime Medical Software. A family physician who created Instant Medical History, which allows patients to enter medical histories online, saving physicians time, enhancing productivity through greater patient throughput, permitting more accurate coding, protecting against malpractice, and leading to more accurate diagnosis.

Summary

What do these innovators share in common? All focus on Internet applications, All think outside the box, but work inside the box. All either promote. note shortcomings, and suggest improvement of electronic health records. And all show one person can make a difference by aiming high.