Rebels and the Innovation of Healthcare

Innovation in healthcare can be fueled from outside the system

Source: Parentingupstream/Pixabay

Many people have experienced situations when the medical system didn’t live up to expectations. Various complaints would likely be heard: the wait time for an appointment, expensive medication, and frustration with insurance not covering a procedure.

And that is not to disparage anyone working in or connected to the medical field. No doubt they are difficult jobs working in a complex system.

Yet some people—patients, that is—strive for healthcare changes.

Susannah Fox knows this. Her book, Rebel Health, celebrates innovators. For over 20 years, she has talked to people moving to improve and advance healthcare.

It is a story of people like Dana Lewis, diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, who feared dying in her sleep because the alarm monitoring her blood sugar wasn’t loud enough to awaken her if she experienced nocturnal hypoglycemia. Despite being told by the manufacturer that the volume was sufficient, Lewis powered forward to create her own device, which was subsequently shared online.

Improvements come from problem-solvers in different arenas, often outside of the healthcare profession. In Fox’s words, “This revolution is the start of something big—for them and all of us” (p. 2).

Fox’s paradigm of innovators offers four roles: Seeker, networker, solver, and champion. A seeker takes action after realizing that something is not quite right. A networker finds community to learn more about a condition or diagnosis. The solver sees the challenge and starts to prototype solutions. Finally, the champion pivots a new idea to innovation by sharing resources with others.

Her notion of rebels in solving healthcare mirrors the creative problem-solving process, especially the framework found in the Creative Education Foundation (2016). In this creative problem-solving (CPS) model, the first step, clarify, narrows down the challenge at hand. The second part, ideate, involves divergent thinking in producing potential ideas for the challenge. The next segment, develop, takes a promising idea and tests it in various ways before the last step, implement finalizes a plan for moving forward.

The healthcare innovators taken from Fox have parallels to the CPS model.

Take the solver in healthcare, the person who resembles the develop notion in CPS. Just as the person(s) in the develop phase analyzes and improves identified solutions, the solver gets access to needed information, “bending and sometimes breaking rules in pursuit of a goal” (Fox, 2024, p. 11). The develop component can include questions surrounding the positive points of the challenge and the beneficial outcomes of the solution. Data to the solver is crucial and challenging, especially when it is needed, for instance, to build a new device to improve patients’ health.

Meanwhile, the champion, that person in healthcare innovation who takes rough ideas to scale, involves an implementation mindset in the CPS model. In Fox’s words, they “fast-track innovations” (p. 11). From the CPS perspective, they work to identify “assisters” and “resisters” and create action statements to bring a solution to fruition.

“Whatever health challenge people are facing, they are not alone,” she told me via email. “There are people who would love to help them if only they knew how to be found. Seekers stand ready to go on the hunt for information. Networkers will provide peer support and advice. Solvers may have invented the device or a needed solution, and champions can boost a team toward mainstream recognition.”

Fox maintained that seekers, networkers, solvers, and champions are dedicated to healthcare transformation throughout the world. Perhaps their efforts, which can run consistent with the CPS design, may reduce the list of healthcare complaints in the years ahead.