A Culture of Innovative Thinking

Barriers seem to be ever present in the United States, and across the globe: inequitable access to health care, antibiotic resistance, complex multimodal diseases, polypharmacy (the use of multiple medications to treat multiple conditions at the same time), patient frustrations with everyday experiences, a sense of “commoditization” of health care practice, loss of autonomy for those who practice, tightening of reimbursement, health care worker burnout, loss of focus on the patient, and a perceptive divergence of patient and health care worker interests.

How do we take the weight of the world and convert our challenges into opportunities? How do we open our minds to the most innovative solutions that not only address today’s challenges but also build infrastructure and opportunities for tomorrow?

I am grateful to be in a technologically advanced specialty, interventional radiology (IR), where we tend to be early adopters of innovation. IR is a field not bound by organ system or pathology, but rather by the constellation of characteristics involving procedural, clinical and imaging expertise. Arguably, interventional radiologists may be cued toward innovation, even if they do not recognize that process is occurring.

Interventional oncology (IO) is the focus of IR on cancer care. It involves endovascular (in a blood vessel) and percutaneous (direct-to-tumor) approaches to minimally invasive image-guided therapies. Novel therapies are also exploring approaches using the biliary system, the genitourinary system and the gastrointestinal tract.

As our imaging/visualization improves with new fluoroscopy, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and camera-based/ direct visualization techniques, we begin to open the door to more advanced therapies. You might say the global positioning satellite (GPS) system is being developed, and what comes next may be akin to the self-driving vehicle.

Already, on the research and early clinical side, we are seeing explosive growth in endovascular and percutaneous image-guided robotics; novel visualization tools; generative AI tools to improve systems efficiencies, labor-intensive tasks and patient triage; and wearables that provide critical realtime information about patients. Many of these technologies fall into the space of biomedical engineering and/or digital health.

To unlock the greatest likelihood of our achieving the most cutting-edge and life-changing therapies, health care must enact a culture of innovative thinking. This culture does not require every individual to have an in-depth knowledge of engineering overnight. Instead, it calls upon us to feel empowered to address our challenges head-on and understand that there is an effective iterative, lean, design-thinking process available to solve even the most stubborn problems.

The “low-hanging fruit” is where challenges are most common, prescient and painful. These areas warrant immediate attention. For frontline health care workers, articulating the challenge creates the opportunity for those with an engineering background to pivot and focus. Without that clinical needs-driven approach, solutions are created for which there may not be significant problems. The most effective way to identify where time and effort should be spent is to start with the pain points; the next step is developing the team to embark on the process.

Technologists prepare the interventional radiology lab for a patient at Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown.

Photo: David Kresses (C) May Architecture

A critical aspect of this process is the commercialization piece, the intellectual property and the regulatory pathway. I explain to residents and students that this is important, not because these innovations will necessarily lead to companies with big exits or wealth for innovators and entrepreneurs. It is critical because creating value in the solution is essential to ensuring it has sustainability and becomes a reality.

The power of innovation in human health is becoming apparent to many. Most of the “big tech” companies are pivoting toward health care. Health care represents the single largest industry vertical in AI, and they are taking notice.

Regardless of what stakeholders may come into this space, they will succeed only if they remain focused on the mission. They will need the experiences—the eyes, the ears, the frustrations, the hopes, the dreams, the setbacks and the opportunities of those closest to the frontlines. It will need to be hyper-focused on the patient, so it is not just “technology for technology’s sake.” And it will take our greatest challenges and convert them into opportunities that will forever change all our experiences.