Healthcare requires stability. But it also requires innovation. The contradiction between operating with zero failures and, at the same time, adopting new technologies, is one of the great challenges for healthcare providers. On one hand, human lives are at stake alongside a unique operational complexity. On the other, there is legitimate — and growing — pressure to improve care, expand access, and increase efficiency through technology.
The question is not whether to innovate. It is how to innovate. And, most importantly, how to do it without compromising the safety, quality, and continuity of care. Knowing how to innovate in healthcare is, deep down, knowing which risk you cannot take — and which risk you cannot afford not to take.
The paradox of innovation in healthcare
In healthcare, risk and complexity walk hand in hand with innovation and change. In probably no other area are the consequences of errors so severe. A system that goes offline, a poorly calibrated automation, or a digital decision taken out of context can, literally, cost lives.
Because of this, in healthcare, fault tolerance takes on another dimension. In any new initiative, fault tolerance starts low (and only decreases from there). It is not about conservatism, but about responsibility.
Automating processes and putting decisions into the hands of systems and algorithms require a considerable dose of caution. And yet, it is necessary. Because, ironically, the very area that can least afford to fail is the one that most needs to reinvent itself. The demand for new care models, assistive technologies, digitalization, and access is growing exponentially. There is no escaping innovation.
The trap of stability
Stable software environments are essential to keep healthcare operations running: systems that do not crash, integrations that do not fail, well-defined workflows. But this quest for stability can become a trap — when it turns into a comfort zone.
Healthcare companies need both innovation and stability. They need to launch new digital services, explore new technologies, and modernize the patient experience. But they want (and need) to do this without the risks of unproven technologies.
The problem is that stability does not protect against obsolescence. The false sense of security is abruptly interrupted when a competitor innovates and delivers more value to the patient.
As a rule, it is not easy to see the loss of competitiveness when innovation is in its early stages. Of course, there are exceptions, which, although few, are “noisy”, giving the impression that they exist in a greater proportion than reality. The most common are situations where the competitive advantage starts small and invisible. However, this advantage tends to widen exponentially. And, like all exponential growth, it goes from irrelevant to decisive in the blink of an eye.
Innovation needs structure — and freedom
If the big question is “how to innovate”, let’s explore some ingredients of this recipe.
Creating a separate structure for innovation — a lab, a cell, a dedicated team — is an increasingly common practice. And rightly so. Operations support has goals of stability, excellence, and continuity. Innovation, on the other hand, needs the freedom to test, make mistakes, and learn.
But this does not mean building a wall between the two worlds. The most common mistake is allowing an “us vs. them” split: on one side, operations support sees innovators as “dreamers” with wild ideas that will not work; on the other, innovation sees support as “bureaucrats” who only put up obstacles.
It is necessary to ensure that innovation and operations coexist in a respectful, constructive way with fluid communication. In addition to frequent interaction between teams, some best practices include:
- Including, in innovation teams, people with deep knowledge of the operation and with credibility among the operations teams, not just as consultants, but as active members.
- Ensuring real freedom for innovation to test hypotheses, conduct proofs of concept, and define MVPs with autonomy until the formal implementation decision.
- Once the decision is made to move forward with the project’s implementation, it must stop belonging to innovation and start belonging to the company. Everyone must be involved and committed – responsibility for success becomes everyone’s.
It is also important to remember that innovating does not necessarily mean creating disruptions. Small continuous improvements, made by those on the front lines, have immense value.
These “silent” innovations generally have lower risk because they arise from practice and are tested in environments that the creators themselves master. The combination of operational experience and a vision for improvement is a valuable asset — and an underexplored one.
Companies that value continuous innovation manage to maintain a culture of improvement without compromising the operation — and they create a pipeline of ideas that can, over time, turn into something much bigger.
What is an MVP in healthcare?
An important quality criterion in innovation projects is the ability to deliver solutions that add value in the shortest possible time. Adopting agile processes and building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) are well-established practices.
In healthcare, the great challenge is defining the “V” – determining what is viable.
We have seen promising projects die because the MVP “didn’t work out”. However, it was the very definition of the MVP that was wrong, not the innovation itself. In some cases, the “MVPs” were too large and complex. In others, actually in most of them, the “MVP” was too simple. In the eagerness to deliver something fast and impactful, vital business issues were left unaddressed. Often these issues had even been raised but were wrongly considered non-essential, seen as hurdles in the race for quick value delivery.
In healthcare, it is common to misuse the Pareto principle: thinking that solving 80% of the problems (with 20% of the effort) is the same as solving a problem for 80% of the cases. The first is the true Pareto rule. The second is the false one – in healthcare, depending on the situation, it means failing severely with 20% of the patients.
The real risk is in the delivery, not the project
Another important aspect to remember is that innovation projects can have problems, that is expected, but a poorly implemented, or unimplemented technology, can result in much larger problems.
Therefore, it is important to give projects the time, budget, and political support they need. No more and no less.
Undersizing a project in any of these 3 spheres creates a delivery risk that can generate a much greater loss than what was “saved” in the sizing.
Oversizing a project, besides the obvious waste of time and resources, brings another consequence, more subtle but no less harmful, which is the loss of credibility in innovation projects more broadly, both in processes and in merit. Sometimes a flawed project causes the institution to change processes that should not be changed, or cancel other initiatives that should not be canceled.
Choosing the right innovation
Good innovation projects are born with the right motivation.
A common mistake is falling into FOMO — Fear of Missing Out. Adopting a technology just because it is “trendy” is a recipe for spending more than you should on solutions that do not solve the organization’s real problems.
Two good paths to start innovating are:
- understanding what you really need right now, and, after that, looking for the best solution (and not the other way around), and
- discovering what, if you do not do it, will compromise your future.
The art of decision-making: between intuition and pragmatism
Among thousands of innovation opportunities, choosing the ones that will actually be worked on is no easy task. The best innovators are those who balance analysis and intuition in this choice.
In the field of analysis, taking into account the return on investment (ROI) is undoubtedly one of the main criteria.
However, it also brings a trap. In innovation, ROI is not always direct, obvious, or accurately measurable. Between what is obviously a good deal and what clearly is not, there is an immense field of uncertainty. This uncertainty cannot be used to engage in adventures motivated by factors such as personal tastes and desires. Likewise, it cannot be used as an “excuse” to maintain the status quo by those who have no interest in change.
On the contrary, it is in the field of uncertainty that the greatest opportunities reside. Opportunities that only those with strategic sensitivity and technical knowledge can seize. And, precisely because they are the ones fewest people see, they usually offer the greatest gains.
In this sense, knowing the correct operational metrics is a great differentiator. Those who do not know where the waste is, do not know where the opportunity is.
Furthermore, a culture that promotes people with an entrepreneurial spirit, who naturally look for opportunities to innovate, and thereby sharpen their intuition, makes a huge difference.
Conclusion: operating and innovating — at the same time
Innovating in healthcare is walking on a tightrope. But it is a mandatory path. The question is not choosing between stability and change — it is learning to build a structure that supports both simultaneously.
This requires culture, intelligent organizational structures, correct incentives, and above all, the right people in the right places.
The future of healthcare belongs to those who know how to navigate the paradox: maintaining operational excellence while carefully transforming what needs to be transformed.