This year’s Aspen Ideas Health Festival was all about a deep desire to move forward, accelerate and disrupt current thinking and approaches in all aspects of health.
We look to Aspen Ideas for inspiration and indicators for what healthcare innovators will focus on in the future. This Festival was no different and was the most energizing year we’ve attended so far. From our conversations and interactions at the festival, we felt (and heard about) a deep desire to move forward, accelerate and disrupt current thinking and approaches in all aspects of health.
Three forces for igniting health innovation emerged:
Connect Now
“People need to know that you care, before they care about what you know.”
Dr. Jerome Adams, former U.S. Surgeon General, said it best during the discussion on the New Prescription for Trust. With global trust in healthcare trending at its lowest levels ever, we as leaders need to first design and encourage environments that promote connection. Whether it’s incentivizing our primary care physicians to spend more time socializing in the community, or as Dr. Vivek Murthy suggests, creating a culture of service to help break the loneliness epidemic, we all must do more to foster connection.
Our driving questions for innovation: How can we foster connection more at work? With clients? In our community? In unexpected places?
Prevent First
A shift may be emerging on prevention vs. treatment. While most of our incentives in healthcare derive from payment based on treatment of an issue, we are hopeful about the momentum achieved by many companies and leaders today. Many examples emerged:
- Dr. Lisa Mosconi discussed her groundbreaking research on Menopause and the Brain, including the use of HRT in prevention for menopause related symptoms.
- 23andMe’s founder Ann Wojcicki discussed the importance of preventive genetic care at scale.
- At a larger extent, Dan Buettner talked about the municipal level Blue Zone impact has on an entire community’s health.
- Dr. Dean Ornish discussed his leading research on early stage Alzheimer’s that showed signals that could potentially reverse progression of early stage disease.
Across disease states and conditions, investment in prevention is critical to healthcare improvement.
Our driving questions for innovation: How might we shift our actions to place a bigger emphasis on the PRE? How might we support our stakeholders’ prevention efforts?
Collaborate to Accelerate
Better health outcomes will be enabled by greater collaboration. Care delivered by a team, not an individual will result in an environment where all stakeholders will thrive – from the patient, to the physician, and the advanced practice practitioner. Dr. Mark Schuster discussed the innovative curriculum at Kaiser Permanente’s Medical School, sharing ways that physicians will be able to deliver better outcomes via care team collaboration. Peter Lee of Microsoft, inspired us all to think about AI as a collaborative tool in the clinic and one that will transform how we deliver care.
Our driving questions for innovation: How might we leverage collaboration more? Are there ways that we can improve an experience by collaborating? Who are unexpected partners for collaboration and what impact might this have?