Taking a Broader Approach to Innovation.

BACKGROUND: INNOVATION AT HENRY FORDHFHS is an integrated healthcare system with a ioo-year history of providing excellent and affordable healthcare and deploying it throughout the challenging market of Detroit, Michigan. It is known nationally for its robust business practices, healthcare innovations, and rapid implementation of those innovations. The breadth of activities within HFHS's health campuses, clinics, and urban outreach activities, combined with its direct relationship with its health payer subsidiary, Health Alliance Plan (HAP), provide a rare laboratory to assess the value and extensibility of healthcare innovations.Henry Ford Innovations (HFI) is a corporate function designed to enhance patient care, research, training, and commercialization opportunities within HFHS. HFI embraces the system's inventive past while preparing it to adapt to the changing world of technology and healthcare. Our strategy is organized around a set of four core programs, each drawing on the successes of the others:1. Education and Research-training the next wave of entrepreneurs and innovators2. Technology Management-commercializing HFHS innovations3. Corporate Innovation-partnering to codevelop next-generation products and services in selected clinical areas4. Global Innovation-expanding quality healthcare around the worldEducation and ResearchThe HFI Education and Research program focuses on the system's internal drivers of invention, particularly the needs and interests of system clinicians. It provides access to intellectual asset-related resources and programs that include innovation training and education, engineering services for prototypes, seminars designed to enhance networking, programs aimed at developing specific medical products, and broad educational offerings in translational medicine and the entrepreneurial arts. We facilitate and support innovations that can be immediately applied internally toward healthcare outcomes, regardless of whether a monetization opportunity exists through commercial partnering.The Education and Research program also includes the system's flagship Davidson Fellowship for Entrepreneurs in Digital Health and the internal Davidson Digital Health Challenge, both of which are funded by the William Davidson Foundation. The goal of the nine-month Davidson Fellowship is to educate and train individuals who have a passion for healthcare innovation on the critical issues and processes related to developing and commercializing digital technologies. The Fellows are a cohort of HFHS professionals, including clinicians, information technology staff, and procurement specialists. These professionals are joined by regional leaders to work in teams to develop multidisciplinary innovation skills.The Davidson Challenge sponsors competition among clinicians, administrators, entrepreneurs, designers, developers, researchers, and others at HFHS to solve an identified problem in healthcare and, ultimately, to make a significant impact on patient care outcomes. Past Challenge topics have included "Clinical Applications of Wearable and Sensor Technology" and "Frugal Innovation," which solicited low-cost solutions to pervasive healthcare problems.Technology ManagementThe Technology Management program creates intellectual assets that can serve as cornerstones for market opportunities. In addition to supporting federally funded applied research at HFHS, the program focuses on intellectual assets in the form of patents as well as the know-how and data that emanate from the daily activities of our frontline providers. The program addresses innovation at any stage of the commercialization process, from inception and ideation through early development, validation, and licensing or spin-out. Core activities include opportunity assessment, intellectual property protection, product development, and commercial disposition.Corporate InnovationOne key differentiator between HFI and other innovation programs is that our activities are not limited to our own assets and technologies. …