Implementation Science in Healthcare technology integration
The goal of e/MTIC is to create a growing ecosystem that accelerates the pace of high-tech health innovations while maximizing patient value and reducing costs.
- To ensure real impact on healthcare, we must ensure effective implementation of innovations that go beyond proof-of-concepts. Therefore, e/MTIC integrates implementation science as an essential research field in of evidence-based healthcare innovation. Implementation science focuses on the challenges and dilemmas inherent in this process.
Through this White paper we want to highlight these complexities by having the key figures involved explain how such a journey takes place from idea to solution and product application.
- With various examples and recommendations, we show the entire process from idea to product development and implementation in clinical practice.
Chapters 1-14
As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Eindhoven Medtech Innovation Center (e/MTIC), we reflect on our journey.
The mission of e/MTIC is not merely to foster the development of ideas generated by doctors and nurses on the hospital floor. In collaboration with engineers from the technical university, we strive to transform these ideas into effective products and, with the aid of the business sector, bring them back to the workplace to benefit patients directly.
Our motto, “the fast track to clinical innovation,” is a testament to our commitment.
AI halves development time medical innovations
The process of developing new products for healthcare can be done better and faster. Data science and implementation science play a crucial role in this.
Research to implement innovations in healthcare takes an average of seventeen years. Especially given the speed of technological developments, that is far too long. So argues Guid Oei, a gynecologist at the Máxima MC in Eindhoven and professor of Signal Processing Systems at the TU/e. He is also involved in developing new products in his field.
For example, a new way to monitor a fetus’s heart rate during delivery. With data science and implementation science, research about how a new product works, can be conducted more quickly and with a more reliable. outcome.
"A new product must first be proven effective before it is widely used. “But if something works in a controlled, lab-like environment, that is still no proof that it also works when implemented in a hospital,”
Read the full article of Innovations Origins
e/MTIC White Paper 2024
Download the full information (pdf)
How to Plan for Change
An important part of implementation is planning for change. This is best done using a stepwise PDSA-sup-ported process which allows forchange leaders to gain trust andadapt to the setting. Well-guided change projects turn adversaries (those who do not trust the newchange) into opponents (those whotrust you, but are not yet enthusiasticabout the change) into allies (hightrust, high agreement)
A stepwise approach includes four critical steps to guide any change project with the purpose of healthcare improvement:
1. Define your strategy
2. Do a stakeholder analysis
3. Start a series of improvement cycles
4. Use data to monitor outcomes
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ADVANCING IMPLEMENTATION SCIENCE
1. Collaboration Over Competition: Foster cross-disciplinary collaboration to navigate challenges effectively and magnify successes.
2. Education and Training: Emphasize continuous learning and retrainingto equip stakeholders with the latest knowledge and tools.
3. Adapting to Change: Remain adaptable to the evolving landscapes ofhealthcare, technology, and implementation science.
4. Overcoming Barriers: Identify and strategize to overcome both anticipatedand unforeseen challenges.5.Shared Vision:Commit to a collective goal of improved healthcareoutcomes and patient experiences.
e/MTIC standardized way of working
The focal areas of the Eindhoven MedTech Innovation Centre (e/MTIC. Multidisciplinary research for breakthrough innovations, left sphere must lead to real impact in healthcare for multiplestakeholders (cf. Value Based Healthcare principles), right sphere.
This is supported by targeting for high impact and high quality publications and valuable IP for sustainable business cases. Innovation and cross-organisational learning is increasingly achieved by the use of data sets and by feeding the learning in education programs that breed new generations of MedTech researchers and professionals.
Prior to e/MTIC’s establishment over a decade of bilateral and multiparty research collaborations on specific subjects has been conducted. Eindhoven University, has and still serves as a pivotal organisation in this web of research. During this period, growing insight that successful and breakthrough innovation was fuelled by the beneath displayed elements was obtained:
- Proximity (physically and mentally)
- Strong executive management commitment
- Focus on selected domains to avoid dilution and sub-critical mass
- A cross-domain and cross functional approach
- An integral value chain perspective (from research to application)
- Innovative and outcome-based mindset