Ideation to Implementation: How Physical Spaces Drive Healthcare Innovation

The healthcare industry is in a state of continual evolution, creating an environment where innovation is crucial. Physical spaces, often underestimated, play a fundamental role in fostering innovation. These well-curated environments serve as platforms for collaboration, creativity, and experimentation, all while attracting and retaining top-notch talent.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PHYSICAL SPACES IN INNOVATION

Innovation doesn’t just exist in the lab or the boardroom. It truly thrives in physical spaces designed for interaction among various healthcare stakeholders, including:

• Design Labs: Dedicated spaces where healthcare professionals, designers, and engineers come together to collaborate. These spaces are often equipped with state-of-the-art technology, allowing teams to effectively prototype and test new ideas.

• Hackathons: Events that host collaborative work on a specific problem or challenge. They bring together stakeholders from varying disciplines and backgrounds to foster creativity and innovation.
• Innovation Hubs: Hubs provide a variety of resources – mentorship programs, funding opportunities, and access to clinical data. While often associated with supporting entrepreneurs and startups bringing their ideas to market, many healthcare systems and corporate partners have dedicated hubs designed to foster their internal innovation initiatives.
• Coworking Spaces: A flexible and affordable way for healthcare stakeholders to connect in-person and share ideas. Coworking spaces are also used to host workshops or presentations, training sessions, networking, and other events that promote innovation.

THE VALUE OF PHYSICAL SPACES IN INNOVATION

Physical spaces are designed to enable and inspire innovation, offering crucial benefits:

• Collaboration: They bring together healthcare stakeholders from different disciplines and backgrounds to ideate and test new ideas and solutions that may not be achieved if individual stakeholders were working in isolation or within their own silos.
• Creativity: They provide a stimulating environment that encourages engagement and creativity. This is often fueled by features designed to spark new ideas, such as interactive showcase environments, whiteboards, emerging technologies, open floorplans, breakout space, and plenty of natural light with inspiring sightlines.
• Experimentation: They offer a safe and well-equipped space for experimentation. Typically highlighted by offering the latest technology and equipment such as interactive displays, technology exhibitions, and emerging technology hardware & software.

THE TECHNOLOGY WITHIN PHYSICAL SPACES IN INNOVATION

Emerging technologies within these spaces play a crucial role in testing new ideas without risking patient care.  It is important to have foundational, enabling technology that can power a variety of use:

• 5G: With unparalleled speed and lower latency, 5G connectivity accelerates secure data transfer, facilitating real-time monitoring and remote care, while enabling seamless integration of AI, VR, AR, and IoT devices in healthcare settings.
• Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC): MEC brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it’s needed, reducing latency, and increasing the speed of medical data processing. This technology can improve telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and robotic surgery experiences – enabling quick decision making in critical situations.
• High Performance Computing (HPC): HPC allows for the processing of complex data sets and performing intensive computations quickly and efficiently. It’s particularly useful in genomics research, drug discovery, predictive analytics, and modelling complex biological systems – which can be used to support clinical trials.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI has an array of applications in healthcare including predictive analytics, diagnostics, decision support, and personalized medicine. It’s revolutionizing the way we understand and interpret vast volumes of health data, helping professionals make better, data-driven decisions.
• Virtual reality (VR): VR can be used to train providers in new procedures, simulate clinical scenarios, and even provide patients with an immersive and realistic experience.
• Augmented reality (AR): AR has the ability to provide healthcare professionals with real-time information and guidance, such as drug dosages or patient vital signs.
• The Internet of Things (IoT): IoT can be used to collect and analyze data from medical devices, sensors, and other sources. This data can be used to improve patient care, identify trends, and develop new treatments.

These technologies, paired with access to a physical space and end users for testing them, enable the accelerated creation of more engaging and effective patient tools. Without regular access to these technologies in physical spaces, their transformative potential is drastically limited and their path to market is slowed.

THE RIPPLE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL SPACES 

The creation of a dedicated physical space for innovation is powerful and extends influence beyond its walls. It signifies the organization’s commitment to innovation, signaling to partners, employees, and visitors alike that innovation is prioritized. The space builds a community for stakeholders working on similar or overlapping projects. It showcases innovative products or solutions from entrepreneurs, startups, corporate partners, and industry leaders, facilitating connections with new talent and partners and raising awareness of the organization’s work. Ultimately this results in a force-multiplier effect where cross-industry partners are connected to raise awareness and accelerate the impact of their respective projects.

11TEN INNOVATION LAB – A LOOK AHEAD AT INNOVATION

11TEN has invested in bringing a world-class innovation, collaboration, and technology showcase physical ‘lab’ to Atlanta.  Within the lab, healthcare and technology leaders will come together with end users and key opinion leaders to ideate, co-develop, and activate new solutions.

Our team encourages new ideas, while being able to structure the unstructured processes to create an environment where innovation can thrive. We currently offer access to many resources including Key Opinion Leader insights, primary and secondary research, and clinical data. Our collaborative culture, created both internally and externally, ensures different disciplines are able to work together effectively to solve true healthcare issues.

The industry is facing numerous challenges, but the future advancement of healthcare truly depends on innovation. Physical spaces play a vital role in driving innovation, and all stakeholders should be utilizing this opportunity to increase innovation through physical collaboration.

11TEN’s Lab is in the final development phase – stay tuned for details on what it offers to healthcare and how you can be a contributing player in the space that will drive innovation from ideation to implementation.