The Art of Healthcare Innovation: Interviews and Industry Insights from 35 Game-Changing Pioneers Paperback – October 21, 2019

Good interviews with some of the most successful people in the industry. There are several things that I like and a few nitpicks that I have—since my nitpicks are my opinion, I don’t let them affect my score (I’ll note why below).What I liked:-This book is focused on solutions—specifically, solutions that people/companies can do (mostly; we’ll talk about the ones that aren’t in the nitpicks). Too much media focuses on the politics of healthcare vs. actual problems and solutions. When I saw that each interview was about a problem and a solution that an organization was working on, I was very happy about the solution-orientation.-This book is about interesting ideas. Each interview focuses specifically on an interesting problem and the innovation that they’re working on to come at the problem from a new angle. Technology is obviously the main driver of anything, but it touches upon human behavior and other aspects as well.-I’m so appreciative in the Michael Bancroft interview that they talked about gene alteration in a positive light. Everyone wants to run to fear-mongering about eugenics when people talk about that, but literally every professional in the field today is doing it to fight diseases/disorders and prevent costly lifetime support requirements for families. Whether someone may want to have a “designer baby” is fun dinner conversation but a non-issue in reality.-Lots of good conversation about data ethics. I think that one interview could make people think that the simple answer is, “Easy—just get consent before using the data,” but it’s not that simple in practice. That’s the beginning, but what you think it’s being used for and what amazing ideas the company finds for it after they collect it are two different things, and how they use it might upset you even if their intentions are good.-The VR-based PTSD treatment was my favorite interview. 66% of combat-related PTSD being treated effectively is wonderful.-Most people had good ideas and solutions for the industry. They get where some of the root causes are and provide some ideas for them. (Note the long explanation in the nitpicks of where a few had some bad ideas)My nitpicks:-There was a chronological structure overall (e.g., diagnosis), but there was not enough structure for me to tie them together in my head in terms of the issues. (There might be enough for most people, so not affecting my score)-I wasn’t a big fan of the interview format. I get that these leaders are representing their companies and innovations, but it felt like it was too far on the side of feeling like advertisements for what they were doing. I would’ve preferred some sort of introduction of the issue within the frame of the innovations and then dovetail into the interviews with the background on the organizations. I felt like I had to skim past the what the company was and what it did or their 10,000-foot background of the topic to find out more about the nature of the innovation and why I should care about them solving it. I can’t put my finger on why that was, but one example (the Charlie Silver interview) was when I had to go to paragraph three, “To effectively combat cancer . . . we need to understand it,” for my brain to get why were talking about DNA and explaining what cancer was in the first couple of paragraphs. (No subtraction because this is a personal preference)-Final part on the format: I’m not a big fan of personal stories in the middle of interviews about a problem. They seemed to go off track of the point of the book often (often into policies, personal stories, or company challenges). (No points taken off here because most people like personal interaction like this, so it would be wrong for me to take off style points when the author is playing to the broadest audience who are not like me)-The poor economic aptitude displayed by several of the leaders - people this smart shouldn’t be making bad economic comments like this. One interview talks about single-payer healthcare and getting more people into the field to reduce wait times in the same paragraph. That is an economic paradox. Economics (the allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses) tells us that you have supply and demand for a service, and there are two main ways to manage demand when it outstrips supply: higher prices or rationing. In a free market, prices goes up, the people who need a service more are willing to pay more for it, the companies make money, competitors come in (increasing supply), and the prices go down. With government price controls, the incentive for competitors to come in never comes, supply remains low relative to demand, and you have long wait times with the government or someone representing the rationing method dictating whether you get seen in a week or six months vs. you voting with your hard-earned dollars when you’d like to be seen. The same thing happens with regulation, which adds barriers to entry and prevents the market from lowering prices because competitors can’t compete. This is core economics. To say that you want to hold prices low AND incentivize more people to come into the field is a paradox (barring coercion). The only solution is to raise taxes and provide the same financial incentives that the market would’ve provided without government intervention, so there is no cost savings happening there—you’re just hiding the costs in taxes so it doesn’t feel like it’s being spent (see: Germany, where they have universal healthcare and a balanced government budget but pay about 10% more in taxes and make about 10% less in income per capita than the US—which means they make much less than if they would if they did not have government-funded healthcare and instead spent 6-14% of their household income on it like the typical US citizen does). Not to mention the conveniently left out point that while single-payer eliminates the profit motive and distributed administrative overhead across companies, it also eliminates (almost) any and all motive to cut costs. Public employees get paid the same regardless of how much programs costs and are almost never fired, so no incentive is there to pressure them to cut costs other than a once-every-four-years election cycle (vs. the constant pressure of a market with quarterly targets—i.e., 16 times more frequent pressure to cut costs). The claims of economies of scale from the government being one big buyer are more than offset by the inevitable stagnation of the entire industry because the incentive to change prices quickly, innovate, or continuously cut costs/find efficiencies goes away in this model. In my opinion, they should’ve stuck to talking about what they knew, healthcare, vs. economics and politics. (Note: this does not affect the score of the book because the author cannot control what the interviewees say. In fact, I appreciate her letting each person have their say (I found the policy recommendations of the interviewees to cut across the political spectrum, and she left them in). That’s a major plus for the author.)So overall, a lot of interesting ideas. A quick read for senior leaders who want to skim and get the download on what’s going on. My only issue is that it has a lot of irrelevant content in the interviews for people who might just want the bulleted list of innovations and isn’t detailed enough for anyone who is technical in nature and wants more specific answers to questions of data ethics, solving the problem, etc. So it’s perfect for people in the industry who want to learn about the major players, see the innovations, and get that human perspective. Five stars for that group (and, since that’s who she’s targeting, five stars for the book). If you’re more technically inclined in any of these areas, then you might want to try something more technical. For someone who just wants the insights and isn’t a ”people person”, you could probably get 90% of the innovation information from this just by reading the headings and one or two sentences within each interview for the solution they found to the problem.

As someone who worked in various aspects of healthcare (until retirement in 2014), and the spouse of a retired family physician, I found this book fascinating. The vignettes/interviews of experts in various aspects of the field are inspiring and hopeful from my vantage point, especially during this time when I hear so much from political operatives who, frankly, seem to have so little insight into the day-to-day issues of delivering health care. In the early 1970s, I worked at MIT, when genetic engineering was in its infancy. (I was NOT a scientist.) The predictions for where this may be going, as reported in this book, are amazing. I was also quite impressed by infection-fighting robots, using ultraviolet techniques.If I were to give a criticism, I would say that I would have liked to have had an introduction as well as the conclusion, before jumping right into the interviews. I almost would have liked to have seen something such as the Q&A that the people had to respond to (e.g., "what made you decide to compile this book?") at the beginning.With that said, however, I would recommend this to any policymaker who has hopes for overhauling and improving the healthcare delivery system in this country. The author has done an incredible job of including forward-thinking, thoughtful people and their ideas that can save lives, be cost-effective, and, in the end, enhance healthcare delivery in the United States.

This book is a collection of brief descriptions of a healthcare innovation, accompanied by short interviews with the innovators. It is organized into 6 sections: awareness, diagnosis, treatment, lifestyle change, ongoing care, and healthcare environment. The book is well-written and the innovations are fascinating, from CRISPR gene editing to diagnose and treat diseases, to a smart bracelet to retrain the brain to prevent harmful repetitive behaviors. I learned a lot about new technologies that I had never heard of, or knew little about.The main problem with the book is that the technology descriptions seem to be written by the innovators, and are essentially sales pitches. The author’s job in the interview section should have been to ask questions that would help us understand the technology better, and to critique the sales pitch. But the interview section mostly ignores the technology and instead focuses on biographical information, such as “What brought you to this career?”, or generic advice like “How do we future-proof our careers?”. The interviews should have been longer and focused on the technologies.Overall, I liked the book, but I think the author could have been a more critical interviewer.

This book highlights people who are trying to make a difference by correcting some of the flaws of the healthcare system. After working in healthcare for eleven years, I saw great value in some of the concepts were discussed. At the same time it made me wonder why the industry isn't more readily adopting some of these ideas that could save millions of lives and dollars.I was truly amazed at the passion of each of the healthcare workers interviewed in this book. From information accessibility to language barriers to lost work time to predictive AI, this book covered so many fresh ideas to improve the healthcare experience in America. It also focused on implementation and business technique. There were many important ideas covered, like when to say no, what to focus on, and how to be a part of your own team rather than just trying to mange your team.There was something for everyone in this book, especially if you've worked in healthcare for any amount of time and felt the inadequacies of our systems firsthand.

Brilliant read, hooked from the first few pages. Anyone evenly mildly interested in healthcare, the future, science, what motivates people to innovate and what inspires creativity should read this book!