Changing global business dynamics,
bureaucratic hurdles and restrictive regulatory regimes have made it
increasingly difficult for social innovations to sprout in industries like
healthcare, where ironically the need for such innovations is all the more
germane in the context of cost, quality and accessibility challenges. What is
interesting is that most governments have not yet fully tapped the potential to
truly transform innovation ecosystems for the healthcare and life sciences
sector, despite facing cost pressures eating into a major chunk of their GDPs!
Their distinctive status as primary funders in
the social arena, not only the prime regulators makes them uniquely poised to
engender an ecosystem conducive for the various stakeholders in the healthcare
industry. Deriving insights from multiple research journals, which elaborated
on the Federal government's key role in health care innovation, I found that in
order for governments to create lasting social impact in the healthcare sector,
they need to play a ‘strengthened’ role in the following 3 areas-
- Provide targeted funding in cases of product and
service model innovations, wherever private funding is inadequate
Examples in this case are the Public Private
Partnership models in the healthcare industry, where central government
insurance schemes in India are reimbursing cardiac procedures performed at Sawai
Man Singh Hospital in Jaipur, a prime model of low-cost social innovation
focusing on operational excellence in health care service delivery. Centralized
procurement of various low-cost medical devices such as the Swasthya Slate
for the widespread adoption by the front-line public health care workers in
India is an example of governments encouraging innovative companies researching on low-cost technologies for the purposes of
diagnosis & treatment.
- Leading the development of collaborative platforms for
the various stakeholders by setting standards and information exchanges
The government is in a unique position to frame
standards & guidelines for information exchange while maintaining patient
privacy as the cornerstone of their initiatives.The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA) by the US government aimed to promote IT implementation in hospitals & physician offices
by channeling funds for the development of exchange capabilities within states
and across the state government jurisdictions.The Health IT components of the
stimulus package, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical
Health (HITECH) Act offered payments for the “meaningful use” of IT, which also involved collection of quality performance indicators by the
government to facilitate quality improvement in healthcare over the long
term.
- Developing policies and easing regulatory hurdles to
bolster innovation and provide assistance for the scaling the adoption
levels of technology or services that demonstrate quantifiable gains in
health quality outcomes and quality
The Indian government last year spearheaded the
Make in India initiative to encourage domestic manufacturing in the medical
device sector, which involved an array of measures ranging from permission of 100% FDI in brownfield manufacturing
projects, mandatory labeling of devices to increase product competitiveness
and adoption of a uniform national tax code.
These case studies are thus indicative that whenever governments have taken proactive measures, they have had a significant impact on the development of social innovations to transform the health care landscape in their nations.
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