Artefact: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/health_systems_and_services/the_emerging_market_in_health_care_innovation

“The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.”

— Linus Pauling

In today’s global society, we have infinite access to information at our disposal. Over time, creativity and innovation have slowly began to change the metrics for facilitating global collaboration in all sectors, including, healthcare in an attempt to increase its efficiencies and outputs. By analyzing global innovation strategies, Canada can look to ameliorate its current shortage of healthcare professionals by leveraging support from community-based stakeholders, and by increasing accessibility and improving efficiencies of healthcare services through the integration of various innovation strategies developed in the emerging markets. By optimizing our operational efficiencies, we can cut costs, which is necessary due to the unsustainable nature of Canada’s healthcare system.

Profile: Narayana Hrudayalaya (Bangalore, India)

With a population of over 1 billion, India’s healthcare leaders are always looking for ways to meet the pressing demands of its people. As of 2007, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) estimated that the Indian healthcare sector is worth $34 billion, equivalent to 6 percent of the country’s GDP, of which 80 percent constitutes as private healthcare (Jallifier, 2010, p.5). With its surging economy and rising middle class, “India has seen an increase in lifestyle diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and various forms of cancer” (Jallifier, 2010, p.5).

Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, a renowned Cardiologist and founder of the Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital is said to be the “Henry Ford of Heart Surgery,” having revolutionized Operating Room (OR) and other hospital operations by increasing productivity, the number of patients served, to offset the associated operational costs (Anand). Narayana Hrudayalaya is a 1,000 bed hospital with 42 cardiac surgeons, which has yielded an unsurpassable 3,174 cardiac bypass surgeries in 2008 alone, higher than any other hospital worldwide (Jallifier, 2010, p.13). Using the basic principles of Lean Production, Dr. Shetty’s metrics allow the hospital to drive costs below $2,000 per patient for procedures including, open-heart surgery. According to the Economic Times, this is achievable if hospitals increase the number of procedures done by 1,000 times (Singh, 2012).

Dr. Shetty opened his first hospital in 2001, and now operates 14 in urban centres across India (Salter). With a constant drive for innovation and increasing efficiencies, he has been able to minimize the cost to patients while setting a precedent for the quality of care and treatment. According to the Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) (2012), Narayana Hrudayalaya maintains an average of 1.4 percent mortality rate within 30 days of coronary artery bypass graft surgery,” significantly below the Canadian average of 2.6 percent (Walker, Hazel & Esmail, 2009, p.14).

Canada is a pioneer in cultivating new knowledge, but struggles to implement innovations into our strained healthcare system in a manner that meets the expectations and desired outcomes for primary healthcare. The Canadian healthcare system needs to challenge its current healthcare norms and medical practices and to revitalize its ideologies and corporate culture to cater to the specialized needs of the diverse aging population. Canada can look to improve its current shortage of healthcare professionals by engaging community-based interest groups, increasing accessibility, and improving efficiencies through the integration of innovation strategies developed in emerging markets.

Emerging markets often have fewer resources to implement social change, but manage to do so effectively regardless of the restraints. The reason being, “necessity breeds innovation.” McKinsey & Company (2012) reported, “in the absence of adequate healthcare, existing providers and entrepreneurs must improvise and innovate (ways to)… deliver care effectively at significantly lower costs while improving access and quality,” (Ehrbeck, Henke & Kibasi, 2010, p.2). Creativity is also a factor, as countries in the Global South face fewer obstacles due to their non-regulatory practices. There needs to be an increase in the translation of innovations not only from one country to the next, but across a variety of disciplines integrating the nuances of communication, technology, and productivity.

Recommendation:

Due to its vast landscape and sparse population, Canada faces challenges in terms of reaching ‘economies of scale’. However, with each province and territory managing their healthcare system, there are still hubs of healthcare in urban centres. Toronto, London, and Ottawa are such hubs in Ontario. In India, the high volume of cases allows for a reduction of costs yielding the “walmart” effect. The Canadian system has made strides in investing more into speciality hospitals, focusing their research and resources (human, monetary, knowledge) into one specific field, whether it is cancer, heart disease, paediatrics, and yielding away from full-service hospitals that we are accustomed to.

Canada can learn from the standardization strategy proposed by Dr. Shetty, which encourages end-to-end patient pathways . In Canada, all medically necessary services are covered by provincial health insurance, however, accessing such services remains a problem even today. As the Baby Boomers represent the largest cohort of Canadian demographic, it is imperative to employ healthcare strategies that are cost-effective and use the utilitarian approach — the greatest good for the greatest number of people, to alleviate the economic burden for tax payers. By projecting the healthcare needs for the future, we can determine the coinciding metrics needed to quantify and qualify the feasibility and effectiveness of this strategy using the basic economic principles of supply and demand.

In his own words, Dr. Shetty proclaims, “what healthcare needs is process innovation, not product innovation” (Jallifier, 2010, p.13). In order to be successful, Canada needs to serve as a catalyst for health promotion, innovation adoption, and address leadership deficit currently plaguing the nation. Western leaders have yet to understand that not only are knowledge and expertise transferable, but innovations can also be replicated anywhere. These leaders need to steer away from high paying consultancy firms, and analyze specific metrics tackling cost, quality, efficiency, and accessibility from the patient’s perspective, and learn that global innovations are about “how to implement, not how to invent” new strategies to achieve a sustainable model of healthcare (Ehrbeck, Henke & Kibasi, 2010, p.5).