Designing Ecosystems in Health Understanding

Understanding any health issue is complicated enough, in how a doctor works through the alternatives as a “pattern recognition” when someone sick seeks help.  The diagnostic process is a complex transition process that begins with the patient’s personal illness history to achieve a result that can be categorized so solutions can then be applied.

A patient consulting the doctor about his symptoms starts an intricate process that may label him, classify his illness, indicate certain specific treatments in preference to others, and put him in a prognostic category.

The outcome of the process is regarded as essential for effective treatment by both patient and doctor(1). It is seen as “the clustering of signs and their development over time is, in narrative theory, defined as the plot, with this plot, eventually becoming the diagnosis.

Taking health systems higher into whole health systems

When you take health systems higher, into a design of a whole health system, the complexity becomes a magnitude of order to sort out that is way up there, in a different league. We struggle to find ways to capture whole health systems, perhaps until now.

There are so many gaps in our health system, to the point we are often just plugging parts thinking they are improving the system.  Actually, the opposite is often true, we produce a ‘knock-on’ effect that depreciates the system to make it less effective progressively over time or in surprising sudden fashion. This progressive decline comes partly from not understanding the complete Health Ecosystem you are in. We need to think about designing Health Systems in Ecosystem ways.

It is argued our health systems are failing as they do not address the “whole” health ecosystem, as we only tend to treat part of the system. The doctor is looking to cure the immediate issue, applying solutions that are often grouped as generative but in his judgment applicable to your need.

The question we all face there are significant gaps as the system really is one-sided, it is looking for speedy outcomes, and to limit the cost. This is a solution-providers need but is it coving the patient’s side by delivering value in one that offers affective capacity. Affective here refers to the underlying affective experience of feeling, emotion, or mood, both in its physical and mental capacity to influence and produce lasting change but also to provide a better health system focused on outcomes that work for the system providers and the patients’ perspectives delivering value to both.

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Responding to the corona virus outbreak- a Network Approach, offered by McKinsey

Copyright © 2020 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved.

McKinsey has been providing a couple of valuable articles on the coronavirus and offers up some thought leadership and business suggestions as we recognize the challenge this brings across the globe, in societies, and in business

Although they are providing the suggestion that leaders exhibit five leadership practices, it is the very first one that catches my eye. It is the setting up of a network and allowing it to be the response team to the pandemic and how the specific company is handling it. Continue reading

Facilitating and Planning out the Innovation Ecosystem Thinking

econocom-comI am presently wanting to determine a framework for investigating and facilitating the thinking considerations we need when we consider innovation ecosystems.

Here I’d like you to consider this as an opening set of thoughts that need to come together far more, in ways that can be repeated and applied to the same basic question that requires a thoughtful thinking through.

It moves towards dealing with the question: “what do I need to consider for entering into an innovation ecosystem design?

It is clear work-in-progress and takes a series of my mind maps I have been developing and now attempting to put these into a structure that those wanting to answer this question can begin to explore possibilities and arrive at answers to their needs. Most of this is taking thoughts and beginning to structure these and build on this further. Still, we all should start somewhere in structuring this. I put some building blocks down recently and this continues to build out the thinking.

Firstly setting an innovation ecosystem into context Continue reading

Why experimenting with platform innovation is vital

innovation-experiementationWhy wait?

Paul Hobcraft and I have been writing extensively about the impact that emerging platforms and ecosystems are having, and will have, on innovation.

As I wrote previously, we are in the same position with platforms that we were with “dot coms” and ecommerce in 1999.  Then there were thousands of alternatives and experiments to try to figure out what would work.  Now, much the same thing is going to happen at the platform level.

There’s a reason Amazon, Facebook, Google, GE and others are trying to test out their platforms, and why other industries like financial services want so desperately for their own platforms to prevail.

Platforms are enticing because they lead to the concept of a required standard.  Anyone who controls a platform in an industry or market can dictate how the rest of the ecosystem adds value or in some cases connects to customers.

Thus, we can expect to see a lot of companies claiming to have the definitive platform in this or that industry.  What’s more, some functions, like the ability to pay for goods and services within a platform, are already platforms in themselves, although they are narrow but important enablers to larger platforms.

Some companies and their platforms will thrive, some companies will build enabling technologies or the “APIs” that ensure tight integration for ecosystem players, but most will take a “wait and see” approach. Continue reading

Nurturing the Network Effect of Firms within Innovation Ecosystems.

nurturing-the-ecosystem

The Network Effect for Ecosystem Designs

We are forming in many different ways our greater collection of relationships that matter to each organization, by connecting increasingly in a network of potential partners and collaborators.

The goals are so as to deliver innovative products and services that would not be able to be delivered by only having just the one organization attempting it.

Managing this growing form of innovation complexity is challenging old theories, boundaries, organizations and how they exist going forward.

Ecosystem innovation is more today about managing beyond the immediate known’s found within one organization’s limited focus of the world, they are exploring many of the unknowns that need discovery and then connection. Continue reading