The evaluation of a lean healthcare concept to improve the implementation of Digital Health innovations in secondary health care: a qualitative study within a Dutch hospital setting.

Background: Digital health innovations are considered a promising avenue in transforming the resourcing, organization and delivery of healthcare services and are often nurtured in organization-based innovation labs. One of their biggest challenges is developing effective processes for sifting through ideas. To improve the existing work process, innovation management is often rooted in lean thinking principles. To illustrate the optimization of the efficiency of innovation processes, an example of a lean innovation process concept will be evaluated in this study.

Methods: The setting of this study was the Health Innovation Lab (HIL) of the Maastricht University Medical Center + (MUMC +) in the Netherlands. The aim was to evaluate its lean "speed dating" concept to improve the implementation of Digital Health innovations in secondary health care. A qualitative study was performed based on a focus group and semi-structured interviews. 36 stakeholders were selected by purposive sampling. Data was collected from 11 respondents. The transcripts of the focus group and interviews were coded according to the open and axial coding phases of the methods of Grounded Theory.

Results: Five major themes emerged during the thematic analysis of the transcriptions: (1) Preparation before the Sign in, (2) Mapping out the process between Sign in and Sign out, (3) Defining the roles and deliverables of experts, (4) Guiding the idea owner, and (5) Supporting capacity of resources.

Conclusions: Through multidisciplinary interaction, by encouraging creative thinking and by fostering innovative behavior, innovation labs cultivate the development of innovative solutions. While the creative phase of innovation commonly exhibits non-linearity, most innovation pilots and implementations follow a linear path. This linearity seems to contradict the importance of flexible approaches to prevent waste in the context of innovation. However, our results suggest that improving cooperation between stakeholders may be a strategy to mitigate this effect. This paper broadens the knowledge on how multidisciplinary interaction during a lean innovation process can be improved, thereby enhancing the implementation of DH innovations.