As part of our ongoing effort to pin down this increasingly ambiguous term, five thought leaders offer their definitions of innovation, including the ABC News health and medical editor, Richard Besser, MD, and MIT inventor and professor Robert Langer, PhD—both of them keynote speakers at this month’s Pediatric Innovation Summit + Awards.
Please submit your definition to join the conversation!
Innovation in health is using new tools, approaches, or processes to improve or promote health, prevent illness and treat disease. —Richard Besser, MD, Chief Health and Medical Editor, ABC News
Innovation involves taking a creative approach to addressing a problem, often a persistent problem. It can produce a result where people say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” —Mark Schuster, MD, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Chief of General Pediatrics and Vice Chair for Health Policy, Department of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
Innovation is taking inventions or discoveries from conception to practical implementation. —Robert Langer, PhD, David H. Koch Institute Professor; Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Something new that required thinking about a problem in a different way, something that has an intended benefit and that makes a difference (e.g., in practice). —Eugene C. Goldfield, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Program in Behavioral Science, Boston Children’s Hospital; Associate Faculty, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
Innovation is the demonstration of cognitive and actionable creativity in alignment with a core purpose, belief or mission. —William F. Bria MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Shriners Hospital for Children; President & Co-founder, Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems
