Yu: Government’s role is to influence magnitude, timing and velocity of innovation

The common refrain in mid-June was that the U.S. Supreme Court decision didn’t matter because the innovation train had left the station. It’s easy to say that — particularly now that the high court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act.

But where would we be if Obamacare hadn’t kicked important changes in the industry into gear back in 2010? Would we still be debating the merits of accountable care organizations? Would any unemployed 25-year-olds be on their parents’ insurance? Would we have any data on impact of the medical loss ratio?

Wil Yu says that making these things happen more quickly is what the federal government is supposed to do. He opened the day at CONVERGE in Philadelphia today with a history lesson about one of the first clinical trials.

Yu: “You could not go very far when your sailors began to deteriorate and die.” #convergeconf #healthcare

– MedCity News (@medcitynews) July 10, 2012

 

Who knew the first clinical trial was done by Capt. James Lancaster in 1601? Lemon juice prevented scurvy #convergeconf #innovation

– MedCity News (@medcitynews) July 10, 2012

 

264 years of #innovation diffusion in #healthcare-lemon juice curesnscurvy. Has much changed, #FDA? Invention not innovation #ConvergeConf

– healthythinker (@healthythinker) July 10, 2012

You could blame the lack of email for the fact that it took the British Navy 200 years to add lemons to the menu on all their ships. But then Yu shared a quote about the need for improving healthcare IT.

“The need for health IT stems in large part from increasingly rapid change in the pattern of illness in the U.S. and from equally significant changes in the way medicine is practiced. The emphasis here is on the importance of developing as rapidly as possible to improve quality and decrease the cost of medical care.”

He asked the audience what decade this recommendation came from. Most of the crowd guessed the ’80s; no one realized that this advice was given to President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Maybe email doesn’t make any difference.

Yu is the director of innovations in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in Health and Human Services. He said that the government was focused on creating a new infrastructure to support innovators and adopters.

“Many existing stakeholders are not culturally, organizational and strategically equipped to adopt or acquire new innovations methodically,” he said. “For innovators, we are supporting the market environment with aligned programs and policies. One example is data infrastructure standards.”

For adopters, Yu said the government is using priorities, policies and programs to encourage existing stakeholders to adopt and scale new technologies and services.

Yu’s department has sponsored many challenges as part of this work including one to bring attention to domestic violence. He directed the audience to challenge.gov to see other current and past examples.

“It literally took an act of Congress to allow all departments in the government to sponsor challenges,” he said.

There are 15 live health-centric challenges with prizes ranging from $425 for a photo contest to $500,000 for a Medicaid challenge.

Yu’s last comment was that getting the word out to entrepreneurs was one of the biggest challenges his office faced. Maybe email, combined with Facebook, Twitter, blogs and good, old-fashioned word of mouth will ensure faster dissemination of this information than the results of the vitamin C/scurvy clinical trial.

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