There’s often plenty of talk about innovation in healthcare. The walk, however, sometimes has trouble gaining traction. Lenovo Health is empowering forward-momentum through the Health Innovation Think Tank, a dynamic group of health industry leaders dedicated to leveraging their collective wisdom in an effort to share innovative best practices and positively affect public policy.

Co-hosted by Lenovo Health, Justin Barnes Advisors, Center for Connected Medicine (CCM), Inventiv Health and HIMSS Media, the Health Innovation Think Tank brought together more than 50 healthcare thought leaders from all corners of the industry, including care delivery systems, payer organizations and health IT innovators, to examine as well as collaborate on best practices and strategies necessary to advance transformative initiatives that accelerate momentum toward key clinical models associated with value-based care, connected health and virtual care. Held on October 10th at the UPMC Center for Connected Medicine in Pittsburgh, the one-day collaborative, the group’s second event held this year, was moderated by Justin Barnes, director of Justin Barnes Advisors and host of This Just In Radio Show, and Tom Foley, director, global health solutions strategy at LenovoHealth.

“This Think Tank gave us the opportunity to pick up where we left off after our first meeting in June. As a result, we were able to dig much deeper into topics that truly matter and produce innovative thought leadership that can help advance the transformation needed in the delivery of care,” Foley said.  “We were not only able to engage these industry trailblazers to address what needs to be done today and tomorrow, but to establish market expectations and truly force a vision for the next five to seven years.”

Such results are possible because the Think Tank is set up in a unique format that encourages participants to not just absorb knowledge but to forge ahead and push the innovation envelope. “Our Think Tanks do not operate under the typical speaker or panel discussion format. Instead, in a session, a catalyst kicks off the discussion, then the entire audience contributes to the conversation – making it a more dynamic and ultimately fruitful endeavor,” Foley said. “In the end, the collaborative thoughts enable the participants to leverage each other’s ideas and come up with the innovations that can truly make a difference in our healthcare industry.”

Indeed, the 50-plus attendees interacted with various industry “catalysts” – presenters who served to jumpstart discussions – as the group collaboratively established key takeaways and best practices through dynamic discussions on the topics of value-based care, connected health and virtual care. “We looked at how each healthcare entity can contribute to market transformation. The day focused on what is working and what is not working,” Barnes noted. “We are fortunate to have some of the greatest innovators and care providers in healthcare as part of our Think Tank and we want to share what our collective experiences are to propel healthcare forward.”

Perhaps most importantly, the group predicted that within the next five to seven years the industry would experience:

• Greater facilitation of innovative healthcare delivery policy ideas, as U.S. demographics pushes the nation in this direction
• The expansion of clinician options for rural and underserved communities, as emphasis on “clinicians” not just “physicians” becomes more common
• Information and data to become even more critical as quality measurement for outcomes and two-sided risk models comes into play – along with precision medicine initiatives
• Greater patient advocacy realized through patient engagement and empowerment as shared decision-making and value-based insurance design become more prevalent
• Achievement of a ubiquitous, unique health safety identifier that advances the absolution necessary to realize full, uninhibited interoperability

The event is just one of many Think Tank activities designed to keep moving the innovation, policy and strategy needle forward. The group plans to continue to take action through future meetings – both formal and informal – as well as via Congressional advocacy and various social media efforts (#HIThinkThank on Twitter).

“We not only want to spark conversation, we want to encourage action,” Foley said. “By bringing this group of global thought leaders together, Lenovo is helping to accelerate the adoption of innovation solutions across the industry and is helping the healthcare industry experience true transformation.”