For Molly Joel Coye, MD, and Wendy Everett, two longtime healthcare thought leaders, innovation is about strategy, development, hard evidence, value and ROI -- think of return on innovation, as well as return on investment.

"Sometimes people say ROI-squared," said Coye, chief innovation officer at UCLA Health. "It’s becoming very clear that it is possible to link investments in innovation quite directly to the strategic priorities of an organization, and that you should be able to measure over 12 months or 36 months -- whatever period you choose -- the actual return on that investment."

Both definitions of ROI will be explored at next week's National Healthcare Innovation Summit, which takes place May 13-15 in Boston. The event is organized by HIMSS. Coye, along with Everett, who's the CEO of NEHI, the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation, serve as co-chairs -- as they did last year, for the summit’s debut.

Innovation can be serious business, but it does not preclude a spirited exploration of how best to improve healthcare and lower costs. That’s what the conference is all about.

"My best hope is that people will leave this conference with the ideas and the consonance and the tactical plans to be able to implement a number of the innovations that we’ll be discussing," said Everett. What makes the National Healthcare Innovation Summit stand out from the others, she said, is that it is focused on innovations that have high-value, demonstrated results.

Coye added that many of the speakers at the summit would be describing the strategic purposes of the innovations that they’ve employed – or in some cases – that they’ve developed, and the evidence for the return.

Among the dozens of speakers and sessions are five keynoters: Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini; Larry Keeley, president and co-founder of Doblin Group and director of Deloitte Consulting; author, consultant and futurist Ian Morrison; Ray Rosin, chief innovation officer of Penn Medicine; and Charlotte Yeh, MD, chief medical officer at AARP Services.

[See also: Embracing innovation with 'crazy' ideas.]

New to the summit this year is the Innovation Gallery – a curated showcase of 10 recent advancements now deemed ready for prime time. They were selected from a large pool of companies. Conference attendees will be able to go from station to station to see and hear about how the innovations work.

"I think that will be very exciting to the participants,” Everett said, "because they’ll get a very early look at what’s about to come on the market in a big way.”

Complementing the gallery is a panel on how people in every sector of healthcare make a decision about whether or not an innovation is valuable and whether or not they will adopt it.

"That’s important," Everett said, "because a lot of people sort of brush off innovation until they’re not really innovations anymore. The innovation community can continue on forever saying ‘look at this wonderful device, service, delivery program, new way of paying for patients.' But, if it never gets picked up or adopted or purchased or used by anyone, then it’s a lot of venture capital money going to waste so we don’t have to make a risky decision."

[See also: Innovation showcase brings 'wow' factor.]

What parts of healthcare are most ripe for innovation?

"I think in the next three years, there is a real opportunity to see the payoff in several areas that are high priority for delivery systems," Coye said. She offered as an example, the management of specialty resources and referrals. Many health systems that are entering into ACO arrangements find that leakage is a critical problem, she said. Other health systems want to strengthen the loyalty and increase referrals for appropriate care.

"In every case, this is a high priority,” she said, "and there are a number of innovations that target it quite successfully."

Population health management is also top of mind today, Coye noted.

"There are key innovations in that area that leverage much smaller investment for a larger impact on patients with complex chronic diseases, on patients at risk for readmissions and even the use of very expensive resources like ED visits," she said.

[See also: HIMSS Innovation Center opens its doors.]

Everett contends more could be done to better leverage remote monitoring. Coye sees huge promise in employing care coordinators.

"These are non-clinically licensed individuals – like social workers and returned army vets that are trained to support patients in compliance with their clinical regimen," Coye said. “There’s a very high return on those and on several different innovations that we’re presenting.”

"We’re just really excited about the really high quality of people that we have coming as speakers and the ability to make this an very interactive session rather than just one talking head after another," said Everett. "We’re talking about the kinds of innovations that people can take home and use tomorrow."