Dr. Clay Christensen

According to Clayton Christenson, Harvard Business Professor and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, a disruptive innovation is a technology, process, or business model that brings to a market a much more affordable product or service that is much simpler to use. It enables more consumers in that market to afford and/or have the skill to use the product or service. The change caused by such an innovation is so big that it eventually replaces, or disrupts, the established approach to providing that product or service.

There are many examples of disruptive innovation occurring in health care: So-called Minute Clinics, provide diagnosis and treatment by a nurse practitioner for a limited number of conditions for which the diagnosis and treatment are fairly simple and routine, such as ear infections and strep throat. In this instance, the creation of walk-in clinics was an innovation on the hospital emergency room and the physician’s office, but not disruptive of any system. The creation of a nurse practitioner was an innovation in the field of health professionals, but not disruptive in and of itself. The authority for a nurse practitioner to have limited prescribing rights was a regulatory innovation, but not disruptive in and of itself.

Health care exists along a spectrum: from judgment/specialist-based medicine to a simpler rules-based medicine. Most health care today is concentrated at the specialist end of the spectrum, creating a situation that not only excludes many who need the care but also resists any downward pressure on costs. “The opportunity for change lies in the simplicity and diagnostic power of rules-based medicine”, says Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen.

But the business model that used a nurse practitioner in a walk-in office located in convenient, high-traffic stores to diagnose and prescribe generic drugs that could be obtained at that same store for a limited number of common conditions accounting for a large portion of primary care visits, is disrupting where and when consumers seek health care. And many more people might now be able to obtain such care because it is more affordable and more convenient than the alternative.

Providing solutions patients want and see as better alternatives is the driver for disruption to occur. Christenson states that an innovation will be disruptive if it provides the consumer with a more affordable and simpler way to get the job done that the consumer wants/needs done. What enables those disruptions to surface is one or more changes in the technology, process, and business models of health care that can change everything from the cost equation, to pricing structures to distribution and delivery channels, to who provides the service, to who is in control of the decision-making.

This competition seeks to identify those changes that are examples of or have the potential to become disruptive innovations in health and health care.

Website: www.claytonchristensen.com