Justin Kunkel
7 Secrets for Successful Healthcare Innovation Projects

There is no shortage of good ideas in healthcare. There is, however, a shortage of good ideas actually being implemented. It’s no surprise: Healthcare organizations are large, sophisticated, heavily-matrixed organizations that are difficult to move. Add silos, politics and communications challenges into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for maintaining the status quo. But […]

Read More
Designing Death with Jefferson Innovation

Death hovers over everything in medicine, maybe American medicine most of all. Our healthcare system’s traditional focus on the acute incident has implicitly put the focus on preventing death. That doesn’t make it any easier to talk about or deal with.

Read More
Atul Gawande and the Challenge of Digital Checklists

Somehow, someway, Atul Gawande had time to take another job. He’s a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, he’s the Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, he’s a Professor of Surgery at Harvard and he writes constantly. Now he’s been tapped by Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett to run their new healthcare […]

Read More
Colloquy: A Conversation with Osteoid Creator Deniz Karasahin

In 2014, Deniz Karasahin won the prestigious Golden A’ Design Award in 3D Printed Forms and Products Design with the Osteoid, a 3D printed cast that combined orthopedics and therapeutics through ultrasound technology that encourages bone healing. We ask him about his experiences designing in an industry completely foreign to him.

Read More
You Can’t Have It Both Ways

I’m a pastry chef.

I’ve got a mariage élégant tomorrow, and I’m crushed. Panicked, I hire you as a temporary assistant. You’re just starting, and as far as you know XXX powdered sugar is something smutty, but desperate times call for desperate (dry) measures.

Read More
Healthcare’s Blackjack Thinking is Broken

We have a competitive group here. We play tennis, racquetball and ping pong with a cutthroat congeniality. When we need a break from healthcare, we fill our lunches with board games, most frequently, the widely popular Settlers of Catan. We do it to change our head space, but playing games improves our work even while distracting from it. It’s also a helpful metaphor.

Read More
Why is the Uber of Healthcare such a trainwreck?

The Uber of Healthcare. The concept is Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth—discussed in mythical terms and chased by vain idiots. But I’ll be damned if Elizabeth Holmes hasn’t gone and done it.

Read More
Why Martin Shkreli Thought He Could Get Away With It

It’s not so hard to take advantage—even hurt—those we can’t see. The famous Milgram experiments at Yale were a study in obedience, but they wouldn’t have been ethically possible if the “teacher” and “learner” were in the same room. The ruse would have been up, because abstracting our behavior towards others changes the way we feel about it. That’s why most of us still eat cheeseburgers.

Read More
Can Salesforce Health Cloud Cut the Clutter?

“Last Wednesday, Salesforce released Health Cloud, a technology platform aimed at using digital media to connect healthcare providers to their patients, improving healthcare quality and increasing patient satisfaction. This application brings the very best of modern cloud tech to health management. Millennials will gravitate toward it, undoubtedly; however, Salesforce has underestimated the industry paradigm shift needed to realize its vision and the impacts implied by that transition. Further, Health Cloud is used as a supplement to existing documentation and processes—not in lieu of, which gives rise to an inventory of concerns, particularly provider adoption.”

Read More
The Business of Health: Advancement is not Innovation

Healthcare is ripe with advancement. Typical cycles start with researchers working tirelessly to find new ways to treat disease more effectively. Then, front-line providers deploy those new therapies, drugs, protocols, etc. to treat patients. The way we treat disease continuously improves through this process of medical advancement.

Read More