Trends in Healthcare Innovation: The Bertha Centre at UCT Interdisciplinary and Innovation

The emergence of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) marks a radical paradigm shift from traditional healthcare models towards eHealth models that promote the use of technology advancements to deliver and manage healthcare. Advancements in the technology (such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning) enable novel ways for the health sector to reduce the burden on health systems by connecting these advancements to medical or connectivity devices, software applications or contemporary forms of transportation (Lepore et al., 2023).

However, the technical heterogeneity of these technology advancements creates challenges to ensure their integration and interoperability to the health sector that is regulated by strict standards. Warranting patient safety and privacy necessitates the “application of interdisciplinary knowledge to manage resources, balance feedbacks, improve problem-solving and develop innovative solutions for the healthcare sector”. The adoption of solutions based on I4.0 means that there are also environmental, social-cultural, economic and political considerations that must be confronted (Lepore et al., 2023). For example, the increased use of machine learning has revealed threats to patients data protection.

Thus, the opportunities and challenges related to adopting technological advancements to realise healthcare solutions requires “cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary” collaboration (Lepore et al., 2023). According to Krause-Jüttler, Weitz, & Bork (2022), interdisciplinary collaboration for real-world problems delivers of reliable and relevant solutions. Interdisciplinary collaboration differs from multidisciplinary collaboration which is an additive cooperation where individuals from each discipline work on distinct portions and develop their own solutions in parallel. In contrast, interdisciplinary collaboration is a “mutual expansion and integration of methods and solution approaches and thus a mutual compensation of existing gaps in the respective discipline with regard to the problem to be solved” (Krause-Jüttler, Weitz, & Bork, 2022). Lepore et al., (2023) argue that collaborations between universities and industries offer access to greater knowledge on how to design and apply innovative solutions. University-industry collaborations also reflect open innovation because they transfer knowledge outside organisational borders and catalyse solutions to existing health system challenges. This collaborative approach can be enhance with a triple-helix model (THM) which has been used to promote regional economic growth and entrepreneurship by appreciating the dynamic interactions between three domains – the university, industry and government (Lepore et al., 2023).

The Bertha Centre

The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship is a specialized unit within the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business that aims to build capacity and knowledge - through interdisciplinary collaborations with organisations, practitioners and students – to advance the discourse and systemic impact of social innovation. The Centre defines social innovation as “a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals”.

The Bertha Centre believes that inclusive and radical collaboration and social innovation in health facilitate different and novel solutions and models from various disciplines that open opportunities to respond to health needs and improve health on a systematic level. The burgeoning 4th Industrial Revolution prompts us to explore how technological advancements can create new ways of doing, being and understanding, all towards a more equal society that is equipped to address and overcome social and environmental obstacles (de Villiers, 2021).

The Bertha Centre has partnered with the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), a global initiative (consortium of the WHO) that works towards efforts to tackle diseases of poverty, and Oxford University’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship to form the Social Innovation in Health Initiative (SIHI). This initiative is involved in research on community-based models of health delivery and developing mechanisms to enhance their impact, developing social innovation capacity for its new partners, and engaging with global networks to scale up the adoption of social innovation in health. The SIHI has helped in ensuring that innovation in health delivery and health systems is now officially part of the WHO strategic workplan 2019 to 2023.

The Bertha Centre has assisted in establishing Technovera, a technology start-up developing smart solutions in the public healthcare system in Johannesburg. The founder of Technovera recognised the many productive hours that are lost everyday due patients waiting in queues at primary healthcare facilities. To address this, Technovera developed a solution that enables patients to collect repeat prescriptions in less than two minutes. This is an example of one of many studies that have been supported by the Bertha Scholarship Programme which has evolved each year through feedback from the programme’s cohort of scholars. The Scholarship Programme demonstrates an interdisciplinary collaborative process where theory, knowledge and skill are enmeshed to create novel solutions.

The Bertha Centre has also initiated ‘innovation spaces’ that bring together the diverse perspectives of different professionals such as engineers, doctors, IT specialists and frontline health workers. This led to the first Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Summit and the first public sector Health Innovation Hub in Groote Schuur Hospital in 2015. The hub runs an annual innovation programme that emphasises collaboration from various disciplines, the exchanging of ideas to arrive at a shared understanding of complex problems, and working together to generate solutions to problems faced by users of the health systems and those who are responsible for its implementation.

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References

de Villiers, K. (2021). Bridging the health inequality gap: an examination of South Africa’s social innovation in health landscape. Infectious diseases of poverty, 10, 1-7.

Lepore, D., Dolui, K., Tomashchuk, O., Shim, H., Puri, C., Li, Y., Chen, N., & Spigarelli, F. (2023). Interdisciplinary research unlocking innovative solutions in healthcare. Technovation, 120, 102511. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102511

Naidoo, G., & Mafora, P. P. (2023). An integrated leadership approach in improving service delivery in health care: A case study of a district hospital in the Limpopo Province in South Africa. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), 12(10), 148-155.