Movement Health 2030 – Uruguay (MS 2030 – UY) - Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

ANII, in collaboration with the private sector and the support of Uruguay's Ministry of Health, is piloting a novel Open Innovation Initiative (MH2030). Ageing populations and rising numbers of people with multiple chronic diseases are placing an increasing burden on health systems. There is a need for improving healthcare by fostering an innovative environment. Through this new co-creative approach, local entrepreneurs work collaboratively with partnering healthcare institutions to tailor and implement digital health solutions. This not only promotes growth of the local health-tech ecosystem but also increases the capacity of healthcare institutions to innovate and solve healthcare problems.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

Even though the conservative structures associated with healthcare have proven challenging for innovative stakeholders. There is an opportunity in finding new ways to seize the entrepreneurial ecosystem for creative ideas and to engage more actively potential users. In this context, ANII and its partners are piloting a novel Open Innovation Initiative. This programme is called after, and operates within, the global co-creation platform Movement Health 2030 (MH2030), built in partnership by Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies (CIFS) and Roche. MH2030's Open Innovation Initiative in Uruguay challenges the traditional method of incubating and accelerating start-ups by involving relevant stakeholders with potential users (e.g. hospital directors, physicians, IT heads, etc.), from problem definition and conceptualization to the development/prototyping and implementation of pilot solutions.

The objectives of this initiative are three-fold:

Promote entrepreneurial growth in the health-tech sector
Foster the development of a creative and innovative culture within healthcare organisations
Showcase the value of innovation (i.e. optimisation of processes and resources and improvement of health outcomes)

The implementation of this Initiative in Uruguay is a 2-year multistep process designed to achieve the following goals:

Strategic Alliances & Funding: establish a public/private coalition that runs and finances the program, with institutional support from relevant governmental institutions.
Healthcare Partners: engage selected public and private healthcare institutions to participate in the program and secure their commitment to allocate human resources to work with innovation partners in the solutions' development and implementation.
Challenge Definition and Open Innovation Call: gather insights from local healthcare experts (government, healthcare institutions, and patient advocacy groups) to define high-level challenges to be solved through an open innovation call.
Innovation Partners: select pool of start-ups from applications to the Open Innovation Call to participate.
Co-creation: collaborative work between selected healthcare and innovation partners to further refine the challenge to be addressed (considering institutional contexts); evolve and integrate innovative solutions incorporating constant users feedback.
Acceleration & Piloting: test minimum viable products within partnering healthcare institutions, validate business models of innovations, implement pilots and measure impact of solutions.
Scalability: export solutions to other local healthcare institutions and capitalise the global network platform of MH2030 to extrapolate solutions to foreignmarkets.

ANII coordinates this initiative, providing the framework to enable collaborative work (based on agile methodologies), coaching/training sessions in relevant topics (e.g. principles in change management) and networking opportunities for healthcare and innovative partners. The first version of the initiative is currently running, in an advanced stage of implementation: 3 major healthcare institutions are working collaboratively with 7 innovation partners (selected from over 20 applications) in the final stages of the co-creation phase. This is co-funded by ANII and the private sector (i.e. Roche) with the MoH´s support. This first pilot program has been successful in creating a cross-sectoral collaboration platform that bridges the gap between potential users and innovative actors in the health sector, enabling a creative and collaborative culture within the healthcare ecosystem. Future versions of this program, local scalability via support from MoH and international scalability through the global MH2030 network will allow the sustainability of these efforts and the expansion of its impact.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

MH2030 is a local innovation in entrepreneurship programs:

Because of its customer-centric approach to innovation potential healthcare users are integrally involved in the innovation process. This not only helps entrepreneurs design/tailor their ideas based on real-life needs and secure a platform for piloting the resultant products, but also shapes healthcare institution processes to allow innovation adoption and manage change.
Cooperation is a core principle. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to collaborate and identify ways of coupling their products to provide holistic solutions to health institutions’ needs.
It originates from multi-sectoral partnerships. It’s the most diverse stakeholder entrepreneurship program run by ANII. Partnerships include governmental agencies, ministries, the private sector, healthcare institutions, entrepreneurs and expert consultants.
By being part of MH2030 Global Community, this initiative benefits from knowledge-exchange of international partners.

What is the current status of your innovation?

After a successful launch and partner recruitment, this Initiative is finalising the co-creation phase in the implementation process. Healthcare and Innovation Partners have already done onboarding, exploration and problem definition. As a result, working teams are now addressing two pressing healthcare problems (operation room management and diabetic patient control). Currently the teams are completing the design stage where innovators are tailoring their ideas/products through continuous exchange with healthcare institutions and finding synergies between each other to generate more holistic solutions to the challenges. At the same time, healthcare partners are incorporating relevant stakeholders from their institutions to the working teams (e.g. medical specialists, IT managers). This is resulting in an increased adoption of agile methodologies, cross-sectoral collaborations and innovation management practices within the healthcare sector.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

The partners involved are key for its innovative value: governmental (ANII, MoH), private (Roche), healthcare (public and private hospitals) and healthtech (entrepreneurs and young companies). Also, it benefits from the global MH2030 platform. Design is provided by MH2030, ANII, and Roche. Stakeholder engagement by ANII, Roche. Management and financing is given by ANII and Roche. Communications are managed by ANII, MoH, Roche and MH2030. And the subject matter know-how is provided by healthcare institutions, key opinion leaders and health-tech experts.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Given the highly multi-sectoral nature of the Initiative, several parties are benefiting from this innovation:

Innovation Partners and Entrepreneurs: direct contact with potential users of their solutions during the whole innovation process, access to resources to develop and pilot their solutions, partner with other innovators to enhance their products through collaboration (e.g. multi-solution packages).
Healthcare Partners: benefit from the implementation of personalised solutions based on their specific problems and barriers.
Relevant Governmental Entities: (e.g. MoH) novel platform to test and measure innovative pilots that address pressing needs in healthcare management with potential scalability. Government also benefits from the integration of a growing health entrepreneurship sector and a healthcare system more adept to incorporate innovation.
Healthcare Users: ultimately the implementation of solutions will result in better healthcare delivery for users.
Private Sector: platform for investing in innovative processes in healthcare with a fast and direct impact in the ecosystem.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Actual results and impacts:

USD 120k secured in funding (MoD signed by ANII and partners)
3 healthcare institutions participating in the end-to-end process (Collaboration agreement signed)
Over 15 experts (physicians, managers, IT) actively involved (registered in roster)
7 entrepreneurs in health working collaboratively, signed ToR (out of over 20 applications)
Over 6h of collaborative work in a 15-week period (weekly activity report)
2 masterclass training sessions involving 50 participants
Monday Project Manager Software and Miro used as follow-up and collaboration tools.

Future expected results and impacts:

2 pilots solutions implemented and scaled
5 monthly mentions in media
Measure impact of specific solutions to:
- Reduce patients' hospitalisation and surgery wait line times
- Improve patients' participation and follow-up in diabetes treatments
- Empower patients to monitor their treatments
- Foster patient journey automation
- Ensure program continuity and broaden its partnerships

Challenges and Failures

The Uruguayan healthcare system is top ranked in LATAM but still faces the challenge to level all institutions in incorporating innovative tools to leverage the whole ecosystem. In this scenario, a big challenge consists in bridging the gap between the different stakeholders and working collaboratively while implementing similar pilots. Thus, it is important not to rush the innovation processes and allow enough time for onboarding, network building and question asking. This time invested ensures that further stages advance quicker (and much more efficiently). Another key challenge has been the integration of the diverse maturity stages solutions . The management team works daily on overcoming blockages and motivating participants, giving them appropriate tools for each phase of the process, noticing positive feedback as well as milestones achieved.

Conditions for Success

The Open Innovation Program is boosted by ANII´s human resources team and infrastructure. This first edition secured its funding with private partners and the Ministry of Health has been a key player to ensure the participation of relevant healthcare institutions. The potential pilot projects were selected taking into consideration the following conditions of success:

PROBLEM + SOLUTION
There is a concrete problem identified and the solution solves the challenge. For this item it is essential that the entrepreneurs understand the problem deeply.

FOCUSED ON PEOPLE
The solution is designed from empathy, always thinking about the community's development.

SYSTEMIC
The solution creates new and better healthcare systems in place of incremental optimizations of the existing ones.

INNOVATIVE
The solution solves the challenge in a novel or creative way. There are currently no similar solutions on the market.

SCALABLE
The solution has the potential to scale in Latin America.

Replication

This Program has the potential to be replicated in four different levels:

Within ANII: the management team is already incorporating several tools and knowledge that will be incorporated in future challenges. ANII works everyday to improve the social and economic situation of Uruguay by promoting investigation and innovation.
Within the actual allied institutions: the solutions implemented can be replicated to other diseases.
Locally: demonstration effect of the firsts pilots implemented and MoH sponsorship of the program fosters a positive environment for more local institutions to adopt the solutions developed.
Internationally: The solutions may use the MS2030 global network to ensure their scalability beyond borders. Developing more sustainable healthcare systems is a priority in the world's agenda, so the innovation challenge can become a key path to achieve some of them around the world.

Lessons Learned

Integrating complex organisations, such as hospitals and healthtech entrepreneurs with different approaches to innovating processes and helping them to work collaboratively has been challenging but successful so far. Main lessons learned in this process are:

Engaging multiple stakeholders is challenging but the impact that can be achieved is much greater
Finding balance between flexibility - to accompany the different stages of maturity of the participants - and keeping the deadline within the expected time framework
Goals are reachable by different pathways and every stage of the process has specific requirements. Taking this into account, it's crucial that the management team is actively paying attention to all the stakeholders to make sure that everyone is feeling confident enough to propose ideas based on their needs and personal points of view
Importance of connecting with vision, understanding rules of the game, different ways of working and organisational cultures