JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Investors, entrepreneurs, healthcare pundits, and venture capital firms all agree that the healthcare sector is awaiting a digital revolution. Steven Case predicted a “third wave” of innovation in 2016 that would leverage big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to transform medicine and finally achieve the reduced costs, improved efficiency, and better patient outcomes. Academic medical centers have the infrastructure and resources needed by digital health intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs to innovate, iterate, and optimize technology solutions for the major pain points of modern medicine. With large unique patient data sets, strong research programs, and subject matter experts, academic medical centers have the ability to assess, optimize, and integrate new digital health tools with feedback at the point of care and research based clinical validation. As academic medical centers begin to explore digital health solutions, they must decide between forming internal teams to develop these innovations or to collaborate with external companies. While each has its drawbacks and benefits, academic medical centers can both benefit from and drive forward the digital health innovations that will result from this journey. This viewpoint article will provide an explanation as to why academic medical centers are ideal incubators for digital health solutions and describe what these organizations will need to be successful in leading this “third wave” of innovation.