It is one of healthcare’s most powerful compounds, requiring a balance and precision worthy of laboratory procedure and meticulous product development.
Creativity is where the abstract is coupled with the applicable to deliver targeted, measurable results, and harnessing it in a digital age unlocks huge commercial benefit and improved patient outcomes.
The agility to think laterally and creatively has always been at the heart of decoding scientific complexities and driving medical understanding, but it takes on extra significance when the healthcare ecosystem is evolving in a far from linear atmosphere.
A recent study put the concept of deploying creativity to improve cardiovascular care in hospitals under the microscope and concluded that it was crucial to problem-solving and performance improvement.
It was focused on clinical performance and learning in hospital settings, but the findings revealed a key factor in creativity that resonates across all arenas, stating: ‘Leveraging new and diverse information sources for creative problem-solving typically required a second, distinct behaviour: accepting (rather than dismissing) disruptive or unwelcome information.’
This is a critical challenge for an industry that is naturally cautious and where disruption is the ‘d’ word and a concept that sets pulses racing. The prospects of boundary-challenging creativity can sometimes be felt with the same discomfort as applying sandpaper to sensitive areas unless it is properly defined, managed and then measured.
Dick Dunford, Group Creative Director at Havas Life Medicom, has a wealth of experience and knowledge across consumer and health sectors and celebrates the force of creativity, but he also understands the caution that swirls around many organisations.
“They are evidence-based organisations that make rational and logical decisions, which is where the conundrum lies,” he observes. “They are presented with what appear to be original, untested, untried approaches and naturally ask: ‘What’s the evidence that says it will work?’ We don’t always have that and that is where there is a bit of reluctance.”
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