Making hospitals innovative: Macro-level policy to sustain micro-innovations in healthcare

Successful innovation clusters are notoriously difficult to establish, and many attempts fail. How can we go about designing such systems reliably? We describe how ecosystems can be strengthened through grassroots bottom-up efforts that empower user and community innovation, as opposed to economic policies that dictate innovation. Specifically focusing on the healthcare industry, we advocate that community hospitals which constitute 90% of all hospitals in Canada are the ideal setting for such community innovation efforts. We investigated the distribution of innovation output from hospitals over the past 13 years and found a decrease in predominance of major teaching hospitals, supporting the potential role for community hospitals in this space. We categorize different types of innovations and recommend institutional policies that can sustain bottom-up, micro-level efforts. Such policies could improve and enhance the development of micro-innovations and the creation of health innovation clusters.