The term “innovation” is no longer a new concept in academic circles. The term was integrated into healthcare terminology as a concept adopted from other fields. Thus, innovation in healthcare is interchangeably used as it applies in business, marketing, and technology. Innovation refers to a new idea, device, or method, as well as an act or process of launching new ideas, devices, or methods. Health innovation therefore falls under a broad category of social innovations applied to solve health problems with more efficient and effective systems and/or processes.
According to Schweitzer (2015), social innovation within organizations is used to encourage new approaches towards poverty alleviation, education, and human development problems. Although social innovation starts with system-level changes (Dube et al., 2014), the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledge that ‘health innovation’ is an important tool for enhancing the quality, effectiveness, efficiency, safety, sustainability, and/or affordability of health care. In addition to these comprehensive definitions, McSherry and Douglas (2011) assert that health innovation includes “new or improved” health practices, system, policies, technologies, products, and services—as well as the chosen methods of delivery—that result in improved healthcare (Rabeh., 2014). Other factors that should not be neglected in healthcare innovation are level of patients’ education, improvement in research and development (R&D), level of access to care, quality of care, patients’ perception of health providers/facilities, and individual satisfaction, among others. In other words, the main purpose of health innovation is to improve the ability of health systems to cater for the health needs of individuals and households. Health innovation therefore aims at providing optimal health care services via technology- and IT-based systems (Rogers., 1995; Bartholomew et al., 2001).
Theoretically, innovations in healthcare are expected to provide effective solutions and significant changes (improvements) in systems, technologies, health policies, products, services, and delivery methods—for the goal of improving health care. Thus, the basic areas of healthcare innovation are categorised under (a) education (b) outreach (c) diagnosis (d) treatment (e) prevention (f) research quality and delivery, as well as (e) free access to healthcare services (Wensing et al., 1998).
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