Failing Fast: Does It Apply to Health Care?

May 09, 2017When you ' re developing new ideas or tech, failure isn ' t  such a bad thing. But for health workers, it means something else.I had the good fortune of attending and presenting at the 2017  SwitchPoint  conference, organized by  Intrahealth International, in Saxapahaw, North Carolina. SwitchPoint brings together musicians, innovators, health practitioners, and a wider range of people working in global health and humanitarian response, for a few days of information sharing and soul searching.The event is highly produced  (while I was waiting to give my talk, the people upfront radioed backstage that I should wait an extra 15-seconds while my walk-on music was playing), and creates a sense of each thing flowing into the next.By putting people who do not typically work together in the same, secluded space and juxtaposing ideas that are seemingly unrelated, the meeting sparks creativity and self-reflection in the speakers, as well as the attendees.We aspire to  fail fast so we can move on to trying the next thing.The word that comes to mind to best capture my experience is “vulnerability”.There was no jockeying to be seen as the smartest person in the room. Many people talked about mistakes or losses in their experience and how these events shaped their work. It ’s common for information technologists to urge our colleagues from public health and medicine to embrace failure.We know that the innovative things we build often don ’t work on the first try;...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news