Updated June 07, 2014.

One thing that astonishes me on a daily basis (that sounds like hyperbole, but sadly it's not) is how slowly we adopt smart new products in health care.

So many well-intentioned, problem-solving manufacturers listen to their health care clients' challenges, and then invest in the research, design, and manufacturing expenses to launch a solution to a well-known, well-acknowledged, well-voiced problem.

 

And then their clients beat down their doors begging to buy this new problem-solving solution, right? 

Umm, no. That's how I naively think the story will end. I fall for it every time. 

Instead, more often, these solutions designed to make life easier, faster, safer in the medical world are met with skepticism by their would-be purchasers working in the hospital or clinic.

Are there exceptions? Of course, and those people should be congratulated, saluted, and glorified so that their use of an open mind, to embrace solutions even when they are new, are seen as the norm. We call them early-adopters. Without them dragging the rest of their colleagues along, I shudder to think where the health care delivery system would be today.

Some hypothesize that the late-adopters, the skeptical, are favoring their survival instincts. That is, their job survival. They fear that being one of the first to buy a new product for their facility exposes their job security. Purchasing for a facility takes on a weighted responsibility far more risky than simply buying a new retail product for one's self, after all.

 

If that's the case, and I believe it is based on what I've seen in my twenty years in health care, then we're not talking about "a few bad apples". We're talking about a systemic problem.  Do we really have a system that puts someone's livelihood at risk when they try to solve a well-known, prevalent problem with a new product, a new service, a new idea? 

We do. Oh yes, we do.

But there's no need for a blind stab in the dark. No one need gamble. There's room to build in careful consideration; there's room for a small purchase to test a new product before it is rolled out far and wide in a bulk-buying contract. 

But sadly, too often the seeds of careful consideration and small-scale testing are not even given the chance to plant and take root.

We have to find a way to plant early, often, and now. Just like the actual plant world, new products and new ideas and new services are the photosynthesis of better health care. These are what put the life-giving oxygen into the air we breathe and the energy into the ideas that make our health care better. It's necessary for us to grow. Without it, our means of delivering medical care would be far behind where we are today; and with more of it, we cannot fathom how much farther ahead we could be right now.  

Many of the 250 articles I've published about health care and medical supplies are blood-relatives, connected by the following theme:

We are wasting time, money, and human lives at an unforgivable pace on problems for which we already have solutions. We are guilty, not in failing to find a better way, but in failing to adopt the better way once it has been found.

And so, in my small way on Medical Supplies at About.com, I try to get the word out. I try to shed light on the problem-solvers, the people, companies, and products that answered The Call to propel us forward. They've listened, they've learned.  They've invested, and they've tested. They've produced.

Here's how we can thank them: Give them voice, give them audience. Challenge them. Push them to revise, to tweak. But please, on behalf of those of us who want to go forward faster because people's lives are at stake, don't ignore them.