Theme
Human services
Digitisation of health and welfare
Roundtable: Is it innovative to digitise the activities we already do? New technologies, data exchange and associated governance models allow us to think differently about system innovation and the provision of services in the digital age. It is believed the accelerating pace of change will be driven by the health consumer, and those funding and delivering services need to innovate to meet consumer needs or be left behind. The question now is how to shift our focus to above-the-line innovation and redefine how we deliver those services.
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Insights
Our key take-away as participants and observers at the event were:
- Speed of digital change cannot be underestimated – the reality is that we can change or be left behind by competitors
- Need to better link social welfare with health as there are things we can do better now and opportunities through emerging technologies to approach this differently in the future
- Engaging the workforce on digital change as clinicians need to co-operate more with other clinicians and increasingly with those in human services, but that requires the exchange of information and data
- Addressing the tolerance for failure as the reality is that there is no tolerance for failure in
healthcare - Shifting the focus to above-the-line innovation as that allows government health and welfare services to move valuable resources away from people who have the skills to manipulate the system for their benefit and to get resources to the vulnerable people we need to service who are unable to manipulate the system.
- There will be consumer driven change – health and welfare sectors are still slow to adapt and apply these changes, but they are occurring and will continue to become more relevant
Innovation guide
Jason Potts is a Professor of Economics at RMIT University in Melbourne. He specialises in innovation economics and the economics of new technology. He is an editor of the Journal of Institutional Economics, and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. He is currently an ARC Future Fellow, and author of 5 books and over 70 journal articles on topics ranging from evolutionary economics, cultural and sports economics, and the economics of blockchain.d providers.