Translating Ideas into Impacts and Scaling Innovations in Health Care

Health care has no shortage of innovation. New ideas, large and small, are constantly popping into existence. New technologies, better care models, novel kinds of partnerships are launching with regularity.

What health systems may lack to varying degrees is not creativity, but the structures required to methodically and consistently turn early innovations into ones that create sustained results and value. This idea about how best to create ongoing results when testing or developing new ideas was a focus at the 2025 Top of Mind Summit: Digital Health, hosted by UPMC Enterprises and the Center for Connected Medicine.

While many of the conversations highlighted creative and potentially transformative health care solutions, the more pressing questions were ones of an operational nature: Why do innovations struggle to scale? What stands in the way of broader adoption? And how do health care innovators move from pilots to permanency?

The answers shared by speakers in multiple panel discussions during the event made one thing clear. Scaling innovation is not about the brilliance of an idea — it is about, among other things, the readiness of the environment in which it will function to support it.

Scaling Starts with Finding Operational Alignment

At UPMC Enterprises, the emphasis is on identifying friction points within care delivery and working backward from those challenges to develop or co-develop solutions.

“We’ve had the privilege to work closely in line with our clinicians, care managers, and partners to get after and solve some of these problems,” said Brent Burns, Executive Vice President of UPMC Enterprises. “Our particular model favors embedded collaboration over thesis-led development that can better enable what we build can realistically be deployed at the needed or desired scale to make it viable by any metric in which in must be measured against.”

The goal is to avoid introducing tools that create parallel processes, duplication, or resistance. Innovation that can scale has to align with real-world clinical, research or operational workflows.

The Implementation Gap

Many promising health care tools and innovations never make it past the pilot phase — and not because they were not good or sound solutions. Often, the breakdown happens at the point of operationalization when responsibilities become unclear, integration proves too difficult due to unforeseen circumstances or missing infrastructure, or the tool’s value and impact on clinical care or other end-use becomes too challenging to measure across settings or populations.

This challenge was evident in the collaboration between UPMC Enterprises and Parachute Health, a UPMC Enterprises portfolio company focused on streamlining the ordering process for durable medical equipment (DME) during hospital discharge. What initially appeared to be a straightforward digital solution revealed deeper operational hurdle ranging from workflow fragmentation to communication gaps between clinical teams and suppliers.

By engaging system operators and care managers early, the partnership identified these barriers before deployment, allowing the product strategy to be refined around real-world conditions. It is a clear example of how structured feedback and operational alignment are critical for developing functional tools and for ensuring those tools can scale within complex health care environments.

Without this level of early collaboration, even well-designed solutions risk failing once introduced into daily practice.

Innovating Within Large and Complex Health Care Systems

Mark Zhang, DO, Chief Innovation Officer at the Veterans Health Administration, shared how one of the nation’s largest health systems approaches innovation at scale. With a patient population spanning millions and a highly structured environment, the VA faces unique challenges in implementing new solutions across its network. 

To address this, the VA developed initiatives like its BETS program (Build, Engage, Transform, Solve), which is a micro-grant funding model that empowers frontline staff to pursue rapid-cycle innovation projects without being stalled by bureaucratic hurdles. By providing small, flexible funds and support, the program encourages grassroots problem-solving while aligning with system-wide priorities. 

Dr. Zhang emphasized that sustainable innovation in large, complex systems like the VA requires embracing the operational realities that exist, not necessarily avoiding them. The VA’s long history of transformative contributions, from pioneering electronic health records to developing the pacemaker, demonstrates how structured flexibility can create a lasting impact. 

Scaling innovation can often depend as much on empowering teams within existing frameworks as it does on the technologies or ideas themselves.

Embedding for Long-Term Success

Scaling innovation depends on more than technical integration. Solutions must be embedded into governance structures, workflows, and accountability frameworks. Tools that rely on indefinite oversight from innovation teams rarely endure.

“You can pilot yourself to death and never go anywhere,” said Chet Ho, MD, chief medical officer at the UPMC Health Plan. “We’re seeing a growing recognition that health systems must design initiatives with sustainability in mind, not so much as temporary experiments, but ones that are integral components of how care is delivered.” 

At UPMC Enterprises, development strategies ensure that solutions transition into operational ownership and are supported by training, governance, and long-term resource planning. Innovation succeeds when it becomes normalized within daily operations, not treated as an exception.

Scaling Innovation: A Continuous Commitment

Successful implementation is only the beginning. True impact depends on how solutions perform under evolving conditions within a real-world health care environment. Without mechanisms for ongoing evaluation and adaptation, even well-integrated tools risk becoming rapidly obsolete.

Leadership in this space will come from organizations that embed alignment, ownership, and accountability into every stage of development and deployment of health care technology, artificial intelligence, or otherwise.

“What matters is not just whether something works, but whether it continues to work as conditions change,” Mr. Burns said. “Ongoing evaluation, adaptation, and alignment with a system’s goals are necessary for maintaining useability over the long-term.”

Next Steps

• Read “Seeding Innovation in Uncertain Times,” a summary of the keynote address and fireside chat featuring Dr. Robert Califf, former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
• Learn more about Parachute Health and its solutions for medical equipment and supplies.
• Read all our Top of Mind reports and event coverage.