LifeScience Alley’s annual conference is usually the place to show off the latest gee-whiz medical device or drug therapy.

But given the fierce debate over health care reform, the organization chose to devote its two key note speaker slots to men well versed in a type of innovation that doesn’t get the same attention: the delivery and experience of health care…

Normally when we think about innovation, we picture products and things, rarely services or processes. But for the country that wishes to truly reform medicine, “we need new ways to deliver better health care,” said Dr. Nicholas LaRusso, medical director of the Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. “I firmly believe that’s the key to health care innovation in the 21st Century.”

MedCity News, by Thomas Lee, 12/9/09

Tags: health care delivery, Health Policy, innovation, Innovation (Center of)