The Health Enterprise: Charting a Path for Health Innovation

The recent economic turmoil and the price of economic recovery are so great that they will likely limit the availability of health-care dollars. The best option for keeping Canada’s health-care system sustainable is innovation that reduces the growth rate of health-care costs, while raising productivity and improving health outcomes. The current economic crisis provides an opportunity to reshape current health, health-care, and innovation systems.

The policy briefing introduces the vision for a health enterprise—an approach that supports alignment and integration of key sectors affecting health-care performance, and suggests that the key for successful health innovation strategies may lie in the proper alignment and integration of innovation goals to ensure all members of the health enterprise work in synchronicity. It also presents a Health Innovation Framework for Action that can guide the design and implementation of policies aiming to support the improvement of health outcomes and to boost national capacity for innovation.