Innovating with INSIGHT: Best Practices for Evaluating Emerging Health Technologies

In an era of rapid healthcare tech innovation, healthcare leaders face a critical challenge: choosing which emerging technologies will truly benefit their organizations. This session presents a structured, evidence-based evaluation framework designed to fill that gap, replacing ad-hoc, hype-driven choices with data-driven decisions. Using standardized criteria and practical tools (like an innovation heatmap and scoring calculator), this framework objectively assesses new tech opportunities by their value and implementation difficulty. The Innovation Scoring and Impact Guide for Healthcare Technologies (INSIGHT) was developed to quantitatively score a given innovation’s “readiness” or merit. Findings from pilot use show that applying this approach helps prioritize high-impact, feasible innovations while avoiding those that are misaligned or high-risk. The key takeaway is that adopting a consistent evaluation toolkit and best practices enables smarter technology decisions aligned with strategic goals and better patient outcomes.