SPRINTing to Innovation: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Strategic Approach to Discovering Its Untapped Innovation Potential

Problem There is a clear and urgent need for health care innovation in the United States. Hospital employees routinely recognize pain points that affect care delivery and are in a unique position to propose innovative and practical solutions, yet leaders rarely solicit ideas for investment and development from frontline providers and staff, revealing an untapped resource with innovation potential. Approach To address these deficiencies, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) expanded its innovation infrastructure with the competition-based SPRINT program in 2015. All hospital employees are encouraged to apply with early stage innovative ideas, and if selected, are provided with business, legal, technical, and scientific project management support to help accelerate their projects toward commercial viability. SPRINT was modeled around 4 core tenets: (1) small, dynamic, and attentive project manager-led teams; (2) low barriers to entry; (3) emphasis on outreach; and (4) fostering innovators. Outcomes Over its first 4 cycles from 2015 to 2018, 271 innovative teams applied to the SPRINT program, which led to support for 30 projects (11% acceptance rate). About a quarter of the projects each year were submitted by physician-led teams (mean 23%), a third by non-physician clinical providers (mean 33%), and almost half were submitted by employees without direct patient contact (mean 44%). Nurses have emerged as the largest applicant group. Eleven of the SPRINT supported projects (37%) resulted in commercial endpoints. Next steps SPRINT has proven to be an effective model for supporting institution-wide, employee-driven health care innovation, especially among frontline clinical and non-clinical personnel. Critical next steps for the program include a formal cost-benefit analysis and the earlier participation of technology transfer and intellectual property experts to improve the commercialization roadmap for many SPRINT projects.