Frugal innovations from other countries provide insights for scaling innovations in the U.S. that could potentially improve healthcare, according to a study published in Health Affairs.
For the study, researchers — led by the Institute of Global Health Innovation, and Innovations in Healthcare — identified five successful frugal innovations in Mexico, India, Kenya, Brazil and Singapore.
Researchers said they then reviewed these five innovations to determine what characteristics make innovations successful and how the innovations have been done at scale.
They essentially found some common features between the five. These included decreasing costs through changed settings and providers as well as improving and facilitating provider-patient communication, among others.
Researchers also identified a number of factors critical to successfully implementing new innovation, such as "knowing one's organization and the innovation" and "developing robust and sustainable change-management systems."
"The potential for successful uptake of each of these innovations in the United States is predicated on addressing potential regulatory, scope-of-practice, funding, governance, training and delivery issues," the researchers concluded.
"We hope that our findings will inspire healthcare policy makers and professionals and inform their consideration of the potential for frugal innovations to improve U.S. healthcare."
Read the full study here.