Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Cottage Health is taking a more structured approach to innovation with the addition of a chief innovation officer role designed to turn frontline ideas into measurable results.
Ryan Kelly, PhD, was named to the position in February and will oversee strategy and operations for the Compton Center for Medical Excellence and Innovation at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. The center was established through support from Mary and Richard Compton, longtime Cottage Health donors, and is designed to align clinical, operational and strategic priorities across the organization.
Dr. Kelly told Becker’s the role was created to better harness ideas already emerging across the organization and bring greater coordination to innovation efforts.
“There’s no shortage of ideas, from improving workflows to streamlining administrative processes and addressing technology gaps,” he said. “This role is about putting resources and structure around those ideas and helping to shepherd them forward.”
In his first month in the role, Dr. Kelly said his focus has been on establishing clarity and trust around how innovation functions within the health system.
“For the first 30 to 60 days, it’s about lifting visibility of the innovation that’s already happening and using those projects to generate early wins,” he said. “At the same time, we’re defining intake processes, evaluation criteria and decision-making so everyone understands how to engage and what to expect.”
Over the next 12 to 18 months, Cottage Health plans to prioritize initiatives that reduce barriers for clinicians, improve operational efficiency and responsibly expand digital and AI capabilities. A central component of that strategy is building partnerships in which the health system plays a more active role in development with its vendors.
“We’re prioritizing partnerships where Cottage can be a co-creator, not just a customer,” Dr. Kelly said. “That allows us to work with companies at the stage when they’re ready to scale and bring solutions to market together.”
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape healthcare, Dr. Kelly said Cottage Health is focused on balancing speed with oversight, positioning itself at what he described as the “forefront of responsible AI adoption,” a concept he credits to Ganesh Persad, the health system’s vice president and CIO.
“We’ve built the infrastructure, partnerships and governance to move fast when the moment calls for it and then slow and steady when the stakes require it,” he said. “Our model isn’t designed to slow innovation down but to ensure we innovate responsibly and with impact.”
He emphasized that successful innovation efforts must start with clinicians and staff rather than being imposed on them.
“Our clinicians and staff are the starting point, not just the end users,” Dr. Kelly said. “We spend a lot of time upfront understanding the problems that are brought forward, not just reacting to proposed solutions.”
Many of Cottage Health’s innovation opportunities originate from frontline insights, he added, and the organization is focused on maintaining engagement by providing transparency, moving quickly on decisions and involving clinicians early in pilots.
“One of the things I’ve seen is that taking a long time to make a decision, especially when you’re not moving forward, can be more frustrating than making that decision quickly,” he said. “We’re trying to provide clarity and feedback in real time so ideas can continue to develop and progress.”
Cottage Health is building on an existing foundation of employee-driven innovation, including a shared governance program that has been in place for nearly 25 years and allows staff to propose improvements to workflows and operations. The new innovation center expands on that work with the potential to scale ideas more broadly.
Dr. Kelly, who brings more than 20 years of experience across healthcare, medtech and life sciences, most recently served as chief innovation officer at Inneo, formerly the Innovation Institute. He previously held roles at Cleveland Clinic, and City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., as well as Scripps Research Institute.
Looking ahead, he said success in the role will be defined less by the number of initiatives launched and more by the impact they deliver.
“It’s about generating wins and having tangible examples of how innovation works that you can build from,” Dr. Kelly said. “Ultimately, we want to be a trusted partner within the organization, not a gatekeeper, and support clinicians, staff and patients in meaningful ways.”
The post Cottage Health formalizes innovation with new leadership role appeared first on Becker's Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.
