In the U.S., there is lots of investment in health care innovation—in new pharmaceuticals, new technologies, new service delivery models, and more. The innovation is fueled by significant investments by government, by publicly traded companies, and by venture capital/private equity firms (see Private Equity Investment In Health Care Technology Rises 22% In Q1 2025 and HHS Seeks To Accelerate AI Use For Health Care).

But the actual scaling and adoption of those innovations across the health system is a slow go. There is a much-noted 17-year lag in innovation adoption in health care—meaning it takes 17 years for a proven new innovation (an evidence-based practice, a medication, a technology) to reach half the consumers for whom it is most appropriate…