“Usually you never put innovation and health care in one sentence, and we are challenging that,” says Nipun Dureja, VP of Engineering at Providence Digital Innovation group (DIG). We’re here to shake up the industry with disruptive technology in order to make healthcare accessible to all. Our focus is on innovating to simplify healthcare and push the industry forward. Here are several ways we foster an innovative culture.
Challenging and rewarding
Software engineers working in technology are often highly coveted. But with that can come a few tradeoffs. This can happen particularly with startups, which can require employees to compromise on work/life balance, forgo benefits available at other companies, and miss out on training and advancement opportunities found at other, more established employers. The culture at DIG feels like the good side of a startup and offers the best of both worlds—the exhilaration of an incubation organization paired with the resources and security of an industry leader. That’s why, when we recruit from the world of technology, many engineers opt to make the switch. We highly value our employees, offering competitive salaries and benefits—but we also offer something else: the ability to help improve lives through technology, and, potentially even save lives.
Providing time to innovate
According to Fast Company, back in 1944, 3M set up the first innovation lab, which it called the Products Fabrication Laboratory. It was designed for “lab technicians to dream big without constraints. The impact: 3M’s misfits of science invented such breakthroughs as surgical tape. Xerox PARC and Google X’s moonshot labs owe 3M a debt.”
At DIG, we don’t have an innovation lab—DIG is the innovation lab. We work as if we’re in a lab environment. According to Billy Jackson, Manager of Telehealth Solutions and Support, “We’re encouraged to experiment, try new things, understand the results and then put them in place. We’re allowed to break rules.”
Another way we encourage innovation is through regular hackathons that give employees free reign to work on code outside of their normal work activities. All employees are encouraged to have fun and experiment and bring with them their different perspectives and skills. One innovation that came out of giving employees the time, space and freedom to come up with new things the new “Find a physician” feature for patients in Seattle area. This feature uses technology to match patients with the right providers, based on things like location, specialty, gender, language and medical group. The tool makes finding a doctor as easy as locating and ordering at the local Starbucks.
Rewarding innovation
At DIG, rewarding innovation goes deeper than putting an employee’s name on a plaque. Often, the little things matter more when it comes to showing employees that creativity and inventive thinking is truly valued.
Innovation can be rewarded with a bonus, promotion or role expansion—or through a rewarding experience such as lunch with the CEO or a company-hosted outing for the employee and his/her team.
Healthcare is an industry desperately needing innovative creators, coders, thinkers. Healthcare technology is still in its infancy; however, with great work, comes great reward. “By hiring folks from different industries and companies, we ensure we bring an open mind towards pushing the envelope in healthcare,” says Dureja.
Are you down for the challenge? If so, check out our latest job openings >
