As especificidades do sistema de inovação do setor saúde

Abstract

Introduction: According to Dr. José Dínio Vaz Mendes, encouraging technological and management innovation in both public and private institutions (profitable or not) has become essential for survival amidst profound and rapid changes in environmental, socio-cultural, and economic scenarios, especially during crises like the one faced by Brazil. These changes reflect in the internal culture of organizations and their outcomes can impact people's lives, whether they are clients, patients, or citizens. In the healthcare sector, where product quality is paramount, innovation becomes indispensable alongside productivity and cost-effectiveness (serving the highest number of clients/patients with limited resources), which must be achieved through sound scientific foundations and specific management practices. Healthcare companies must be incentivized to pursue operational and economic results based on these concepts, with immediate and social product measures. Best practices ensure advantages for products placed on the market, satisfying the effective use of resources and improving citizen health conditions. Physical and organizational areas, particularly those facing new operational specifications, technologically advanced due to innovation, are regulated by special legislation. The entrance door becomes the outpatient clinic (or primary health care in the public sector) and emergency services; complementary services function as an assembly line providing diagnostic precision; clinical-surgical hospitalization with beds for acute and severe patients maintains different spaces for invasive procedures and intensive therapies; and infrastructure, without direct patient contact, provides support for other areas. Additional space for research, teaching, and activities beyond the healthcare sector, such as home care and bioengineering, has specific cultures that require new healthcare management strategies. Objective: Explore the unique characteristics of the innovation system in the healthcare sector, emphasizing its peculiarities in terms of research, development, regulation, and delivery. Methodology: This work presents a qualitative literature review, selecting articles based on the theme to be developed, aiming to provide a perspective on the specialties of the healthcare sector's innovation system. The Periodico Saúde platform was used for constructing this study. Results and Discussions: Healthcare managers should identify the causes of inadequate functioning in the basic health network, which drives patients (and professionals) away and directs them to already congested emergency rooms in major hospitals, especially teaching hospitals, where they expect to receive the best care. Introducing technological and management innovations that improve healthcare professionals' adherence to these units (such as telemedicine, remote reference unit support) is essential to ensure they can perform their duties safely and with motivation to provide quality-based care, productivity, and cost-effectiveness without waste. In healthcare, there are 12,423 possible clinical diagnoses based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10); procedures (consultations, treatments) listed in the Unified Table of SUS Procedures include 1,515 high-complexity procedures, 2,289 medium-complexity procedures, and 113 in primary care. Healthcare is the industry with the greatest variety of products, nearly 4,000, demanding knowledge, method, technique, standardization, and team training for production. Innovation allows for more accurate and faster diagnoses. The complementary area of diagnostics and therapy includes over three dozen sub-areas (e.g., magnetic resonance, hemodynamics, and other imaging tests, clinical laboratories with over 3,000 types of exams), demanding precision, safety, and in some cases, higher costs. Conclusion: Therefore, innovation is the solution, a source of new opportunities to improve population health conditions and working conditions. However, innovation alone does not work miracles; it requires effective and efficient healthcare management, combatting bureaucracy, and preparing for a new institutional culture and administrative structure to embrace it.