Innovative Action

Across the first two decades of the 21st century, it's been said that health care faces an innovation imperative, acknowledging the complex array of challenges, demands, and shortcomings that are continually faced in our health care system. At the same time, critics have argued that the field of health administration education has failed to effectively prepare its students to navigate these complexities, disrupt the status quo, and develop into the transformative leaders health care needs. Such concerns were directed at Trinity University's Health Care Administration (HCAD) program in 2014, when its Advisory Council challenged the faculty to thread innovation more intentionally throughout the HCAD curriculum. In response, the HCAD faculty worked closely with alumni, stakeholders, and the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to revise their course content and develop an integral HCAD experience fondly referred to as “Tiger Tank.”  

As a semester-long innovation journey, Tiger Tank guides students to develop innovative solutions to an array of challenging health care problems, ultimately culminating in students pitching their concepts in a manner similar to the popular television show, Shark Tank. The first Tiger Tank pitch competition was held in 2015; since then, the program has grown and gained interest from fellow health administration educators across the country. The external interest prompted Trinity University's HCAD program to develop the Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition in 2020 as an external-facing event, inviting and motivating other health administration graduate programs and their students to embark upon their own innovation journeys. 

Healthcare PRISm stands for "Healthcare Problems Require Innovative Solutions," and it likewise challenges graduate students to apply knowledge and behaviors that will prepare them to be disruptive forces of positive change and innovation from within the health care system. In contrast to typical graduate competitions that center upon a common case and heavily incentivize the perfected presentation of a specific strategy or analysis, the innovation journeys experienced through both Tiger Tank and the Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition encourage the exploration and validation of diverse problems that teams express passion for and individually select. This emphasizes the importance of iteration and experimentation to shift students' mindsets from a fear of failure to a bias for action, and embrace creative problem solving from a human-centered approach to guide students towards solutions that are feasible, viable, and desirable. In turn, both Tiger Tank and the Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition have gained national recognition as the type of valuable innovations that are desperately needed in health care management education, recently serving as the motivation for Trinity University's HCAD program to be recognized as the first-ever recipient of the prestigious CAHME/George and Regi Herzlinger Innovation Education Award in early 2022.

This past February, Trinity University's HCAD program wrapped up its second annual Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition, completing and celebrating a months-long innovation journey for health care administration graduate students from across the country. Beginning in August 2021, teams of 2 to 4 students embarked upon a process of identifying and validating a problem they were passionate about in health care, exploring and understanding that problem through empathy exercises and human-centered research, and crafting innovative solutions using design thinking principles and creative problem solving skills. 

Among a collection of initial concepts received in November 2021, 12 teams were invited to continue their innovation journey and further iterate their solutions through guided feedback and individualized coaching sessions with health care leaders. Those teams were then organized into four categorical groups—or brackets—in which they ultimately pitched their concepts virtually during the competition's "bracket round" on Feb. 3-4, 2022. This round consisted of four themed brackets with four teams in each bracket delivering their pitches, responding to judging panelists' questions, and workshopping their concepts with judging panelists to think about next steps. From each bracket emerged one "Best in Category" team: the Mobius team from Baylor University won the Equipping Healthcare Leaders bracket; the bAIby team from Saint Louis University won the Improving the Care Experience bracket; the MindConnect team from Saint Louis University won the Providing the Right Care bracket; and, the Cadence Pain Management team from the University of Minnesota won the Supporting Patients' Care Journey bracket. Those teams advanced and were encouraged to incorporate feedback from the bracket round to further iterate their concepts and pitches for the Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition Finals on Feb. 11, 2022, with the "Best in Show" prize ultimately awarded to the Cadence Pain Management team. 

More recently, the HCAD program just celebrated its eighth annual Tiger Tank journey at the end of April, with this year's impressive collection of solutions including truly innovative concepts addressing a wide array of health care problems, from health literacy to wayfinding, from mental and behavioral health support to care coordination, from patient intake to patient discharge. 

Throughout the history of Tiger Tank and the Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition, the HCAD program has depended upon the support, encouragement, and guidance from its alumni, students, and friends, including the Advisory Council and Trinity University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, led by Luis Martinez, Ph.D. Alumni who have been essential in developing Healthcare PRISm and Tiger Tank since its earliest days include Buzz White '04, M’06 and Jerold McDonald M'08. Additionally, Patrick Halinski M'11 has continuously taught design thinking principles to HCAD students since 2015, and Livia Istrate ‘04, M'16 has been a valued contributor to the Tiger Tank journey for numerous years as a consultant to student teams. This year's judging panelists and innovation coaches for the Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition and Tiger Tank involved numerous HCAD alumni, including Traci (Dodderer) Bentley ’00, M'02, LaKesha Brooks M'04, Matthew Cowley M'18, Ian Crawford M'21, Dylan Darden M'18, Garrett Dewbre M'21, Patrick Dwarica ‘14, M'16, Francisco Escobedo M'18, Katie Fiedler M'19, Patrick Figures ’09, M'11, Enrique Gallegos '06, Patrick Halinski M'11, Ashley Hixon M'00, Chelly Hubbell M'19, Sally Hurt-Deitch M'03, Livia Istrate ‘04, M'16, Andrew Jones M'17, Jerold McDonald M'08, Lindsey Nolan M'14, McKenzie Quinn ’15, M'19, Andre Storey M'12, Scott Sundell M'12, Mary Wey ’13, M'19, and Buzz White ‘04 M'06. Friends of the program who also served as judges included Heather Anderson (Stogo), Alex Maiersperger (SAS, Advancement League), Michelle Mudge-Riley (Physicians Helping Physicians), Kyle Robertson (Press Ganey Accelerators), Jamo Rubin (RightSite Health), Khang Vuong (Mira), and Mike Zucker (FetchMD).

Not content to rest upon the past successes of Tiger Tank and Healthcare PRISm, the HCAD program is eager to continually embrace its own innovation journey, further advancing and iterating these experiences each year to better equip the next generation of transformative health care leaders. We are incredibly grateful for the ceaseless efforts and support of the HCAD Family, who have made this innovation journey possible. Those who are interested in learning more about the Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition can visit the Healthcare PRISm website, where you can also view recordings of the past two Healthcare PRISm Pitch Competition finals.