Opening keynote: Healthcare’s ‘Blockbuster Moment’—Innovation, Disruption, and the Future of Nursing

Editor’s Note

Healthcare can’t afford to “rewind,” said Dan Weberg, PhD, MHI, RN, FAAN, executive director of nursing workforce development and innovation at Kaiser Permanente, during his opening keynote on leading and embracing innovation in healthcare. According to Dr Weberg, healthcare’s “blockbuster moment” has arrived, and leaders must choose to evolve or risk irrelevance.

The story of Blockbuster’s downfall offers a stark warning, he said. Once boasting 9,000 stores in the US, Blockbuster doubled down on its outdated model instead of adapting to Netflix and Redbox. “If the worst part of your experience is making you the most money, you have a problem,” he joked, speaking of the late fees that generated revenue for the company but also offered an awful user experience. Like Blockbuster, healthcare organizations often cling to tradition instead of experimenting with new ideas. “We can’t rewind,” he said, warning against romanticizing the past. “We can’t go back to pre-COVID. Most people don’t realize that burnout was already at 56% then.”

To further illustrate, Dr Weberg presented findings from a 2023 study he co-authored:

• 50% of nurses reported worsening health
• 66% reported depression or anxiety symptoms
• Respondents said at least 50% of their time is spent documenting.

Three forces are disrupting healthcare, according to Dr Weberg: education, workforce, and technology. Traditional education models are outdated, he said, noting that “faculty need to be context experts, not content experts,” because knowledge is freely accessible online. The workforce, too, is evolving toward flexibility. “The F-word in nursing is ‘floating,’” he quipped, but argued that true flexibility means matching skill to patient need rather than staffing to room numbers. Finally, technology—especially artificial intelligence (AI)—is changing how care is delivered. “AI isn’t replacing nurses,” he said, emphasizing the point by showing different examples of how badly AI-created graphics portrayed certain scenarios. Comparing it to a seasoned nurse offering advice to a new graduate, he said both technology and human can be biased and imperfect, but both can inform clinical judgment when used wisely.

To navigate disruption, Weberg outlined three rules for leading innovation:

1. “You don’t need to be an innovator to lead innovation,” he said. Innovation is not about having the idea, but about building the environment where ideas can grow. He contrasted innovation with performance improvement, describing the latter as optimizing what is known, while the former is exploring what is possible.
2. Build innovation capacity. “Innovation is cultural—you can’t copy it from another organization,” he said. Hospitals that simply replicate hackathons or “post-it note parties” miss the point. Instead, leaders must develop psychological safety so staff feel free to share ideas and know how innovation works.
3. Lead deviation. Innovation requires bending outdated rules, such as restricting mobile device use or relying on paper-based annual education. He pointed to virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) as emerging tools for OR training, saying, “If you haven’t started exploring VR as a training method, you’re already behind.”

Dr Weberg also described the innovation process in three phases—inspire, ideate, and impact—a structured approach to developing and scaling solutions. Inspiration begins with evidence and user input to frame “How might we…” opportunities. Ideation involves prototyping quickly and cheaply. Impact means setting clear criteria for whether an innovation succeeds or fails to avoid what he called “pilotitis,” when organizations “pilot everything and spread nothing.”

He urged nurses to seize the moment. “Crisis is the perfect time to innovate,” he said, adding that new nurse-led companies and venture funds are already reshaping the field with practical inventions. “You don’t need to love technology. You just need to responsibly lead the people who do.”