Technology is transforming healthcare. While patients drown in a sea of online information – not all of it accurate – the healthcare industry is struggling to adapt.

For a global pharmaceutical company like AstraZeneca, the challenge isn’t just working out how to keep up – it’s how to harness the full potential of technology to actively improve patients’ lives.

We realised that this requires a genuinely new mindset. So we've created a transformative new approach that helps AstraZeneca take advantage of technology’s true potential.

The Digital Innovation Group (DIG) is dedicated to the creation and delivery of digital solutions to some of the biggest problems in healthcare. It works at a pace that a traditional organisation simply can’t match.

We've fused the lean, experimental approach of the best digital services with some of the brightest minds in healthcare, and set them to work on problems that – if solved – will make a real difference to society. Small teams have full freedom to rapidly prototype and test genuinely new ideas.

In just six months, DIG’s pace and appetite for innovation is already yielding promising results – with four of our ideas attracting further investment to bring them to market.

DIG’s innovative process begins with a Theme Day, held every seven weeks. Here, we collaborate with notable experts in healthcare, technology and beyond to unpack a big healthcare challenge.

So far, we've looked at areas as varied as ongoing medical training, disease management, and the unique problems faced within Chinese healthcare.

Suitably inspired, DIG divides into small, multi-disciplined teams. Each one has three weeks to further explore the challenge and propose a solution; no limits are placed on the form it might take.

If a team’s idea seems worthwhile at this point, it gets another six weeks to develop it more fully. If not, the knowledge gained is harvested for future challenges.

Ideas that make it through are pitched in prototype form to wider stakeholders within AstraZeneca. They decide whether to fund the development required to bring it to market.

It’s a swift process that delivers real results.

In DIG’s first six months, AstraZeneca has already invested in four programmes to take to market.

For the Chinese challenge, we’re now testing and developing a proposed service to connect doctors via their patients. By encouraging Chinese HCPs to develop more supportive relationships, it reduces the pressure on top doctors and increases skills and confidence among more junior HCPs.

Two other DIG products aim to bridge the gap between scientific theory and medical practice. Tempus is an iPad application, designed to help HCPs get more value from the content presented at medical conferences. DoctorsNotes is a browser plugin, which makes it easier for medical professionals to annotate their medical reading and build relationships with peers.

Now we’re turning our attention to patients, with Breathe.Able. This is a service for sufferers of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), combining wearable technology with timely messaging to help them understand and manage their condition.