Breaking the Mold in Vascular Access: Why Healthcare Needs a Gut Check
I’m over the “innovation” talk in healthcare. Really. We’re all so busy positioning ourselves as the next big tech company with our “custom AI” projects, yet CLABSIs—central line-associated bloodstream infections—still run rampant across the country. Every professional I’ve met in healthcare has this bizarre inertia: they’re quick to ask but excruciatingly slow to spend, like they’re clinging to the hope that maybe if they wait just long enough, their problems will solve themselves. Spoiler alert: they won’t.
Let’s call it what it is. The healthcare system—especially in vascular access—is resistant, slow, and more comfortable hiding behind research than actually doing the work to make change. And for what? To be on one more academic paper about hemolysis in goats or a novel “non-inferiority” study that accomplishes exactly nothing? If you ask me, that’s not progress. That’s just bureaucratic masturbation.
Healthcare’s Hype Obsession: AI Without Direction
Now don’t get me wrong. I believe in tech. Hell, I’m building technology myself because I genuinely believe in its potential. But the way healthcare fetishizes tech is downright laughable. We’re so busy trying to add an AI module to every minor task, thinking we’re on the brink of some groundbreaking discovery. Yet nobody’s stopping to ask: does this actually do anything?
We’ve seen this story before. Excel transformed data handling in the 90s. And now, with language models and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), we have tools that could streamline the way information flows in healthcare. We could reduce redundancies, cut back on misinformation, maybe even start solving real problems. But no, we’re too busy focusing on buzzwords, trying to build “proprietary solutions” with no real objective other than being able to say, “Yes, we have AI.”
Let’s be clear: if you’re using AI because everyone else is, that’s not innovation. That’s herd mentality. And it’s one of the biggest reasons why healthcare innovation fails before it even gets off the ground. Don’t expect tech to be a savior if you’re not even clear on what it’s saving.
Stop Worshipping Obstacles: Move Fast and Fail Forward
The phrase “fail forward” gets tossed around a lot these days, but the truth is, we’re still too scared to fail—especially in healthcare. Everyone’s so careful, so cautious. We’d rather watch issues like CLABSI spread because no one’s willing to take a risk, maybe test out an unproven solution, iterate, and make improvements over time. The goal isn’t to be perfect on the first try; the goal is to be better today than we were yesterday.
We seem to forget that failure is a given in any real innovation. You’re going to mess up; I’m going to mess up; everyone is going to mess up. The difference between success and stagnation is in who can keep moving despite the failure. Sitting around and thinking about what could go wrong is paralyzing, and it’s exactly why healthcare remains this behemoth of red tape and sloth. At some point, you have to get off your ass, put something out there, and fix it as you go. That’s how everything that has ever improved actually improved.
Genuine Innovation Isn’t Safe—And That’s the Point
Think about any real leap forward in history. Did it happen because everyone sat around a conference table playing it safe? No. It happened because someone got sick of waiting, someone got pissed off enough to do something radical. But in healthcare, genuine innovation is treated like it’s too dangerous, like we should stick to what we know—even if it doesn’t work.
That’s where I see the issue: the people in charge of making change are the same people who are perfectly content with things staying the same. These people are more interested in protecting the system than in challenging it. They’d rather publish a paper on an obscure aspect of vascular access that’ll impress their peers at the next conference than actually reduce infection rates. Innovation is for the brave, for the impatient, for the people willing to look at a wall and think, “Screw it. I’m going through.”
Healthcare needs a gut check—a reminder that it’s here for people, not protocols. If something isn’t working, we don’t need another five-year study to tell us that. We need to act, and we need to be willing to fail publicly, fail loudly, and then get right back to work.
The “Next Big Thing” Mentality is a Smokescreen
It’s not the obsession with AI and fancy tech. It’s the obsession with being the “next big thing,” with trying to make some grand, sweeping change like handling a merger between two hospital networks when we can’t even get the basics right. Vascular access, for instance—why are we still struggling with outdated practices that don’t work? Why are infection rates still a problem? Why are we pretending like these issues need revolutionary solutions when we haven’t even mastered the basic, effective protocols? Some of these nurses are learning more on TikTok than they are from their own organization.
The answer is simple: we’re more interested in looking good than in actually being good. So here we are, one healthcare startup after another claiming to be “disruptive” while taking on absolutely zero risk. We’re just riding the coattails of the last buzzword, too scared to step outside the line.
You can’t claim you’re “changing the industry” if you’re unwilling to make waves. Real change is disruptive, uncomfortable, and yeah—it’s going to piss some people off. But if you’re not ready to upset a few people along the way, what are you even doing here?
Break the Mold: Healthcare Doesn’t Have Time to Play It Safe
At the end of the day, healthcare is too important to us to be this slow to move. Patients are too important to be pushed aside in favor of keeping things comfortable and familiar. If you’re in a position to make change, you have a responsibility to do it now, not five years from now. And you need to be ready to fail, to mess it up, and to keep moving anyway.
So what’s it going to be? Are we going to keep tiptoeing around, hiding behind academic papers and committees, or are we actually going to do the work? Are we going to let the obstacles stop us, or are we going to bulldoze right through them?
If you’re not here to break the mold, to try something different, to screw up, and to keep pushing forward, then maybe healthcare isn’t the right field for you. Because this industry doesn’t have time for hesitation anymore. We need risk-takers, rule-breakers, and people who don’t care if their name’s on the paper—as long as the patient gets what they need.