Optimizing technology development and adoption in medical imaging using the principles of innovation diffusion, part I: theoretical, historical, and contemporary considerations.

The pioneering work performed in the social sciences on diffusion of innovation can be applied to medical imaging and shed valuable insights as to how innovation is analyzed and adopted within the population of end-users. Successful innovation must take into account unique stakeholder differences, changes in communication and social interactions, and shifting priorities in market economics. The dramatic changes currently underway in current medical imaging practice provides unique innovation opportunities to those individuals and companies which can utilize this knowledge and effect change in objective and reproducible means. Successful innovation should rely upon data-driven objective analysis, which can scientifically validate the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the innovation, when compared with the idea or technology it supercedes.