“Adoption is the hardest barrier to healthcare innovation”

Voices from the Data2Value Executive Dialogue: Jorge Juan Fernández García, CIO, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona.

The question of where healthcare innovation most fundamentally breaks down does not have a simple answer. Jorge Juan Fernández García, CIO of Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, is candid about that. Funding, scaling, and adoption are not competing explanations – they are all necessary conditions. Remove any one of them and innovation stalls.

“Mindset changing is the most difficult thing.”

But when pressed to identify the single hardest barrier to change, his answer is unambiguous. Not because funding is unimportant or scaling is straightforward, but because changing the way people think is harder than changing the systems they work in.

“If I were to choose only one, I would choose adoption,” said Fernández García. Technology can be procured. Infrastructure can be built. But institutional mindsets – the assumptions, habits, and risk tolerances embedded in how healthcare organisations operate – do not change through investment alone. They change slowly, through leadership, trust, and sustained cultural effort.

For health systems serious about innovation, that is both the hardest truth and the most important one to confront. Because you can fund an idea and scale a platform. You cannot budget for a mindset shift.

Jorge Juan Fernández García is CIO of Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and a participant in the Data2Value Executive Dialogue, Copenhagen, May 18, 2026.