Healthcare Excellence is a Global Phenomenon

Change can be uncomfortable, and yet, it is essential for growth. Healthcare excellence requires growth and the pursuit of more effective, safe, people-centered, equitable, timely, integrated, and efficient care. Healthcare teams with recognition through the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence award program have consistently and intrinsically risen above these challenges, choosing “change” over “comfort,” for the betterment of healthcare overall. Winning teams associated with the 2025 UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence award program were recently announced (Fig. 1). The 9 newest teams span 7 countries (China, France, Iceland, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, and the United States), including 2 unique country additions to the previously recognized conglomeration of winner alumni. New country representation accounts for 29% of recognized sites in 2025. This trend is not unlike the past 3 years in which 30% to 33% of recognized sites involve health systems in countries new to UNIVANTS. Thus, UNIVANTS alumni now include over 422 innovators across 85 teams in 31 or more countries over 6 years. 2025 UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence award winners. Not unlike the name of the award implies, every winner alumnus associated with the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence program has (a) unified across disciplines (i.e., embodied teamwork in demonstrative ways) and has (b) applied avant-garde thinking to traditional challenges, maximizing insights from laboratory medicine to achieve measurably better outcomes for patients, payors, clinicians, and health systems (1). The 2025 award-winning teams tackled common themes, including timely identification of previously unknown infectious disease (hepatitis C and syphilis), timely triage and enhanced efficiencies within emergency departments, and timely personalized approaches for enhanced clinical care pathways in patients at risk of and/or suffering from diverse disease (chronic kidney disease, hepatocellular carcinoma, and H. pylori). Another focus of one 2025 best practice was reduced anticoagulation variability in patients taking warfarin (2). As healthcare excellence is a global phenomenon, it has been rewarding to appreciate that the recognized best practices associated with the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence program in 2025, and since its inception in 2018, have been geographically diverse. With that said, 3 countries (China, England, and the United States) have had sustained recognition through the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence award program for at least 5 of the 6 years. Interestingly, these countries (and all countries associated with recognition through the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence program) have only marginal overlap (35.5% to 41.9%) with the top 30 countries that are most commonly cited for healthcare excellence (3–5). This underscores the importance of continual improvement, and a leading premise associated with recognition from the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence program, which is that submitted best practices must involve measurable improvements in the form of key performance indicators when compared to existing processes, and not necessarily a gold standard. All best practices with recognition through the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence award program, however, must be implemented into clinical practice with a measurable benefit to patients, payors, clinicians, and health systems. The scoring rubric is multifactorial with at least 7 judge assessments per application spanning the following 7 organizations: International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC), Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM), European Health Management Association (EHMA), Modern Healthcare, Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), National Association of Healthcare Quality (NAHQ), and the Institute of Health Economics (IHE). While Abbott funds and founded this prestigious and highly coveted healthcare honor, it has no role in the scoring process (1). For more details about the 2025 winning teams and/or to learn more about the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence awards, partners or more, visit www.UnivantsHCE.com. Author Contributions: The corresponding author takes full responsibility that all authors on this publication have met the following required criteria of eligibility for authorship: (a) significant contributions to the conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (b) drafting or revising the article for intellectual content; (c) final approval of the published article; and (d) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the article thus ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the article are appropriately investigated and resolved. Nobody who qualifies for authorship has been omitted from the list. Melissa Ryan (Data curation-Equal, Formal analysis-Equal), Colleen Strain (Conceptualization-Equal, Data curation-Equal, Formal analysis-Equal), and Tricia Ravalico (Conceptualization-Equal, Data curation-Equal, Formal analysis-Equal) Authors’ Disclosures or Potential Conflicts of Interest: Upon manuscript submission, all authors completed the author disclosure form. Research Funding: None declared. Disclosures: C. Strain receives a salary from Abbott Diagnostics and holds relevant stocks, and serves as the Corporate Representative to the IFCC Communications and Publications Division. M. Ryan receives a salary from Abbott Diagnostics and holds relevant stocks. T. Ravalico receives a salary from Abbott Diagnostics and holds relevant stocks, serves on the ADLM Corporate Advisory Board, and is the Corporate Representative to the IFCC Executive Board and a member of the IFCC-TF Corporate Members.

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