Why the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics Matters at the Bedside: Innovation, Institutions, and Hospitalist Leadership.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt for their work on innovation-driven growth, offers an unexpectedly practical framework for hospital medicine. Their scholarship emphasizes that progress depends not only on technological advances, but also on institutions capable of implementing, governing, and adapting innovation in real operational settings. This perspective resonates with hospital medicine, a field born from institutional redesign and now facing a new inflection point driven by digital technology and artificial intelligence. Hospitalists are uniquely positioned to lead this transformation and ensure innovation strengthens, rather than fragments, inpatient care. We conclude with practical recommendations for hospitalists: building durable AI literacy grounded in how these systems work, guarding against deskilling and never-skilling across career stages, and institutionalizing governance and education.