Innovative ideas in healthcare lead to more efficiency and better delivery of care, and hopefully improved outcomes. Many healthcare innovations have come from the work of scientists and researchers. These new ideas or techniques were reported in academic and medical journals; over time, they were incorporated into the actual practices of clinicians.

This time hospitals are launching innovation centres of their own to work with researchers and design thinkers to tackle the biggest challenges in  patient safety, health IT, healthcare costs, and access to care, according to an article in Becker's Hospital Review.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, for example, collaborated with an accelerator called Blueprint Health to open a dedicated innovation space last summer. The hospital's innovation centre is focused on developing health IT solutions. "The innovation centre has a team of information technologists from across all different facets of IT that focus on solutions in two main areas: patient engagement and provider collaboration," said Peter Fleischut, MD, chief innovation officer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

The tech-focused centre has organised a hackathon. It also recently sponsored a 10-week challenge calling for innovative solutions to enhance patient care and provider communication open to both the general public and hospital employees. The winning entry was a mobile application that facilitates care team communication and collaboration, patient clinical information search and exchange, and care team alerting.

Earlier this year, the New York City-based hospital also launched NYP Connect, a cross-campus mobile communication tool that securely and efficiently connects NewYork-Presbyterian staff members and providers to streamline patient care.

Since the concept is still gaining traction among hospitals, many innovation centres are only a few years old. A report published by The Commonwealth Fund in April 2015 showed that many innovation centres were launched in 2010 — the same year the Affordable Care Act was passed. Quite a few more centres have opened since then.

The average innovation centre annual budget is about $1.9 million, according to the Commonwealth Fund report. Many centres receive 75 percent to 100 percent of their budgets from their home institution, although funds may also come from foundations or government sources.

"To launch an innovation centre, you need to have a solid infrastructure," Dr. Fleischut pointed out. "You need to have an idea of how all the centre's activities are going to be aligned with each other and the culture of the institution, and what the centre's ultimate strategy is going to be."  He did not specify the exact cost of launching the innovation centre, which gets its funding from the parent institution.

Source: Becker's Hospital Review
Image credit: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital

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healthmanagement, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, health IT, innovation centres, medical innovations, hackathon Innovative ideas in healthcare lead to more efficiency and better delivery of care. Many healthcare innovations have come from the work of scientists and researchers. Now hospitals are launching innovation centres of their own to work with researchers to