Impressive innovation
This week in health IT it’s all about innovation. The Center for Connected Health held its annual symposium, Cleveland Clinic its Medical Innovation Summit and DreamIt Health Ventures had a demonstration day showcasing amazing uses of technology to achieve the triple aim.
Mobile health could transform healthcare but “only if we get it right,” said Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of the Center for Connected Health. The success of Instagram and Snapchat have a lot of entrepreneurs thinking that developing a health app is easy. The typical design strategy is giving people what they want but health apps attract fit, connected people, not the people who really need them.
“People who design the apps are stuck in a world where we think as long as we educate you, you’ll be inspired. We can’t confuse education with inspiration.”
At this point, mobile health might become just another tech bubble, he said. A lot of investment dollars are going into products that don’t work very well. “The bad news is no company has this right. The good news is some companies are doing some things right some of the time. We have to get this right and this has all to do with this engagement story.”
Cleveland Clinic announced its 9 th annual list of Top 10 Medical Innovations likely to have major impact on improving patient care in 2015. The No. 1 innovation is mobile stroke treatment unit. Very few eligible patients get tPA in time so mobile units can get that treatment to them faster.
“Now that we have effective treatments, the problem is really access,” said Peter Rasmussen, MD, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Cerebrovascular Center. “Current care delivery systems don’t match the biology. The brain begins to die at a much faster rate than we’re able to bring treatment to bear.” Portable CT scanners and better broadband now make mobile units cost-effective.
DreamIt Health Philadelphia’s demonstration day included everything from technology designed to reduce billing errors and help hospitals access compliance experts to 3D printing of organs. These start-ups and their enthusiastic founders represent the best of future technology.
I hope these stories inspired you as much as they did me.
Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.