The U.S. healthcare business wastes $750 billion a year -- that’s 30 cents of every dollar spent. Inefficient operations were a significant contributor to that waste.
Healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente operates 37 hospitals with over 160,000 employees. To figure out how to save money and reduce medical errors, they’ve opened a fake hospital and made it a testing ground for new solutions. Technology Review reports.
Most of the research that goes on at the 37,000-square-foot Garfield Innovation Center in San Leandro, California, is focused on testing out new technologies.
It features detailed replicas of hospital rooms with fake patient data loaded onto the bedside computer, a surgical theater with the instruments laid out ready for use, even an ICU with a plastic baby in an incubator.
Ideas about what to test can come from the team of social scientists circulating around hospitals looking for workflow problems. Ideas might also come from technology salespeople, who are asked to install their robotic indoor GPS system or interactive patient information board, for example, in the mock wards of the Garfield center.
Kaiser surgeons, nurses, and janitors come to the center to brainstorm and role-play their everyday jobs. Their feedback helps determine what sorts of equipment the organization buys. Some ideas being deployed:
Image: Garfield Innovation Center
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com