Patient Experience Lab: Innovation in Life-or-Death Terms
How do you create innovation for a completely unpredictable environment? That is the core question in the new project in the Patient Experience Lab, the Trauma Bay of the Future. Over the summer of 2007, the Business Innovation Factory, Item New Product Development, the University Emergency Medicine Foundation (UEMF), and Rhode Island Hospital are rethinking and re-imagining the trauma, or resuscitation bay in the Emergency department.
Who are all those organizations, and what is a resuscitation bay? Shortest answer first. A trauma, or resuscitation bay, is the room in the emergency department where the most critical patients are treated. From gunshots to car crashes, seizures to overdoses, doctors and nurses must assess and treat at the top of their game, when time is literally of the essence. As a result of having to deal with anything, the bay is filled with everything. Tools, supplies, medical equipment, computers. And lots of people - doctors, nurses, technicians, specialists, family members, and a patient at the center.
No one doubts that the ER docs in the trauma bay do a tough job amazingly well. So how do you make great better? Well, its starts with the trauma bay environment, and that’s where the partner organizations in this project come together. Item is an industrial design firm with a 20-year history of groundbreaking design solutions, with a special strength in medical equipment, and a knack for seeing the whole puzzle, not just the pieces. UEMF is the group of emergency room doctors that serves in the busiest emergency departments in Rhode Island, and drives emergency care research and teaching at The Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. Rhode Island Hospital is the flagship hospital of Lifespan, and home to the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Southern New England. It’s the biggest, the busiest, and the most advanced. And BIF is a neutral platform for big-win innovation, a network of resources and communication channels with an emphasis on real world experimentation.
This is a group of partners with a divergent set of experiences and viewpoints - ideal because divergence drives innovation. However, the common thread across the partners is a grounded sense of the importance of place and customer experience in creating big-win change. Our goal over the next 12 weeks is to create a new vision of this life-saving space - a redesigned environment where doctors and nurses, and the equipment and technology they rely on, work seamlessly to relieve the pain and suffering of patients and their families.
Join us as our embedded reporter creates a unique window into the process of system innovation, through weekly blogs and slideshows. We will enable the extended innovation community to not only see the result, but also gain insight into how you get there.
Posted July 10, 2007 12:00 PM by Allan Tear | Permalink
