Innovation Day 2012: a Time To Inform and Inspire

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February 2, 2012
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Innovation Day 2012: a Time To Inform and Inspire

See 17 TED MED-style talks on Children's Hospital Boston's latest devices, technologies, and clinical innovations

BOSTON, Feb. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On February 14 from 1 to 5 p.m., Children's Hospital Boston, will hosts its first "Innovation Day." In a series of 17 short sessions, cutting-edge approaches to improving care delivery and quality while lowering costs will be presented by the innovative leaders at Children's Hospital Boston.

The event is sponsored by the Innovation Acceleration Program (IAP), an 18-month-old program at Children's Hospital Boston charged with building resources to support the innovation process and removing obstacles to hospital-based innovation.  The IAP is led by Chief Innovation Officer Naomi Fried, PhD. "Our group focuses on enhancing the culture of innovation that thrives at Children's. We support a wonderful community of innovators with funding, software development and advice," says Fried. "Children's innovative environment coupled with strategic support of innovation has resulted in some outstanding contributions to medicine and science."

Innovation Day is an opportunity to witness first-hand innovative ideas being turned into products, technologies and new care delivery models to improve the care of children. Some examples:

    --  Peter Laussen, MBBS, is revolutionizing real-time data to catch critical
        care crises before they happen. His T3 project aims to develop a
        scalable and portable visualization and intelligent early warning system
        to prospectively track the clinical course and trajectory of critically
        ill patients, and allow critical care clinicians to move from
        prescriptive and intuitive decision making to one that is predictive and
        analytic.
    --  Eric Fleegler, MD, MPH, and Eugenia Chan, MD, MPH, have developed a
        web-based program designed to capture in real time how a child with a
        chronic condition responds to medications when he is away from hospital.
        The Integrated Clinical Information Sharing System (ICISS) is a
        monitoring and management system that gathers real time (rather than
        recounted by parents weeks later) information from patients, parents,
        teachers and others care takers to monitor a child's health and
        functional outcomes so clinicians can accurately assess and adjust
        medication regimens. Its goal is to improve care coordination, decrease
        unnecessary healthcare utilization, enhance clinical decision-making and
        identify variations in care for defined patient populations.
    --  "Think Pediatrics" is a cloud-based teaching platform designed by Jeff
        Burns, MD, MPH, and Traci Wollbrink, MD, MPH, to aid and support
        clinicians around the world. By harnessing the global reach of the
        Internet, the latest knowledge can be shared instantly, providing
        clinicians with life-saving information anywhere at any time.
        "Pediatrics without Walls" is a comprehensive, continuously updated, and
        peer-reviewed knowledge exchange platform dedicated to providing
        multimedia and interactive teaching for physicians and nurses who are
        caring for critically ill children. Developed in collaboration with IBM,
        the March 2012 beta launch will include 1,000 users in hospitals across
        six continents.
    --  Thanks to the "Back to Sleep" campaign, babies are spending more time on
        their backs, causing their skulls to flatten, a condition known as
        plagiocephaly. But not every child needs to be evaluated by a neuro- or
        craniofacial surgeon. A web-based program, designed by neurosurgeon
        Joseph Madsen, MD, helps determine if a child can be referred to the
        Children's brace shop for a plagiocephaly helmet. In consultation with
        pediatricians, parents use cell phones and digital cameras as diagnostic
        aids and send their photos to a website for Children's experts to
        review. This telemedicine solution is enhancing efficiency, lowering
        specialty consult costs and saving parents time and needless worry.
    --  Delivering much-needed oxygen to the bloodstream during critical times,
        such as asphyxia, cardiac arrest and hemorrhagic shock can be very
        challenging. John Kheir, MD, has developed an oxygen micro-bubble foam
        that can be injected directly into the bloodstream, delivering
        lifesaving oxygen when and where it is most needed.
    --  Developed by John Brownstein, PhD, HealthMap is an online resource
        utilizing informal sources (e.g., newspaper articles, eyewitness
        reports, expert-curated discussions and validated official reports) for
        disease outbreak monitoring and real-time surveillance of emerging
        public health threats. Through a website (http://healthmap.org) and
        mobile app ('Outbreaks Near Me'), HealthMap delivers real-time
        information on a broad range of infectious disease outbreaks.  The
        system publishes online information about emerging diseases in nine
        languages, providing a view of the current global state of infectious
        diseases and their effect on health and facilitating early detection of
        global public health threats (e.g. H1N1 influenza).
    --  Hiep T. Nguyen, MD, and his team is developing an implantable device for
        more effective dialysis, calling it "Holly I." The device functions as
        an "artificial kidney" with the benefits of both hemodialysis and
        peritoneal dialysis.
    --  Eye drops often provide quick relief to patients suffering from minor
        eye problems such as redness, itching and dryness, but much of the dose
        isn't absorbed. Doctors have found that drops do not work very well for
        more serious chronic conditions such as glaucoma. Prototype multilayer
        lenses, developed by Dan Kohane, MD, PhD, are a form of a contact lens
        that sandwiches medicine between two layers of polymer film and
        administers large doses of medication at constant rates over extended
        period.
    --  An invention called BEAPPER (Bidirectional Electronic Alert
        Patient-Centered Provider Encounter Record) developed by Debra Weiner,
        MD, PhD, is an iTouch/iPhone app designed to track a patient's progress
        through the Emergency Department (ED).  Coordinated care requires that
        every member of busy multidisciplinary medical teams has access to
        timely information about their patients' test results, imaging studies
        and specialty consults so they can make expedient care decisions.
        BEAPPER facilitates communication between emergency department providers
        about shared patients and provides clinician support resources,
        improving care delivery, parent satisfaction, and ED through put.
    --  Pierre DuPont, PhD, is developing new robotic technologies and surgical
        tools to convert intra-cardiac repairs to percutaneous, beating-heart
        intervention. The innovation behind this technology enables the
        fabrication of tools with design features that cannot be achieved by any
        other manufacturing process. While developed for intra-cardiac surgery,
        both the robotic platform and the tools are applicable to many other
        types of surgery including neurosurgery, urology and orthopedics.
The event will be held in the Folkman Auditorium, Enders Pediatric Research Laboratories, Children's Hospital Boston, at 320 Longwood Avenue, Boston, Mass.  The event will also be live streamed here.  Please call the telephone number above or email for free parking information.

Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children's Hospital Boston has been ranked as one of the nation's best pediatric hospitals by U.S.News & World Report for the past 21 years. Children's is the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest provider of health care to Massachusetts children. In addition to 395 pediatric and adolescent inpatient beds and 228 outpatient programs, Children's houses the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries benefit both children and adults. More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children's research community. For more information about the hospital visit: http://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.

CONTACT:Rob Graham617-919-3110rob.graham@childrens.harvard.edu

SOURCE  Children's Hospital Boston

Children's Hospital Boston

Web Site: http://www.childrenshospital.org/

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