Innovation Stewardship: The Kaiser Garfield Innovation Center

08 Jan Innovation Stewardship: The Kaiser Garfield Innovation Center

Steward (stū‘ərd) n.

1. One who manages another’s property, finances, or other affairs.
2. One who is in charge of the household affairs of a large estate, club, hotel, or resort.
3. An official who supervises or helps to manage an event.

I have written a few notes (here and here) regarding Kaiser Permanente (KP), including their continuing rise to lead the next wave of health care organizations creatively adopting and successfully implementing disruptive innovations. They have all the requisite features of disruption – the adoption of technology enablers, new business models of care, and due to their vertical integration value networks that reinforce one another through virtuous cycles.

While KP is clearly not perfect, the scale and scope of KP is now allowing them to do things that acclerate their push to leadership with a primary example being the The Garfield Innovation Center. As soon as I heard about this concept I have been figuring out how to get a first hand look at exactly what they are doing. I am thankful to my  friends at KP (shout out to Holly Potter, Ted Eytan, and Anna-Lisa Silvestre) for giving me an opportunity to experience a test drive in an exclusive setting on February 4, 2009.

Here is what is on tap for the day:

• A general tour of the first of a kind center that brings together technology, architecture, workflow and frontline nurses, doctors and patients to spawn innovation and successful failures. The center is used as a living lab to brainstorm, test tools, and implement programs for patient-centered care in a mock hospital, clinic, office and home environment. The center is infused with innovation inspired from  Cisco Systems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and others to leverage collective design and innovation resources to push new thinking.
• A presentation from Intel’s Digital Health Group showcasing their latest technology prototypes designed for physicians, nurses, and members.
• A demo by a KP physician on how they are using KP HealthConnect (Epic Systems) to intelligently enhance interactions between physicians, nurses, and patients via the the world’s largest civilian electronic health record.
• A physician and IT expert from KP’s Innovation & Advanced Technology Group demo how they evaluate new technology and assess features/function/performance in the Garfield Center as part of a 3-5 year forward looking implementation perspective. Currente projecs include touch/surface computing, advanced robotics, telehealth and remote monitoring, the connected medical home, and health gaming with the Nintendo Wii.
• A KParchitect shows how they use human-centered design with health care providers to prototype the “Micro Clinic”, a new kind of technology-driven clinic being developed.
• The lead researcher of our  Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health (RPGEH), describes how KP creating the world’s largest genetic biobank (500,000 samples) to study everything from bipolar depression to breast cancer to personalized pharmacology.
• The Director of Research explains how KP researchers utilize HealthConnect to conduct cutting-edge medical and scientific research
• One of our innovation experts provides a case study of how human design and workflow concepts can dramatically improve improve medication administration / error reduction using a simple system being implemented throughout KP and other US based health systems.
• Environmental Stewardship Officer (you have got to love that title!) shows how KP is leading the industry to create greener health care environments by removing potentially toxic materials and focusing on energy saving design

Again, the scale of KP creates a pretty big canvas from which to paint. More impressive to me, however, is the organizational commitment to pushing the boundaries by dabbling in all the colors of the innovation rainbow in creating a next generation health care masterpiece. KP’s leadership, or stewardship,  over its potential catalyzing role in this transformation continues to impress.