Clinical Excellence
October 17, 2008
Innovation Learning Network Meets to Envision Future of Health Care
Dozens of health care innovation experts from around the United States gathered this week at the Kaiser Permanente Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center to brainstorm and create a vision of the future of health care.
The event was a semi-annual meeting of the Innovation Learning Network. Attendees included experts from Kaiser Permanente, Partners HealthCare, Alegent Health, Duke University, VHA Health Foundation, the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovation Technology and other health care organizations.
Using arts, crafts, building supplies and creative group-thinking, participants built the concepts, tools and gadgets for "CareAnywhere," what health care might look like 20 years from now. Innovators worked in small teams to act out skits, record and play videos and demonstrate prototypes of tools for CareAnywhere, which aims to give patients the ability to access their primary care anywhere the patients’ needs and desires might be: home, vacation, work, in transit.
"By sharing ingenuity and innovations among health care organizations, we are leveraging their collective design and innovation resources to push new thinking," said Chris McCarthy, Kaiser Permanente innovation specialist and director of the Innovation Learning Network, which is the nation's only self-organized, self-led, grass-roots organization that fosters collaboration to create innovations in health care. "Given the need for systems to transform health care, this is an excellent way to share knowledge about how to do it. And Kaiser Permanente is leading the way by working with other health care organizations to inspire design thinking in the health care world."
This gathering is one in an ongoing series of events that explore innovation at the Garfield Center, a state-of-the-art facility in which Kaiser Permanente nurses, doctors, members and innovators develop tools and programs that transform care delivery. More than 13,000 people have come through the Center's doors since it opened in June 2006.
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