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HealthCare Cluster Overview

The Council’s HealthCare Idea Exchange comes together to examine how technology can contribute to improving quality and efficiencies in healthcare delivery through the development and implementation of emerging technologies. Participants come from payer and provider organizations, academic institutions, technology and service partners, regulators, and others.

The HealthCare Advisory Board meets on a regular basis and is open to member executives with direct experience/expertise in the healthcare industry. Each year, the group organizes a couple public breakfast briefings and a half dozen private member-only meetings where industry experts can build relationships and discuss the latest trends.These sessions provide valuable insight into the minds of technology buyers at the region’s leading healthcare organizations.

The barriers to delivering and adopting innovations in real-world health care settings are significant. Clinical environments are commonly demanding, fast-paced, and complex. That type of setting creates many challenges to innovation, including: simply finding the time and mental space to envision future needs; establishing partnerships with industry and academia; preserving momentum; and experimenting with potential innovations while maintaining day-to-day operations.

Three "of-the-future" learning laboratories will be featured in this event -- the MGH Operating Room of the Future, the BIDMC Emergency Room of the Future, and the MGH Ambulatory Practice of the Future. Clinicians from each setting will describe the clinical challenges of the environment. Industry colleagues will then describe emerging solutions that are driven by the needs of the user community. A lively, interactive discussion with audience participation will follow.

 

Recent HealthCare Cluster Events:

June 5, 2008: MassTLC HealthCare/IT Summit: Placing Bets: Top IT Vendors’ Healthcare Visions and Investments

On June 5, 2008 the Mass Technology Leadership Council convened thought leaders from the IT community to discuss their investments and vision for the healthcare IT market (Placing Bets: Top IT Vendors' Healthcare Visions and Investments). Also included in the discussion were healthcare CIOs (IT buyers) and patients who provided important perspectives on these investments. Below is an excerpt from one of the panelists Dave deBronkart aka “ePatient Dave”.

Ever started to use a new piece of software, and quickly concluded that it was designed by some dork in a conference room who didn’t bother to go out and talk to live humans? That’s what I do not want to have happen with the next wave of healthcare IT.

But look what it says on our own MassTLC Cluster page: “Participants come from payer and provider organizations, academic institutions, technology and service partners, regulators, and others.” If we diagrammed this as an ecosystem, patients wouldn’t even show up. The same is happening on well-meaning committees like CCHIT: not a single patient on the roster.

What’s it to me? In January 2007 a routine shoulder x-ray revealed kidney cancer that had spread throughout both lungs and several bones. Median survival time: 24 weeks. Want rapid motivation? Try that: I learned a lot, fast. Yet even while we focused intensely on treatment, I was acutely aware of what met my needs and what didn’t, and where The Dork had clearly been at work.

The business problem is that with Web 2.0, consumers are becoming producers of value in this ecosystem, and if we keep leaving them out, we’ll keep missing the mark. And it won’t just have a business impact – it’s personal: Your time is coming too. Whether it’s yourself, your children, your parents or friends, a health crisis is in your future, and you want the next systems to work well.

What can we do about it? That’s why I blog.

 

March 5, 2008: Patient, Heal Thyself: How to Succeed with Online Consumer Health Sites

For more informationa about the Cluster, please contact Ian McGuinness, ian@masstlc.org

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