Visiting the Sidney Garfield Innovation Centre - January 17, 2012

I joined another 12 people for a tour of the famous Sidney Garfield Innovation Centre in Oakland, California. Housed in a warehouse in the airport district, the Centre provides space in which the Kaiser Permanente healthcare group brings together ideas, clinical and technological expertise to develop and trial everything from new work practices to new devices to new physical environments. They have a number of workspaces set up - a ward, an operating theatre, a set of clinic spaces, the home and a large space that can be turned into anything required.
They demonstrated the current technologies under development and/or evaluation - exciting ideas such as using the XBox Kinect technology to allow scrubbed surgeons to use gestures to look up information, or to control equipment, facial recognition for logging into hospital information systems (it took 3 seconds!) and a very cool robot that delivered supplies aound the hospital, saying "Excuse me" if it detected an obstruction! Some of the equally useful, but less flashy, innovations included the development of modular ward walls that incorporated all the required services (medical gases, suction, etc) and could be put up quickly. All the switches and wall mounts were mounted vertically so they were easily accessible. There was "telepresence' in every room, supporting all sorts of communication including allowing parents to observe their babies in NICU from home, consultations at a distance, and an interactive screen for patients to do everything from ordering their meals to seeing their medical record, learning from hotels where guests can order food, check services etc on their TV screen. There was a new device they were trialling that contained an accelerometer to detect patients moving out of their beds so that nurses could respond quickly and prevent falls.
I loved the new approach taken by Kaiser in establishing clinics connected to shopping malls, where patients check-in using a self-check in like most airlines now have.
The home environment was also fascinating, where they're looking at how smart appliances can support healthy living.
Much of their work is using the iPad as a platform. They're currently working with a number of different companies but the ubiquity of and ease of app development for the iPad means that it can't be ignored. The main issues they've identified are the need to be able clean the surface, and the poor ergonomics of the iPad for use carrying around all day.
Some of the attendees on the tour were actually from Kaiser's competition, and openly so. Kaiser encourages sharing of ideas, but is just this year, dealing with the issue of intellectual property rights.