James Barlow.

Managing Innovation In [Year]

Healthcare: Week 4 Activity
http://www.hansenmedical.com/us/en/cardiac-arrhythmia/sensei-robotic-

system/product-overview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e1aV34vlN0Q

[James Barlow. Managing Innovation In Healthcare]

Hard technology innovations

1. Robotic heart catheter. Robotic surgery involves a system that can be

programmed to aid the positioning and manipulation of surgical instruments to

surgeons to carry out complex tasks more efficiently or remotely. It is beginning to
become widely used for certain procedures, especially those involving minimally
invasive surgery in the thoracic cavity and the abdominal cavity. Robotic surgery
requires a different set of techniques to be adopted, with the surgeon operating from
a remote console to control the equipment rather than physically operating on the
patient him or herself. As well as potential benefits the patient, such as decreased
risk and shorter recovery time, the wider health benefits include fewer human errors
and a faster learning curve for surgeons in training. One area where robotic devices
have been developed for surgical procedures is the insertion of catheters such as
Hansen Medical’s robotic catheter system. This allows surgeons to remotely guide a
heart catheter with hand movements, while seeing a 3D view of the operation. The
device allows more precise catheter movements inside the heart.

2. Diagnosing cataracts by smartphone. Diagnosing cataracts typically requires a

USD 5,000 piece of equipment and a physician to interpret the test results. Neither is
easy to come by in rural areas and lower-income countries. A team of MIT
researchers has developed a simple device, Catra, that can clip onto an ordinary
smartphone and provide a diagnosis of cataracts within a few minutes. ‘I like to think
of this as a radar for the human eye’, said one researcher. The system sweeps a
beam of light across the eye to detect the cloudy patches resulting from cataracts
and creates a map showing their position, size, shape and density, more detail than
needed to make a decision whether or not to surgically remove the lens. Inexpensive
and portable diagnostic devices such as Catra could play an important part in
helping provide care for the 250 million people in the world who are blind because of
preventable causes.

Sources:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/netra-cataracts-app-0701.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V2BXSWuQO0M

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 James Barlow. Managing Innovation In [Year]
Healthcare: Week 4 Activity
Soft technology innovations

These are both from the Health Services Journal (HSJ) Best Practice Awards

2011.

3. Bupa Care Services: Improving residential care by digitalizing quality processes.

In 2010, the English health and social care regulator, the Care Quality Commission
(CQC), changed its methodology for assessing quality processes in residential care
homes. Bupa used this opportunity to review how they monitored its care services
and re-engineer its quality assurance (QA) processes. It aimed to ensure that all QA
processes were internally integrated and aligned with external regulation, to make
QA simpler and less burdensome for care home managers, and to drive improved
quality through better governance and more transparent reporting. Bupa moved from
a paper based QA process to an online model, where compliance assessments were
fully digitalised. By using a free-to-market version of Microsoft Sharepoint, Bupa was
able to develop the system on a tight budget. After introduction of the system, care
home managers spent less time providing their compliance assessment reports to
the CQC, which meant they concentrated more on the residents and their needs.
Regional managers were able to see reports before they were submitted to the CQC
to ensure their accuracy. The system also resulted in more useful and actionable
management information, quickly identifying concerns and allowing managers to
track improvement actions between their visits.

4. University Hospitals Southampton: Finding the missing millions and reducing

admissions through medical intelligence. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD) is the fourth leading cause of death in the UK, with enormous social and
economic implications. It is the second most common reason for an emergency
hospital admission. The British Lung Foundation report Finding The Missing Millions
highlighted the fact that the city of Southampton is a hotspot for COPD, yet the
disease is significantly under diagnosed, leading to a higher admissions rate. It was
clear that a strategy to identify undiagnosed and misdiagnosed COPD was needed.
Using medical intelligence, GP practices were prioritised according to estimated
undiagnosed COPD prevalence and hospital admission rates. A team from the
hospital then visited and educated each GP practice. This was supported by wider
educational meetings, an education package, and websites for health professionals
and patients. The hospital employed a dedicated respiratory nurse to deliver the
project and work closely with primary care. An audit of hospital attendances revealed
that 34 patients were admitted more than three times the previous year and were
responsible for 22% of admissions. These patients were looked after exclusively by
the respiratory teams — reviewed in their homes by a consultant and specialist
nurse to look at their health needs, optimise their current treatment and investigate
the reasons why they needed to come into hospital. After implementing the project

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 James Barlow. Managing Innovation In [Year]
Healthcare: Week 4 Activity
the rate of diagnosis look at their health needs, optimise their current treatment and
investigate the reasons why they needed to come into hospital. After implementing
the project the rate of diagnosis increased from 1.5% to 2.3%, compared to an
estimated 6% prevalence rate in the city. There was a 19% reduction in hospital
admissions due to COPD exacerbations, and hospital readmissions within 30 days
were reduced from 13% to 1.7%. Net financial savings in the first year were
estimated to be GBP 301,800.

Box 3.4 EXERCISE: Classifying healthcare innovations

All the examples here have been recognised as ‘healthcare innovations’. Two can be
described as hard technology innovations and two are soft technology innovations.
Scan the material and answer the following:

• Why do you think these have been described as innovations?

• What is innovative about them?

• Try to categorise them according to

— their degree of novelty (how new?);

— their form or application (product, process, service);

— their ‘innovativeness’ (radical, incremental, architectural, modular).

• How easy do you think it will be to ensure the innovation is widely adopted? What
are the organisational, cost-benefit and other acceptance issues?

In your presentation groups please put your answers on word document. You will be
required to share it with the whole group.

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