As chief innovation officer of Boston Children's Hospital, John Brownstein is building partnerships with health IT companies, as well as working internally to usher in greater innovation in the healthcare space.
Brownstein, in an Xconomy article, says that while it will always be important for patients to receive care within a hospital's walls, much of the physician-patient relationship will also be based on virtual communication.
"So much of the focus is on keeping populations healthy, rather than dealing with illness," he says. "Digital is going to play such a huge part of that."
Boston Children's Hospital previously has partnered with IBM Watson to better understand rare pediatric diseases, joined with other Massachusetts providers to create a Web portal to allow companies to work with academic medical centers in the state and, in conjunction with the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies, worked on an online platform to provide virtual training and to allow providers to communicate with each other worldwide.
Brownstein says that the innovation program at Boston Children's has been focused on "building a culture of innovation and forcing the communication about how to think differently about [clinicians'] workflow and new digital tools to improve care."
He adds that the hospital will soon announce a project with Amazon Echo to "embed Children's Hospital know-how" into the platform.
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