Memorial Sloan Kettering goes high-tech with new surgery center

A surgery center opened this year by New York City's Memorial Sloan Kettering Center relies on technology and innovation to help out patient cancer surgery patients.

There are four levels of innovation at the Josie Robertson Surgery Center (JRSC), Pete Stetson, M.D., chief health informatics officer for Memorial Sloan Kettering tells Healthcare Informatics: cognitive support, communication support, patient-related outcomes and data on location of patients and care team members.

What's more, some processes formerly conducted manually now are aided by technology, adds Dan Stein, M.D., Ph.D., director of preoperative informatics and innovation at JRSC. Information systems can automate time stamps for when a patient enters or leaves the OR, Stein says.

Tech can also help patients feel more comfortable by displaying the name of the care team member on the TV when they enter the room. There also are displays in waiting rooms for family members to see when a patient is in the OR and when they can be seen by loved ones, according to Stein.

"One of the core strategic objectives for this facility was to deploy it as a learning health system," Stetson says. "We want the data we get back from our systems to inform the future design of those systems. We are collecting data on the people, processes and tools, and how they're used in order to better understand how we can better take care of patients."

Other health systems also are looking to high-tech ideas to help patients. For instance, at Boston Children's Hospital, CIO John Brownstein is building partnerships with health IT companies, as well as working internally to usher in greater innovation. Meanwhile, the University of California-San Francisco hospital at Mission Bay uses robots to ferry food, linens, medications and more around the medical complex.

To learn more:
- here's the Healthcare Informatics article