Meetings with UPMC Innovation staff and conference

The past week has been full of meetings.
On Wednesday I met with Deborah Pesanka, the Innovation specialist who is going to help me get in touch with the right people at UPMC. She introduced to me the UPMC Innovation project ‘Ticket to Ride’ (T2R), that has resulted in cards that can be attached to nurses namecards, and that provide a quick overview of all the things that should be checked about a new patient – in chronological order. Deb told me that the biggest problem area in the present ‘patient journey’ is the point where there is a handover from one nurse (unit) to another. T2R tries to prevent the problems that occur in this area. Deb also gave me the name of the company that manufactures the tanks – Praxair – and confirmed that my planning to start the observations and contextual inquiry next week, and hand out the diaries the week after, was feasible. She has already made appointments with the head of the Respiratory Care department, Edgar Delgado, and with Michael DeVita, the doctor who has been involved in an earlier oxygen tank project. Both meetings are on Monday morning.

Also on Wednesday I had a meeting with WISER simulation center director Joseph Samosky. He showed me around the impressive simulation rooms with lifelike manikins, equipped with state-of-the-art technology. If I want I can make use of these rooms to test my working prototype with real people, in a later stage of the project. Photos from this visit can be found here: http://www.student.tue.nl/h/b.voss/wiser.zip.

On Thursday I joined a weekly Innovation Center meeting in which I was introduced to the whole department. I did not understand all of the jargon and abbreviations, but I got the idea about how things go at the department. I agreed to give my earlier presentation again next week – for the whole department.

On Friday I went to a UPMC conference about ow healthcare could be improved by looking at examples from the game industry and from Disney. The Disney part was interesting, since it proposed a new division of market sectors, and how hospitals should improve to keep up with this phenomenon. Next to the three sectors commodities, goods, and services, speaker Fred Lee introduced a fourth sector: the experience economy. Hospital staff should seek to create positive, personal, memorable experiences for each and every patient. In doing so they should constantly try to imagine what it would be like to be in the situation that their patient is currently in, and empathize with that particular patient.

In the coming week I will meet with more of the UPMC staff, perform observations and contextual inquiries, and prepare the diaries that I will hand out next week.