Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1468176
33 INNOVATION Ballad Health forms alliance to boost healthcare innovation By Naomi Diaz J ohnson City, Tenn.-based Ballad Health has partnered with East Tennessee State University Research Corp. to create an innovation and entrepreneurship alliance, the health system said April 14. The Appalachian Highlands Rural Innovation and En- trepreneurship Alliance aims to translate research into business opportunities and investment to accelerate ear- ly stage development to support the enhancement of healthcare delivery. "When we created Ballad Health, we made a commitment that this new organization would leverage the regional strength of the Appalachian Highlands, reaching across all our communities in Northeast Tennessee and South- west Virginia to enhance opportunities to turn good ideas into thriving businesses and economic opportunity," said Alan Levine, Ballad Health chair and CEO. "This center will not only leverage good local ideas into business opportu- nities for the region, but it will attract ideas from all over the world, which will support the enhancement of health- care delivery and innovation, while also creating an eco- system for those transformative ideas to grow and be put into practice all over the world." Ballad Health is also creating a regional investment fund to support rural healthcare, which will be open to other investors and entrepreneurs interested in innovation with- in the alliance. The health system has donated $1 million toward the fund. n Kaiser invests in nurse staffing startup By Katie Adams O akland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente participat- ed in a $115 million funding round for nurse staff- ing platform IntelyCare. IntelyCare's artificial intelligence-based platform is de- signed to schedule and match nurses with open assign- ments. The startup will use the funds it raised to expand its footprint to new states and "invest heavily" in its AI plat- form and data science technology, according to an April 6 news release. The funding round gives IntelyCare unicorn status, as the startup is now valued at $1.1 billion. The round was led by Janus Henderson Investors. n 'De-innovation': How Cleveland Clinic and more determine which processes to nix By Katie Adams, Andrew Cass, Naomi Diaz and Georgina Gonzalez W hile most conversa- tions about hospital innovation center around which new initiatives health systems have up and run- ning, a less glamorous yet im- portant piece of the conversation centers on which programs have been discontinued. Deciding which projects are not working or where resources can be put to better use is not always easy, and many health systems shy away from discussing it. However, learning from errors and building on them for future projects can help keep innovation fresh and beneficial to patients and staff. Healthcare leaders should com- bine adoption with elimination to advance healthcare delivery, David Asch, MD, executive direc- tor of the Center for Health Care Innovation at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, told Becker's. "ere's a resistance to innova- tion and it's a term I like to call 'de-innovation'" Dr. Asch said. "It's hard for some clinicians to adopt new practices, but it's even harder to give up old practices that no longer serve or benefit health systems." Christopher Coburn, Bos- ton-based Mass General Brigham's chief innovation of- ficer, agreed, saying hospitals should apply the same enthusi- asm they have when launching new projects to asking the hard questions about which operations might need to be eliminated. Mr. Coburn said hospitals would also benefit from revisiting ques- tions they asked when launching their existing innovation proj- ects, as circumstances may have shied and new performance measures may have emerged. By eliminating processes that no longer serve them, hospitals gain opportunities to reduce tech- nology debt. Matt Kull, Cleve- land Clinic's CIO, told Becker's that with every new technology platform his organization imple- ments, its application rationaliza- tion team ensures data from the legacy applications is archived and the technology is sunset. e approach has reduced tech- nology expenses by millions of dollars, according to Mr. Kull. Providence has also reduced its legacy technology debt in re- cent years by moving away from on-premise applications and to- ward the cloud. B.J. Moore, the Renton, Wash.-based system's CIO, said this move has helped Providence standardize its cloud solutions, simplify its app ecosys- tem and modernize its storage. Mr. Moore also said the system's strategy for developing digital health solutions has evolved from a fragmented approach seeking to "prioritize thousands of feature requirements" to an approach that builds end-to-end patient jour- neys and develops solutions that meet a specific user experience. Sunsetting technologies and pro- grams is a way to improve new ones, save money by eliminating legacy systems and measure per- formance. Although the decision to give up old projects and tech- nology may come with challeng- es, experts are adamant the pro- cess can ensure health systems continue to serve their commu- nities, patients and staff efficient- ly and effectively. n