Becker's Hospital Review

37 INNOVATION Why Northwestern Medicine is mentoring startups By Giles Bruce C hicago-based Northwestern Medicine has launched its inaugural startup accelerator class to meet some of healthcare's most pressing needs with innovation and technology. "We want to work with young startups to solve healthcare problems where we know, as good as we are, we're not going to be able to solve them alone," Northwestern Medicine CIO Doug King told Becker's. "And our thesis is we can make all of [these companies] better by working with us." The 11-hospital system is partnering with Techstars, a startup studio and venture capital firm that helped narrow down the class to six from hundreds of applicants. The finalists focus on billing and coding, workforce and supply chain management, EHR automation, and AI for cardiovascular care. The 13-week mentorship program takes place at Northwestern Medicine's Mansueto Innovation Institute in Chicago and concludes with a pitch day for investors and healthcare leaders. Northwestern also provides a small investment in exchange for equity in the companies. "We put out an ask to people across the health system: 'Does anyone want to mentor these companies?'" Mr. King said. "These young companies are now going to be working with seasoned experts within their space. … Eventually, we're going to have a better product on both sides of the aisle. It's a two-way door. It's not just us with them. We also can and will learn from them." Northwestern hopes to continue the program in future years, taking lessons learned from other health systems with startup accelerators. "Northwestern has a lot of capability, and historically we have kept that insular and focused on our patients," Mr. King said. 'What we've realized over the past several years is innovation is a key element to us as a health system, us as an industry and really as a nation, being successful with taking care of our aging populations." n "One of the biggest purposes of this unit is to identify what would become the standard in a future hospital," said Ron Carson, executive director of enterprise applications for Nebraska Medicine. "We're trying to identify the baseline." Mr. Raymond calls it the "universal room." e rooms and floors on the new hospital will be "acuity adaptable," so units can easily be swapped. "We are rigorously testing these different solutions, comparing them and using that information to inform our decisions for future implementation of these products and workflows," said Bethany Lowndes, PhD, scientific director of innovation at Nebraska Medicine. Having the unit gives the health system the "flexibility to adapt" to coming technologies and patient needs, Mr. Raymond noted. Most innovation centers around the country simulate care; Nebraska Medicine's is unique in that it is in an actual hospital inpatient unit. "Trying to do proof of concepts of innovation in a hospital is very difficult because you have to try to take over a unit and affect the workflows," Mr. Raymond said. "So that's a huge differentiation from other labs." Future technology implementations could include ambient listening, biometric monitoring, and robotics for delivery or exoskeletons for patient recovery or to help staff perform functions. e innovation unit also plans to share its findings with the broader healthcare community, and gives vendors direct access to the clinical space to try out their technologies. "I like to use the example of, 'Row the canoe while you're carving it,'" Mr. Raymond said. "So we have the opportunity to do innovation in real time." Or, to use another motto of the unit: Fail fast. "Success is great, and that leads to operations, but failing or bailing leads to innovation and taking the technology to the next level," he said. "We have a really unique opportunity here at Nebraska Medicine," said Kara Tomlinson, DNP, RN, executive director of system delivery and innovation at Nebraska Medicine. "is innovation design unit is going to give us an opportunity to test, trial and innovate around different ways to provide care. is is really exciting stuff." e technology has been "pretty intuitive" for patients and staff alike, she said. "We really tried to keep the people at the center of everything," Mr. Carson said. "So giving patients more control over the space they were in, giving our staff better visibility to the conditions they may be facing as they entered rooms for patients who were fall risks or had other isolation precautions, and then trying to retain our staff in an environment where care dynamics change by allowing them to continue to use their skills in a virtual format." Nebraska Medicine worked with healthcare consulting firm Blue Cottage of CannonDesign on the concept. e health system solicited feedback from staff in designing the unit, asking: What does innovation in healthcare mean to you? Nebraska Medicine plans to continue iterating on the hospital room of the future, even aer its "futuristic" new medical center is built. "is unit, and the philosophy, the vision, will continue on into perpetuity," Dr. Tomlinson said. n

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