Doctors are actively engaged in creating meaningful innovations for workaday healthcare—and here's a sampling of the output from a few of them who are part of HealthTrust's Physician Advisors Program.
You don't have to chat with physicians long to discover that their passions lean heavily toward innovation. Unsurprisingly, the creative output tends to be highly relevant to real-world healthcare where they're immersed an average of 10 hours daily. These aren't multimillion-dollar inventions that investors would line up fund, but practical solutions conceived in an inspiring moment followed by months (if not years) of sweat. In other words, not necessarily on the radar of The Wall Street Journal.
I'm personally acquainted with innovators who have found ways to offer care at more appropriate price points, and improve staff productivity and the care delivery experience, as well as use predictive analytics for better shared decision-making with patients. And that's the yield of just four of the overachievers comprising HealthTrust's Physician Advisors Program. I'd estimate that about half of the 140 or so doctors in the program—virtually all them actively practicing and many wearing multiple leadership hats—have also created some entirely new product or service.
Exhibit A: Troy Sybert, M.D., an internal and preventive medicine doctor in Johnson City, Tennessee, recently accepted into the Innovation Lab at East Tennessee State University. He has created an approach to chronic disease management so more Tennesseans could afford to get the care they need with the convenience of a one-stop shop for low-cost labs and medications, mobile telemedicine, self-scheduling and subscription payment models. The idea was born out of dysfunctions he observed at numerous healthcare systems and clinical offices as well as frustrations he felt as a patient dealing with the bureaucratic hassles of getting approved and in to see a physician. Required aptitudes included an understanding of clinical workflow minutiae and how much services actually cost to deliver. Five-year vision: walk-through kiosks utilizing artificial intelligence to treat the patients.
Exhibit B: Patrick Willis, M.D., an interventional cardiologist who practices with the Oconee Heart & Vascular Center in Athens, Georgia. He's working on a prototype for an ECG telemetry app that could be used on patients presenting with chest pain. Getting an ECG today is a multi-step process, including rolling a machine into and out of a room and putting small stickers (electrodes) on patients—pretty much the same way it has been done since the 1960s. Given that telemetry is already being used to monitor patients' vitals, he wondered, why not also use it to get an instant readout of their heart's electrical activity? If nothing else, it would improve the productivity of ECG techs. Dr. Willis now has a patent on the idea and will be collaborating with a research team at Emory University to move from the concept to the device design phase. He is also working on creating a collaboration with Georgia Tech, a hub for device innovation. He says he came to embrace his creative side during fellowship training where he saw naysayers of similar "bright ideas" repeatedly proven wrong.
Exhibit C: David Alfery, M.D., an anesthesiologist in Nashville, Tennessee. He has invented four products to date, the first and most successful of which was a device for improving oxygenation during one-lung anesthesia. It was his answer to the traditional jerry-rigged system comprised of a valve, oxygen source, inflatable bag and any number of other items. His next invention was a beveled bite block with attached handle that conforms to a patient's molars—his simple but ingenious alternative to makeshift bite blocks made by wrapping and taping gauze around a tongue blade.
Exhibit D: Gregory Brown, an orthopedic surgeon at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington. He has developed a predictive analytics tool for patients considering total knee replacement surgery. It's a simple red-yellow-green matrix that quickly shows patients if they're likely to have a poor, good or excellent surgical outcome and their infection risk. It's been helpful in the shared decision-making process with patients, he says, especially surgical candidates where a good or excellent outcome is expected but with a moderate or high risk of infection—and how choices they make might move them from the yellow to the green zone. It beats simply telling them to lose weight or quit smoking, or saying "no" because their arthritis isn't severe enough to warrant surgery. Next up: a third dimension for patient satisfaction tied to factors such as depression, number of affected and replaced joints, and patient expectations from surgery. The beauty of the tool is that it's patient-specific, not based on an "average" patient in a randomized controlled trial.
Better data availability and visibility is certainly a key driver of physician innovation. But so is the changing healthcare climate where doctors are under scrutiny from every side. Physician advisors not actively involved in product development are personally trialing some emerging technologies designed to improve the care experience and get patients engaged in their own recovery. Few physicians are simply waiting around for an insurance company to find some new way they're not making the grade.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.