The Future of Healthcare as Seen Through the Eyes of @kpTotalHealth with @Tedeytan #HealthIT

I posted a piece that was published on FastCompany site at the end of last month:

It included a link to an original concept from the innovative Kaiser founder Dr Sidney R. Garfield

I shared this with my wife who is an accomplished midwife (she stopped counting her deliveries after she hit 1,000) and we both shared a laugh but as she pointed out – at the time it was a brilliant compromise between two competing interest:

In this particular instance the National Health Service (NHS) in England was ahead of its time, guided by an experienced and well respected cadre of midwives who promoted and encouraged rooming in of babies when they were born. We experienced this with our children but our youngest was born here in the United States and at the time it was a fight to stop the nurses from removing our daughter from the room

I had the privilege of visiting the Kaiser Total Health facility and spent an invigorating few hours with Dr Ted Eytan, Physician Director in the Kaiser Permanente Federation (@TedEytan and his blog)

He was kind enough to reply to my article in a tweet:

And the details even appeared in the wall of knowledge with the background that I captured here:

Ted shared a link to the original history
KP’s ‘Baby in the Drawer’ Helped Turn the Tide Back to Breastfeeding Babies after World War II Which tells the story of the driver on this innovation centered around better outcomes from keeping mothers and babies together:

Sidney R. Garfield he had read an interesting article about the now famous Yale University School of Medicine research experiments with rooming-in for mothers and babies

Kaiser Permanente has continued their continued innovation – Small Hospital, Big Idea which continues and contributes to their impressive growth:

An Impressive and consistent increase in Patients

All this is embodied in the Kaiser Total Health Center that brings together existing and new technology in innovative ways. Everything from the large screen introduction:

 Through to the handheld ultrasound device:

Mock up Patient Examination Room

3-D Visualization for Patient Engagment on Medication

 and simple technology – but so important – two hand sets for one phone so patient and health care worker can both listen in to the same conversation with immediate availability for language translation (I’m willing to be we won’t need a telephone for this simultaneous translation in the near future)

Mostly, I know that someday, someone in my same CMIO and MD shoes will think how silly it was that doctors actually hand-typed patient notes