Four health systems and one digital health company have opened or announced plans to establish new centers focused on healthcare innovation in the past five weeks.
Editor's note: The innovation center launches are listed in the order they were reported.
- Penn Medicine will launch a new health informatics center this fall that will focus on health data projects across the Philadelphia-based health system's innovation and information services departments. The Center for Applied Health Informatics aims to develop the information infrastructure that Penn Medicine needs to become more of a high-reliability organization, or an entity that operates in high-risk environments with very little error.
- Verily, the healthcare and life sciences sister company of Google, is launching a new artificial intelligence research and development center in Israel. The center will focus on using AI to address problems and inefficiencies facing the medical field, including applying the technology to endoscopy, minimally invasive surgery and other imaging methods. It plans to partner with Israeli hospitals, researchers and digital health companies.
- Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health is planning an innovation district in Charlotte, N.C., where it will build a four-year medical school and innovation and research hub. Atrium Health will leverage its existing relationships in Charlotte to build a pipeline of partnering community colleges and other organizations to find talent.
- Houston-based Baylor College of Medicine is teaming up with three other providers to establish a new center for researching and developing wearable devices that help providers collect health data from patients remotely. The National Science Foundation's Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers awarded $3 million to Baylor, Tucson-based University of Arizona, Los Angeles-based University of Southern California and Pasadena-based California Institute of Technology to launch the institute, dubbed the Center to Stream HealthCare in Place.
- UC San Diego Health established an innovation center to focus on improving virtual visit experiences for patients and integrating remote monitoring technologies within treatment plans, among other initiatives. The center will initially focus on refining the virtual visit experience for patients with technologies such as wearable sensors, which monitor chronic conditions. Its goal is to focus on older adults, high-risk patients with diabetes and hypertension, and patients in remote areas.