The business of saving lives is constantly undergoing a state of innovation, as new techniques get used in surprising applications to save lives around the world. New technological advances are not just making it easier to keep the sick and injured alive and well, but they are also streamlining bureaucratic processes which results in hospitals delivering care to more patients at faster speeds. In addition, innovators are working around the clock to bring the latest and the greatest to the industry as a whole. Even in this past week several innovations occurred in the healthcare technology industry, which will be shared below.
The Boston Children’s Hospital has long been considered one of the best pediatric facilities in the nation since 1869, and in order to streamline patient experiences, the hospital has selectedAccenture to provide a faster and easier method for interaction with the organization. Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, and through its platform the Boston Children’s Hospital is hoping to organize over 200 specialized clinical programs, 26,500 surgical procedures and 12,000 staff and volunteers into an easily navigable system for patients and their families to select the health care that they need. After a three-month evaluation, Accenture will be able to identify and streamline the recommended solutions for the hospital.
In other news, Facebook CFO David Ebersman has officially announced that he will be leaving his position with Facebook in order to return to healthcare. Ebersman was already working in the medical field when he began working with Facebook as their CFO almost five years ago, and now it appears that healthcare is calling his name once again. “This was a tough decision because Facebook is such a great company and has such a bright future ahead,” he said in an official statement, “but I’ve devided to move back into healthcare where I spent my career before Facebook.” Looking forward, Facebook has already named Dave Whener as Ebersman’s replacement for the CFO position.
A recent survey considering the privacy of healthcare data also turned up some unusual results this week. A collaborative project between Kelton and Makovsky Health found that around 90 percent of Americans are willing to share their personal health records with researchers in order to learn more about diseases and the best way to prevent them. Considering the fact that Americans are wary about the way they share private information – especially after the debacle between Edward Snowden and the NSA – this news comes at somewhat of a shock. However, the study also found that these Americans were only okay with sharing the information if it was done so anonymously.