OSF Simulation Stage at Matter Chicago
First, it was the rise of the health technology incubators and accelerators. Now, those centers are opening up some of their space to healthcare providers so both may take advantage of the other’s resources and understand the needs of potential end users.
The latest partnership comes from Matter, an incubator in Chicago, and OSF HealthCare, based in Peoria, Illinois. Last week, the two debuted the OSF Simulation Stage at Matter, a flexible, hospital room-sized space intended to give startups a convenient place to test their technologies in a simulated clinical environment.
Dr. John Vozenilek, CMO for simulation at OSF HealthCare, speaks at Matter.
“The Simulation Stage is a feedback mechanism,” explained Dr. John Vozenilek, CMO for simulation at OSF HealthCare said. “We want to create a fertile ground for rapid-cycle iteration.”
Vozenilek oversees simulation at the Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center, a unique, freestanding facility jointly operated by OSF and the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria. That works great for some purposes, but there aren’t a whole lot of innovative startups in the Peoria area.
The idea behind the Simulation Stage is that OSF needs to go where the startups are. In Illinois, that obviously means Chicago, and Matter, one of two healthcare incubators in the Windy City, houses and convenes dozens of new companies, Vozenilek explained at the kickoff event.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“We believe in simulation,” said Vozenilek, who ran a simulation center at Northwestern Memorial Healthcare in Chicago before moving to Peoria in 2012. “We’ve seen the transformative power.”
But he and other OSF leaders noted that healthcare simulation hasn’t been widely tried outside of academic settings environments. “Simulation has largely been done in medical and nursing education, not in clinical practice,” Vozenilek said.
OSF’s CEO, Kevin D. Schoeplein, agreed. “The launch of the OSF Simulation Stage here at Matter advances simulation beyond education,” he said.
Schoeplein said that that his health system wants to create “healthcare without walls” in the communities OSF serves. That means relying on new technologies intended to make clinicians more efficient and effective and to keep people healthier.
Medical supplier Hill-Rom and electronic health records vendor Allscripts Healthcare Solutions are donating technology for the Simulation Stage. Allscripts, which just happens to be headquarted eight floors above Matter in the iconic Merchandise Mart, actually installed a working build of its Sunrise Clinical Manager in the room.
Initially, the space has been configured as a hospital observation room. For the first six months, Hill-Rom is sponsoring a challenge in search of innovative technologies for observation units. Applications to participate in the challenge are due Oct. 15.
Photos: Neil Versel/MedCity News
