January/February 2007
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Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering

Healthcare Technical
Assistance Program

Discovery Park

Purdue University

Regenstrief Institute

IUPUI Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research

People
 > Communication faculty joins Regenstrief Center. More

Projects
 > Researchers work to enhance decision-making capabilities     for cancer patients. More

Partners
 > State hospital association names new chief executive. More

Progress
 > Registration now available for Davis, Shortell and     Regenstrief Center Annual Conference. More

 > Regenstrief Center kicks off Brown Bag Speaker Series. More

 > Weekly Operations meetings connect healthcare     researchers. More

 > Mann Hall progressing toward April move-in date. More

 > Upcoming systems conference focuses on patient flow and     access. More

 > Powell, Covey to speak at annual conference on healthcare     information systems. More

Publicity
 > Editorial: Save more lives with telemedicine. More

Communication faculty joins Regenstrief Center

Bart Collins

In January, the Regenstrief Center welcomed Bart Collins, Ph.D. as the center's director of healthcare communications. Collins, who earned his master's degree at the Univeristy of Arkansas and his doctorate in Communication Studies at the University of Kansas, will spearhead the Regenstrief Center's work in telemedicine. He previously served as director of Digital Content and the Instructional Development Center at Purdue University since February 2002.

As a part of the Regenstrief Center, Collins is advancing the Center’s involvement in a tri-state telemedicine initiative with University of Kansas and Michigan State University, referred to as the Midwest Alliance for Telehealth and Technology Resources. The partnership will work to support networks of health communication technologies to increase access to residents throughout the Midwest, particularly those in rural or underserved areas.

"My interest in health communication technologies reaches back to my days as a graduate researcher the University of Kansas. As director of healthcare communications, I will take a broad look at the role of information, communication and technology in healthcare delivery and education, and will work to connect Purdue's resources and expertise with state and regional initiatives," said Collins. "The Regenstrief Center is committed to translating research into practical solutions, and I'm excited to be a part of that mission."

“Bart brings valuable communication and technological skills to the Regenstrief Center, which are critical to our efforts to advance telemedicine in the state of Indiana and across the region,” said Steven Witz, center director. “His involvement also links us more directly with the College of Liberal Arts, providing new opportunities to engage social science faculty and graduate students.”

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Researchers work to enhance decision-making capabilities for cancer patients

Painting from a series by Jan Lucas Grimm, leukemia patient

Cancer screening or treatment have been found to be particularly prone to difficulties in communication and decision-making between health professionals and their patients, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Upon diagnosis, patients are often faced with a variety of options regarding treatment, timing, and risks. Henry Kraebber, Regenstrief Scholar and professor in Mechanical Engineering Technology, and Seza Orcun, researcher with e-Enterprise Center in Purdue’s Discovery Park, have been working with Dr. Larry Cripe, an oncologist at the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM), to enhance patients’ ability to understand and track treatment options.

Portion of a handrawn patient care map by Dr. Cripe

“When we first met Dr. Cripe, he demonstrated how he hand-draws maps of treatment options to help patients make decisions about their care,” Kraebber said. “While the maps are very useful to document decisions and keep everyone on the same page, it had to be redrawn for each newly diagnosed patient, and every time the patient made a change in treatment. We felt certain that a technical solution could be found to make treatment mapping easier and more effective for the provider, patient and patients’ families.”

Excel-based patient care map

Kraebber and Orcun worked with Dr. Cripe to develop a program using Microsoft Excel to create personalized patient care maps that highlight a patient’s options and chosen treatment path. “We chose a common program like Excel because it would be familiar to more physicians, patients and family members. It is key that all stakeholders have the ability to easily modify the maps to accurately reflect the patient’s care decisions,” Orcun said.

Kraebber, Orcun and Cripe hope to extend this initial application to include other decision-support tools and an electronic patient scrapbook where patients can add personal thoughts, concerns and questions to the medical record. They also aim to capture treatment paths in an aggregate database, which could be mined to analyze costs, best practices, evidence of efficacy and patient satisfaction.

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State hospital association names new chief executive

An Indiana hospital executive will become the new president and chief executive officer of the Indiana Hospital&Health Association (IHHA) in 2007.

Douglas J. Leonard, currently chief executive officer of Columbus Regional Hospital, will succeed Kenneth G. Stella, who is retiring after leading the state hospital trade association since 1984. The effective date of his appointment has not yet been determined, but it is anticipated to be in early summer.

Leonard’s selection was announced on Dec. 21 by Vincent C. Caponi, CEO of St. Vincent Health in Indianapolis and 2006 chairman of the IHHA Board of Directors. Caponi said, “In conducting a national search of healthcare executives, we are fortunate to have attracted Doug Leonard’s interest and commitment to the association’s work on a full-time basis. He is a national leader in healthcare quality initiatives, with a passion for improving every Hoosier’s healthcare encounter and outcomes. He has built a culture of excellence in Columbus that inspires us all, and we are pleased that he has chosen to share his talents with his colleagues statewide."

During his tenure at IHHA, Stella has:
    > Guided members through the state’s transition from government-imposed hospital resource        controls to free market competition.
    > Expanded the association’s voluntary data collection and management comparative        databases on charges, utilization and quality.
    > Strengthened relations between hospital executives and physician leaders.
    > Integrated hospital trustees and physicians into the association’s health policy development        process.
    > Launched the Indiana Patient Safety Center to accelerate efforts to prevent harm to        Hoosiers seeking care.

“Ken Stella and IHHA have been crucial supporters of the Regenstrief Center and have contributed greatly to our early success. They partnered with us in establishing the Healthcare Technical Assistance Program, and have helped us to establish important connections with the healthcare industry in Indiana,” said Ken Musselman, Regenstrief director of strategic collaboration. “We wish Ken health and well-being in his retirement, and look forward to our future collaborations with IHHA’s new leadership.”

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Registration now available for Davis, Shortell and RCHE Annual Conference

Registration and conference schedules are now available at www.purdue.edu/dp/dls/rche for the 2007 Discovery Lecture Series and Regenstrief Center Annual Conference. The events will explore the role of engineering, scientific and business principles in transforming healthcare delivery to provide “basic” healthcare for all, consumer choice and responsibility, and personalized and coordinated continuums of care. Purdue is also proud to welcome the National Academy of Engineering to these events as a part of the NAE symposium.

Monday, April 23 will feature two keynote speakers:

Stephen Shortell, Ph.D., dean of the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley (Bio)
Marriage of Medicine and Management:
Sustaining improvements in delivery, quality, cost and outcomes
1:30 p.m., South Ballroom, Purdue Memorial Union

Karen Davis, Ph.D., President of the Commonwealth Fund (Bio)
Achieving the Best:
The road to improving national performance of healthcare delivery
3:00 p.m., South Ballroom, Purdue Memorial Union

The Regenstrief Center Annual Conference continues on Tuesday, April 24 with sessions focused on three key components of a healthcare-delivery system for the next generation: 1) solutions for equitable access, 2) expanded models for health consumer education, and 3) new provider models.

Confirmed conference speakers include:

    > Dr. Judith Monroe, State Health Commissioner, Indiana State Department of Health
    > Christopher Sears, Partner, Ice Miller Indianapolis
    > Dr. Gregory Larkin, Director of Corporate Health Services, Eli Lilly and Company
    > Dr. Wesley Wong, Neurologist and Assistant Professor, Indiana University Medical Group

Join healthcare experts from industry and academia in the national dialogue about the future of healthcare. All events are free and open to the public; events are sponsored by Purdue's Discovery Park and the Lilly Endowment. Register at www.purdue.edu/dp/dls/rche.   

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Regenstrief Center kicks off Brown Bag Speaker Series

This semester, the Regenstrief Center will offer a weekly lunch speaker series, to be held every Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Burton D. Morgan Center, Room 206. The series will feature presentations by a variety of Purdue researchers and center partners and will be specifically geared toward exposing graduate students to the wide array of research opportunities in healthcare engineering.

“One of the strategic goals of the Regenstrief Center is to promote healthcare engineering as an academic discipline at Purdue. The Brown Bag Speaker Series is one way to pull together faculty and graduate students with similar interests in healthcare, with the hope that these interactions will result in collaborative advances in learning and research across the university,” said Steven M. Witz, center director. “It is vital that we reach the next generation of researchers and demonstrate the power of multi-disciplinary research in transforming healthcare.”

View the series schedule at www.purdue.edu/rche.

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Weekly Operations meetings connect healthcare researchers

Regenstrief Center Operations Meetings are held at 7:30 a.m. every Monday in the Burton D. Morgan Center, Room 206. This weekly one-hour meeting provides updates on Center activities and research, and is open to all interested faculty, students, staff and healthcare professionals. Visit www.purdue.edu/rche to view a schedule of research presentations.

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Building continues on the Gerald and Edna Mann Hall, the future home of the Regenstrief Center. The Center will occupy 25 percent of the new building, which also will house the e-Enterprise Center, Purdue Homeland Security Institute, Center for Advanced Manufacturing, and the Purdue Terrestrial Observatory.

The external structure of the building has been completed, and work inside the building will continue through the winter months. Mann Hall is scheduled to be completed in early April, with a building dedication planned for May 15. To view a real-time glimpse of the building’s progress, visit http://video01.bbc.purdue.edu/view/index.shtml.

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Upcoming systems conference focuses on patient flow and access

Society for Health Systems Conference
Improving Patient Flow and Access - Across the Continuum of Care
New Orleans, Louisiana
February 23-24

The Society for Health Systems (SHS) is an individual membership organization that exists to enhance the career development and continuing education of professionals who use industrial and management engineering expertise for productivity and quality improvement in the healthcare industry.

This year’s conference theme, “Improving Patient Flow and Access – Across the Continuum of Care,” was chosen to address a range of the most pressing issues facing administrators, physicians, clinical leaders, and clinicians and their performance improvement partners working in healthcare. Session topics will include:

    > ED services.
    > In-patient services.
    > Peri-operative services.
    > Ambulatory and clinical support services.
    > Revenue cycles.
    > Supply chain management.
    > Process improvement (i.e., Lean, Six Sigma, simulation, project management, change
       management).

Keynote speakers will present case studies and strategies for system-wide throughput and access improvement. More information and registration is available at http://www.shsweb.org/conference.

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Powell, Covey to speak at annual conference on healthcare information systems

Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference and Exhibition
New Orleans, Louisiana
February 25-March 1

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is the healthcare industry's membership organization exclusively focused on providing leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare.

The 2007 annual HIMSS conference promises usable knowledge on leading edge topics in healthcare IT and management systems through the over 200 education sessions, pre-conference workshops and symposia, 200 education sessions, and keynote speakers:

    > Steven Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Corp.
    > Gen. Colin L. Powell, 65th U.S. Secretary of State
    > Stephen R. Covey, Co-Founder, FranklinCovey Co.

More information and registration is available at http://www.himss07.org.

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Editorial: Save more lives with telemedicine

Written by Cullen McCarty, president of Ellettsville, Ind.-based Smithville Digital. He can be reached at chmccarty@smithville.net, (812) 876-2211. For more information, go to http://www.smithvilledigital.net.

After the last national census, 66 of Indiana's 92 counties were federally designated as medically underserved areas or areas with shortages of key health professionals. For roughly a third of Indiana's population, getting proper medical attention is becoming more and more of a serious, even life-threatening, problem. Only 13 percent of Indiana's active-care physicians are living in and serving rural areas, with the rest clustered in major Hoosier urban areas.

As the 115th General Assembly prepares to convene, numerous issues and "big ideas" have already been identified by Gov. Mitch Daniels and key legislators. Both sides of the partisan fence now call for open dialogue.

Thankfully, one of these big ideas represents healthcare and the crying need for better and more widespread access to qualified medical services. But while funding and reimbursement appear to be getting some much-needed attention, one critical solution has not yet received the urgent consideration it deserves: telemedicine.

A nurse uses video conferencing technology to monitor a patient.

As the Purdue-based Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering pointed out earlier this year, "Telemedicine applications offer the promise of improved access to care and tremendous cost savings…and in some cases even save countless lives in Indiana."

The Regenstrief report saliently outlined three major challenges blocking the positive spread of telemedicine: access to affordable broadband, strategic regional decisions about telecommunications access and consideration for robust infrastructure.

Real telemedicine can make a real difference in Hoosier healthcare, and it can do it in a hurry. The Regenstrief report warns that Hoosiers are already falling behind in this critical technology, which can leave the state "disconnected" in an unacceptable way.

The resources are here. The time for Hoosier telemedicine is now. Read full editorial.

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