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July 11, 2019
CO-CREATING HEALTHCARE OF TOMORROW
FREDERICK, MD,
June 22 — Frederick
Memorial Hospital (FMH) and Frederick Innovative Technology Center Inc. (FITCI)
organized their first Community Think Tank on June 22, 2019. for the
“Co-Creating Healthcare of Tomorrow” event. Sixteen people were divided into
three competitive teams. All teams successfully completed the one-day long
brainstorming process, which was held at the ROOT building in downtown
Frederick. Three topics were chosen: 5-2-1-0
(the importance of increasing the community engagement in the 5-2-1-0 program);
Geriatric Living’ (life hacks for the
elderly – providing hacks and solutions to living at home longer) and I Did It! (ways of encouraging patients
to take medications, do rehab exercises and adopt healthy behaviors so they can
say: “I did it!”). Each team pitched and demoed their new tech solutions to a
group of unbiased judges: Alexander Nason (FMH), Jackie Rice (FMH), Kathie
Callahan Brady (FITCI) and Dr. Ruth Cheng (AgNovos Healthcare).
“It
was a great day. Being able to collaborate with folks from across the Frederick
community to tackle challenges in healthcare was amazing. I am really excited
to see where we can go with these ideas.” said Alex Nason, Director of
Innovation for FMH. Mr. Nason and Ms Callahan Brady, alongside with Mrs. Rice,
were the initiators of this community think tank, that brought together so many
people from Frederick and DC Metro area.
Kathie
Callahan Brady, FITCI’s CEO, commented that: “This kind of community
centered Think Tanks are the best way to bring the diverse and innovative ideas
to the table!” Kathie also mentioned that FITCI is proud to have partnered
with FMH in realizing this idea.
The
winning team was the 5-2-1-0, who
utilized their time to work on a technology solution for encouraging more
children/teenagers (target population 6 – 15 year old) to join 5-2-1-0 Program
- eating 5 fruits/vegetables a day, not doing more than 2 hours of screen time
a day, exercising for at least 1 hour and intaking 0 sugars from sweetened
drinks. Vishy Mahadevan was a part of the winning six-member group, and commented
that:
“It was team effort listening and
understanding each other with different perspectives of the problem and
designed a solution we all agreed will make a great impact in the society.”
Vishy also mentioned all the excitement around the fact that they now get to
build the real solution that they brainstormed during the event. “Can't wait to
see the working Gamification Mobile App to increase the 5-2-1-0 health
awareness”, he concluded.
The
team came up with a theoretical approach to an interactive and fun app that
could be used by both the target population as well as their parents and the
local community. The app would be engaging the users with current offers in
local stores, programs, community news, current challenges, and then individual
achievements and awards during the day. The judges appreciated this idea the
most due to the versatile approach and the ability to change behaviors at the
crucial development time in children’s lives, which could stick with them for
decades to come.
“All
the solutions the teams came up with were very impressive. The passion and
excitement the groups showed to solve the challenges conveyed how much they
cared about the wellbeing of our community.” – Jackie Rice, Chief Information
Officer, FRHS.
Another
participant of the Think Tank, Dana French, stated that: “System problems in
our community require system solutions. Our one-day Think Tank session
proved that if you get a cross section of bright people in the same room to
tackle a problem, they can collaborate, achieve consensus and propose some
thoughtful actions.”
Both
FMH and FITCI hope this is not the only Think Tank organized in Frederick
community, and as FITCI’s CEO, Callahan Brady concluded, “the excitement is
even bigger when thinking about the possibility that three new businesses might
blossom out of this first Think Tank”.
