Combining forces: Philips Israel, Rambam Health Care Campus, and the BeWell.il community are working together to improve patients' hospitalization experiences.
Photo Credit: Yuval Pan
Philips, a global leader in health technologies, Rambam Health Care Campus, and the BeWell.il Digital Health Community recently held the Philips Innovation Hackathon under the title "Patient Experience." The two-day hackathon was held at Philips’ R&D center in Haifa and focused on improving patient hospitalization experiences. Eight teams participated, including engineers and others from Philips, as well as representatives from Rambam. The teams collaborated to find solutions to a number of challenges raised by the Rambam clinical teams, focusing on improving patient experience.
The teams addressed challenges related to issues such as providing patients with practical information about their hospitalization, treatment, and emergency room (ER) wait times; finding a solution that supports the transfer from the ER to hospitalization, taking into account the patient's clinical situation and the department status; optimizing the efficiency of the nurse call service for hospitalized patients; encouraging handwashing compliance; efficient diabetic wound diagnosis and treatment; and more.
Dr. Michael Halberthal, Director of Rambam, noted "Something amazing was achieved, and I think that as a concept, we need to think outside the box. We can see today that if we want to promote innovation and activity, the addition of these kind of brainstorming sessions increases the power of innovation. Once, we all kept information to ourselves, but the greatest benefit from this kind of collaboration between a hospital and leading companies like Philips leads to incredible results – and this is only the beginning.”
The BeWell.il Community’s Yael Ophir stated, "Our goal at BeWell.il and the National Digital Health Initiative is to connect between the true challenges of healthcare organizations. This hackathon serves as a great example of how to integrate the talented, dedicated staff of Philips with employees from Rambam, who understand the needs and know how to provide feedback in real time. We were happy to take part in this important event."
Efrat Shefer, President of Philips Israel and GM of the Global business unit of Clinical Imaging Applications & Platforms, said, "The increased trend in life expectancy and chronic illness is a major burden on the health system and hospitals, and in turn intensifies the pressure on clinical teams and related systems. Philips, which held this innovation hackathon for the fifth year in a row, believes that the role of technological innovation is to bridge the growing gaps and ease hospital loads while improving patient experience. We thank Rambam and the BeWell.il community for their cooperation and hope that together, we can continue to work to improve the lives and health of patients in the State of Israel."