There and Back Again: Our First Travel Experience

 The third week of our fellowship went without a hitch. We traveled to Wilmington, Delaware, where we met with a close friend of the Health for America program, Dr. Paul Rosen.

Dr. Rosen is the Chief Experience Officer at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children (see his TED talk here). A big part of his job is to ensure that patients at Nemours experience not only the highest quality health care, but also receive empathy-driven care that makes the hospital experience as pleasant as possible. When walking the halls of Nemours, it's apparent Dr. Rosen excels at his job. From interactive graphic games to puppy centers, Nemours is tailored to ensuring patients have as pleasant of an experience as possible. Human-centered design, a design strategy that seeks to keep the end-user in mind when creating a solution, is at the heart of Dr. Rosen’s work. It goes without saying that our team aims to create a solution that achieves just that.

Our trip to Nemours also provided us the experience of meeting with several other friendly, helpful, and noteworthy individuals. The backgrounds of those we were introduced to were broad, ranging from pediatric hematologists to the Chief Operating Officer. While the backgrounds of these individuals were highly diverse, several common themes resonated through nearly every one of our conversations. Innovation in health care is often slow and difficult. Health care isn't a field where it's O.K. to make mistakes (understandably so). In addition, innovation in healthcare must be geared toward many stakeholders. Not only does it have to drive better health outcomes for patients—innovation in health care should not significantly disrupt the workflow of care providers, and must provide measurable value for payers. While our team moves forward throughout the year, it will be important to keep in mind much of what Dr. Paul Rosen and Team Nemours discussed with us.

A big thank you to everyone at Nemours who dedicated their time in order to help us learn about the dynamics of healthcare innovation and pediatric stroke!