Photo: ECRI Award presented at Times Square in New York City.
A West Virginia health care system has won a national innovation award from ECRI, a nonprofit that focuses on health care safety and quality.
Mon Health System, based in Morgantown, West Virginia, won ECRI’s Health Devices Achievement Award for its technological innovation and collaboration, whose centerpiece is its work with a startup incubator called Intermed Labs at Mon Health that brings together clinicians and entrepreneurs from around West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania to create devices and companies.
“Establishing a collaboration with a local innovation lab allowed us to provide our clinicians with the framework and infrastructure to develop new ideas to improve patient care,” said Mon Health President and CEO David Goldberg. “For this initiative to succeed, we committed our leadership support and then we got out of the way so the entrepreneurs had full rein to innovate.”
Goldberg, who before becoming CEO was a SVP at Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, joined Mon Health in October 2018 as president and CEO. He was a hospital president and senior health care executive during his career before joining AHN and then Mon Health.
The ECRI award goes to a facility that has worked the most toward patient safety, cost reduction and other measures in health technology; previous winners have included Penn Medicine and Boston Medical Center.
ECRI spotlighted one of Intermed’s initial successes, which is the development of a 3D-printed fingertip that can be ordered ahead of time and is low cost and easy to order for the patient.
“With other 3D-printed augmentations have required significant post-production customization and maintenance, our device’s intrinsic joint system makes it essentially maintenance-free and is able to be used immediately upon delivery,” said Dr. W. Thomas McClellan, CEO of Intermed Labs at Mon Health as well as a plastic reconstructive surgeon at Mon Health.
ECRI President and CEO Dr. Marcus Schabacker praised Mon Health’s innovation.
“Mon Health’s submission showed how health system leadership can foster an environment that encourages the use of innovative technology solutions to advance patient care,” Schabacker said.
Comentarios