Healing health care through team care: Project 10 to the 100th
The Google Foundation asked people to submit call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible, through Project10tothe100. Here's our idea, as submitted on the Google Foundation official form.
We believe Washington State University Health Sciences, Inland Northwest Health Services, and Spokane, WA are the best place in the world to launch our idea.
Idea name
Heal health care through team care
What one sentence best describes your idea?
Revolutionize health care research and delivery: Create knowledge-rich teams using health IT to advance human health in the context of larger systems.
Describe your idea in more depth
Today, health care is fractured.
We’re treated by isolated professionals who were taught and practice in silos. Experts on human health don’t work with experts on plant, animal or ecological health. Seldom do any cross paths with experts in policy. And the information that could help them all is cumbersome to access, lying hidden in patient data and public health records.
Tomorrow’s health care should be a system.
Interdisciplinary research unraveled the code for DNA. Imagine a future where—thanks to a robust health IT system and people who understand and use the knowledge it holds—the learning from such research is translated real-time into instruction, clinical services, and other practices and policies. Imagine if our health were designed into our very culture and health solutions were customized to each person.
We need to start a health care revolution.
The world needs a fresh approach to understanding and embracing human health as a system. People can design it, technology can enable it. We need to demonstrate in an entire community that we can dramatically improve the culture in health care research, curriculum, delivery, policy and the medical informatics and data sharing that tie it all together.
We can create a “connected care community” that brings together new teaching methods, interdisciplinary research, a robust electronic medical records system, public health, plant and animal health, clinical partners, and thoughtful, culturally appropriate outreach to vulnerable and underserved populations . This connected care community will create, test, refine, and disseminate a new health care model for the world.
Good science builds hope, but smart policies embed scientific discoveries into the fabric of everyday life. We will weave a new healthy fabric for the world by changing how we understand health.
What problem or issue does your idea address?
Inside the U.S. health care system: Annually $17 billion in preventable medical errors; tens of thousands of preventable hospital deaths; 1.5 million people injured by medication errors; approximately 1 million premature deaths due to preventable conditions; unsustainable annual cost increases; patient records scattered among providers; no connections between individual records and public health.
The global health challenge: Many serious infectious diseases—SARS, E. coli, salmonella, Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad cow) disease, and potentially avian flu—are transmitted from wild and domestic animals to humans via food, water, air, or insects. In rural areas and poor nations, the consequences of one sick animal can be disproportionately overwhelming. We need to detect diseases early, prevent their spread, link animal/human health surveillance systems, and equip local health organizations and providers with tools for quick response.
The answer: Linking health IT to knowledge-rich teams in a connected care community under the Team Care umbrella.
If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
Everyone in the world benefits from greater understanding, better outcomes and lower costs in health care.
At the current rate of increase, it’s projected that health care costs will consume 20% of GDP in developed nations by 2050, over 50% of GDP by 2080 in the US alone. US spending increases every year without actual improvements in outcomes.
The location that serves as the first connected care community laboratory will benefit first from the development and implementation of new approaches. These benefits will be exported to the world as research is published, new professionals are trained to replace the wave of retiring practitioners, and health IT and public health system integration is developed. Through national and international partnerships, programs will be launched that enable other communities to serve as next-generation laboratories for further research and education, spreading this model around the world in a cycle of continuous improvement.
What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
Identify a community with key characteristics essential to rapid development and testing of health IT integration and the change to a knowledge-rich team care culture in the professions:
- at least 1000 practitioners and all hospitals in the area participating in a single electronic medical records database as a research resource;
- existing collaborations among hospitals and providers;
- urban/rural interface;
- institutions of higher education with proven research and outreach, but without traditional silos in health professions programs;
- a research university with expertise in global animal health;
- a partnership culture that will enable rapid adoption of the Team Care philosophy;
- support from elected officials for investment to build a new system;
- and a vision for transforming our understanding of health care.
In that community, invest in new curriculum, health IT research, data exchanges, research at the animal/human health boundary, and rapid development and dissemination of evidence-based knowledge to change understanding, culture, and practice.
Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?
Some key outcomes:
- Consumers value the community care concept;
- providers participate in the health IT system at higher rates;
- the electronic medical records system serves as both research resource with deidentified/standardized records, and as a means to improved care with the ability to reidentify patients and inform their providers of new findings for personalized care;
- students in health professions learn a new team-oriented curriculum;
- animal disease surveillance systems, public health, and the medical system exchange data;
- core systems needed for other communities to adopt this approach are identified and ready for dissemination;
- the community and its institutions/organizations are recognized as models and share information with others to facilitate adoption of the new approach.
All of this results in the most important and measurable outcomes of all: a more efficient and less costly health care system with significantly improved outcomes and healthier people.
Quick links
- Idea name
- What one sentence best describes your idea?
- Describe your idea in more depth
- What problem or issue does your idea address?
- If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
- What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
- Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?
