The Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center is a simulated care delivery environment for testing new ideas and designs. At the Garfield Center the people of KP, our members, and the communities we serve come together with a common vision to improve the care we deliver by developing and evaluating new technologies, products, clinical care processes, and facility designs.

The Garfield Center provides a physical testing ground for new technologies, hospital design and materials, workflow, and biomedical equipment in advance of their adoption and utilization. Space includes:

Clinical and nursing unit with patient rooms fully mocked up including medical surgery room, operating room, emergency department treatment Room, and labor & delivery room
IT & Biomedical technology laboratory
Rapid prototyping spaces
Outpatient setting with provider offices, exam room, and reception areas
Home care environment
Learning and conference center
Test Before Build

Kaiser Permanente physicians and staff have the unique opportunity to work side-by-side with designers, architects, and technologists to test and evaluate everything from biomedical equipment, new technology, facility designs, and materials before implementation. For example:

The Innovation and Advanced Technology Group will utilize testing environments to evaluate advance technologies
National Facilities Services will take a look at workflow, paths of travel, patient monitoring and visibility, patient, family and staff amenities, and support and functional systems, as well as finishes, equipment and design standards
Biomedical Engineering and KP-IT will utilize a “plug and play” testing area to support testing and training on the use of new devices.

Just thought you should know

That statement needs qualifying, I’d say. Are we behind in cool technologies, or actual face-to-face healthcare end-results – and is that the actual patient’s… I mean, comrade’s… or rather, citizen’s point of view or just the technologists? I’m not picking a fight here, because I don’t know enough about it to do that – but I looked and found thousands of articles about the evident reality of socialized medicine and how agonizing and horrific much of socialized medicine really is. Apparently, while some in the US are rushing blindly into socialized medicine (and everything else), many others beyond whatever borders we still have seem to be running in our direction.

I don’t know… I’m just sayin’.

Why are vendors not offering solutions to this?

This is where the money is. I am confused