Healthcare Innovation Magazine|Healthcare Innovation…A Bridge Over Troubled Waters
The environment we are in is allowing us to establish creative and innovative ways to safely move studies forward expeditiously. This pandemic is unprecedented and it’s an opportunity for us to make the world a better place.
Overnight, the COVID-19 global pandemic caused significant disruption to all aspects of life worldwide, and just as quickly, innovation became our bridge over troubled waters, as it has throughout history.
Everyone remembers the Apollo 13 crisis. When there was an explosion on the lunar module, NASA engineers had to figure out how to build a filter out of a bunch of spare parts on the spacecraft. They only had a few hours to find a solution. It was a great moment for the U.S. space program and for American ingenuity. Out of a crisis came a solution.
In 1952, the U.S. was experiencing the worst polio outbreak in its history, and with no vaccine available 57,000 people became infected, 21,000 were paralyzed and 3,145 died, most of them children. Swimming pools and movie theaters were closed up, and frightened parents kept their children at home after seeing images of kids in leg braces and hospital wards filled with infants sealed in iron lungs. With the help of a national March of Dimes fundraiser campaign, a vaccination was discovered and introduced on April 12, 1955.
Family practice physician Dr. Sarah Page says, “The COVID-19 pandemic will bring exciting new innovations just as it has in the past. Caregivers throughout history have been able to adapt and rise to the occasion with new innovations when challenged with crises.”
Where We are Today
Today, medical professionals across the U.S. and beyond are developing innovative solutions to problems that arose out of the pandemic. Immediately, with the shortage of PPE’s nurses and others began making face masks and face shields, distilleries began making hand sanitizers, and physicians began developing new products and procedures to respond. Our subsidiary Tech Knowledge Associates and our Innovation Lab were among those diligently working to make quality masks, especially for the frontline.
COVID-19 has triggered unprecedented innovation including here at The Innovation Institute where the need to accelerate new solutions and medical products in our Innovation Lab became a priority. One of those products was the BayWin Closed Circuit Valve™ which has been dispersed to hospitals across the U.S., is designed to maximize protection of caregivers from airborne infectious agents that can be released from mechanically ventilated patients. Unlike the other valves on the market, the BayWin valve doesn’t require caregivers to disconnect the valve to change from manual to mechanical ventilation or to do suction or provide meds. Disconnecting the ventilator circuit can expose clinical staff to infectious agents released from within the circuit and create loss of lung pressure in patients, that may lead to complications like ventilator-associated pneumonia. More…
