Ryan Cameron, the hospital's VP of Technology & Innovation, says healthcare understands empathy but not scale, while consumerism can scale but has problems with empathy. Put the two together and big things can happen.
Concepts that have been used in the gaming industry for decades are now helping pediatric surgeons understand exactly what they’re going to do before they even pick up the scalpel.
It’s happening at Children’s Nebraska. In a partnership with Insight Surgery, the 231-bed, Omaha-based pediatric hospital is creating 3D-based personalized surgical planning and cutting guides, allowing clinicians to see how each step of a surgical procedure will take place. The first use case, earlier this year, enabled an orthopedic oncology surgeon to conduct a complex sarcoma surgery of the tibial tubercle and patellar tendon, including an allograft.
"It's really perfect," says Ryan Cameron, EdD, CHCIO, CHD-E, the hospital’s VP of Technology & Innovation, "because the models really come into play for when you're working with multiple surgeons and they're going to try and figure out how to navigate a surgery."
Children’s Nebraska is one of the first hospitals in the nation to have an FDA-approved 3D printing and manufacturing facility on its campus. Cameron says the technology enables clinicians to map out and even practice complex surgeries, vastly improving the outcomes. It allows doctors to reduce the time and size of the surgery by being more precise, reducing trauma and speeding up recovery time, and gives them a visual guide when explaining the procedure to parents and caregivers.
"That's a lot better than saying, 'Hey, I'm gonna take a scalpel and we'll take care of it,’" Cameron notes.
Taking a Non-Traditional Approach to Innovation
Cameron says this type of 'thinking outside the box’ is sorely needed in healthcare, where clinicians look at something that has worked in another industry—say, gaming—and try to apply it to their biggest pain points.
"Technology that used to be very entertainment focused, very gaming focused, because of their consumerism, is now more accessible and more affordable and more ever-present," he says. "We use the very same headsets that you would use to play a video game, and our surgeons are able to take ultra-high resolution CTs and rehearse a surgery and save eight hours. And they're able to reduce multiple surgeries by doing pre-surgical planning."
Ryan Cameron, EdD, CHCIO, CHD-E, Vice President of Technology & Innovation at Children's Nebraska. Photo courtesy Children's Nebraska.
In pediatric healthcare, Cameron adds, this type of innovation is often more of a necessity than a luxury.
"The thing that has surprised me the most with pediatrics is the absence of investment and innovation," he says. "About 22% of the patient population in the United States requires pediatric care. But if you look at both venture capital investment and the number of healthcare startups that are happening, less than 2% are in pediatrics."
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"With pediatrics, everything [is] by default, [and innovation] has to be personalized and precise," he adds. While hospitals and health systems catering to adults have the advantage of a very large healthcare innovation technology market to choose from, healthcare executives at children’s hospitals often have to take a new idea or technology and design it specially for their needs.
For example, Cameron says there’s a radiologist on staff "who’s kind of a gearhead. He likes to fix things himself. A cardiologist walks into his office and asks him to build something for one of his patients. And he does it."
Cameron sees a lot of potential in the 3D printer, especially as the industry moves toward bioprinting. An idea once limited to science fiction could someday soon help children in need of transplants, bone and burn reconstructions and other serious health issues
"You think about all the many things where bioprinting is opening the door to a whole new era of healthcare," he says excitedly. "It truly is a profound notion that we could save lives by actually printing organs and tissue in parts."
"Let's say you take part of your leg bone and then move it up into your face so you can do facial reconstruction," he continues. "The fact that that's even possible now, it happens now and it's in front of us, is just remarkable. Because those are the [children] who really need it."
"We’re opening the door to every possibility," Cameron adds.
Looking for Healthcare’s Cutting-Edge Ideas? Try CES
That means looking behind some pretty interesting doors. Cameron, a former self-described "Silicon Valley pirate" and VP of strategy and innovation for an AI company, says he was deliberately hired by the health system in 2022 "to shake things up." He wants to create things, and he sees a very big workbench in front of him.
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Cameron dispatches members of his staff every January to CES in Las Vegas, sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). The healthcare industry has long been interested in consumer-facing technology and strategies, and more health systems are sending their transformation and innovation people in hopes of finding clinical connections to concepts like wearables, the smart home (and car) and gaming.
Cameron says he sees more potential there than at any of the other, more traditional healthcare events.
"We go to the healthcare conferences and we hear exactly what we expect to hear: Here are the problems [and] here are how our peers are tackling them, but we're don't hear about a lot of big moonshots," he says. "We don't see things that are novel that we can apply into the healthcare space."
"So when you set that horizon much higher, you look at higher education, you look at consumer markets, you look at it all. Even get a little wild, look at children's museums, theme parks, the gaming industry, the entertainment industry," he adds. "Those are places where rapid technology adoption is happening, and you find things that, you know, are really fascinating for us."
"This year, last year and the year before last, we've walked away from CES with at least one technology that's really made a huge impact," Cameron says.
The latest? Holographic communications, and a printer that can print skin-safe tattoos. Theme parks are using them to print cartoon characters on children’s arms. Imagine how they can be used to make kids feel more comfortable in the hospital, or even help them and their parents understand how they’re being treated.
"The possibilities in healthcare are endless," he says.
The Challenge: Balance Empathy With Consumerism
Cameron says all of healthcare—not just pediatric hospitals—needs to embrace this strategy to move forward at a time when transformation is imperative.
"Look at the unexpected places," he says. "Cross-industry collaboration is essential. Healthcare needs to talk to other industries, and vice versa. That's where the really good, exciting innovation comes from. It never happens in a vacuum; it's got to be diversity of thought, diversity of science and engineering, and then the exciting things happen."
Consumerism understands scale but not empathy, Cameron points out, while healthcare understands empathy but has problems with scale.
"And if you get those fine minds talking in the same room, and you can have scale with empathy," he says. "Then you revolutionize how you care for a human being."
Cameron’s advice for other innovation and transformation execs in healthcare? Stop setting the bar low. Raise your horizon.
"Hospitals that are hiring outside of the core discipline of healthcare are seeing success in that they've grown their capability to bootstrap innovation on their own," he says, noting the strong growth of innovation labs and centers and incubators. "They've become a little more brave in terms of thinking about IP and monetization, and thinking like a startup and being more agile and more quick."
"Big tech is trying to figure out how to do healthcare cheaply and make a ton of money off of it," Cameron adds. "And we're trying to figure out how to do healthcare at scale with incredible empathy and high quality. One of us is going to win. I’m betting on me."
Eric Wicklund is the associate content manager and senior editor for Innovation at HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Roughly 22% of the nation’s healthcare patients are children, yet less than 2% of VC investment and new startups are focused on pediatric healthcare.
Pediatric hospitals often have to take technology designed for mainstream health systems and tailor them for children’s healthcare—or create their own technology.
Children’s Nebraska sends staff to CES each year to survey the consumer technology landscape, and executives look for new ideas in any and every industry, from museums and theme parks to gaming and entertainment.