JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – Ole Miss School of Business and the University of Mississippi Medical Center partnered up for a conference Tuesday about healthcare innovations. They say finding new ideas to improve patient outcomes, and economic opportunities is a win-win for the state.
The conference served as a place to brainstorm new ways to improve the way you get care and drive new healthcare-related business.
“We have to, as physicians, look outside of our own box and take the advice of people that maybe are from civil engineering, like one of our presenters here today, or someone who has had some practical experience on the ground as a parent who might be a mom or a dad who just has a great idea,” described Dr. Khristinn Kellie Leitch.
Former state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs was a panelist for a discussion titled “The Future of Technology in Healthcare Delivery: Do We need Physicians?”
“Who has an Apple watch? Or even your apple phone? So, there’s things now you can do to personalize your health which is a promise,” asked Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Dean of the UMMC John D. Bower School of Population Health. “But it’s also a real danger because people don’t really know what things mean when they see them.”
The data right at your fingertips or wrist is something docs expect will only expand.
“It’s gonna also be important to sort of communicate that with a health professional who knows how to interpret it, because a lot of the information that you get might be confusing, it might be frightening, it might be irrelevant, but also might be really, really, really very important,” added Dobbs. “So, you know, using that as an adjunct, not as a replacement for your, you know, your healthcare provider, your doc, your NP that’s going to be really the important thing.”
That kind of innovation does represent an opportunity on the business side of things.
“If you talk to entrepreneurs out there, there’s lots of work being done there,” said Dr. Paul Johnson, University of Mississippi Associate Dean of the School of Business. “So you know, apps, for example, that people are using these, this wearable technology.”
Other conversations included ways to improve the diversity of nursing staff in the state and how to create a better workforce pipeline.
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