Last week, we were excited to be able to share the work of the Chancellor’s Health Innovation Visioning Committee with the broader campus community. If you have not yet visited the Health Innovation website, I encourage you to do so. You will find the highlights of the committee’s vision (complemented by some fantastic graphics created by IHSI graphic designer Kacey Nelson) as well as a link to the final report PDF.
I would like to take this opportunity to again thank the very insightful and passionate committee and the broad array of stakeholders across campus who provided valuable input into this process. Although this report concludes the work of the Health Innovation Visioning Committee, this is the start of much more to come. A Health Innovation Implementation Committee along with three sub-committees will soon be formed and charged to begin to make plans for carrying out this vision. Realizing this new mission-based model for interdisciplinary research and education in Health Innovation will require extensive collaboration with units, programs, and resources across campus, as well as with health, industry, and translational partners locally and globally.
There are endless examples of how technology will be used to address many of society’s greatest health challenges. Smart sensing and imaging technologies connected to satellite networks will enable anywhere internet access for monitoring and management of chronic diseases, particularly needed as our aging population will increasingly require hospital-at-home care. Changes in mental health and well-being will be detected and diagnosed from smartphone-embedded sensors and AI-detected changes in social behaviors, activity, and voice and language patterns, followed by both in-person encounters and tele-health with avatar person and pet therapy. The list goes on.
But in order to change lives and have a real societal impact, we need more than technological innovation. We also need educational and social innovation. Advances in technology will be ineffective if not implemented with new training programs to both address the workforce shortages of physicians and nurses and educate and inform family and caregivers. Innovative ideas that will form the basis of future technological determinants of health outcomes will only succeed when coupled with innovative practices, processes, and resources that will address the social determinants of health. Again, the list goes on. We have much to do, and even more we could do.
I hope you will continue to be part of shaping and building this vision for health innovation at Illinois.
Sincerely,
Stephen Boppart, M.D., Ph.D.
Interim Director, IHSI