New Office to Focus on Clinical Practice Innovation

School of Medicine and Health Sciences initiative aims to improve medical care through clinical intervention.

July 29, 2013

Medicine Healthcare

A new office housed in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences will serve as a hub for developing and evaluating clinical interventions. The overall goal for the Office of Clinical Practice Innovation is to provide increased knowledge and understanding of structure, processes and effects of health services for individuals and populations.

“Through this new initiative, we hope to unite entities across campus and beyond to spur clinical practice innovation,” said Jesse Pines, director of the Office of Clinical Practice Innovation. “Our goal is that outcomes from our research will not only serve and improve processes within our own clinical entities at GW, but will become benchmarks for medical institutions across the country.”

For example, Dr. Pines and his team are working on proposals that will determine how to better engage patients in quality and safety improvement and are studying new innovations, like clinical decision units, and how they have impacted acute care delivery.

The main objectives of the Office of Clinical Practice Innovation are to:

“This new initiative represents a bold commitment to finding ways to improve the health care system that we know today,” said Jeffrey S. Akman, vice president for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. “By leveraging our existing partnerships and embarking on collaborations with other, like-minded research institutions, we believe that we will make a positive difference for patients and health care providers.”

The new office will employ assets within GW, including EMR systems used by its clinical partners, and develop a data infrastructure to facilitate the study of local clinical delivery initiatives at GW, as well as work with local partners. The GW Office of Technology Transfer will work to facilitate the development of new clinical innovations. The Office of Clinical Practice Innovation will also develop a fellowship program for physicians and other providers.