Eastern Health partners with global tech firm
Local facilities will serve as an official innovation site for Bd-canada
In recent years, Eastern Health has been setting itself up as a “living lab” for health innovation, a strategy it plans to highlight at an innovation summit Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 20-21.
In advance of the event, the health authority and Bd-canada launched a formal partnership Tuesday by naming Eastern Health as an official BD innovation site for North America.
The designation “will ensure that Eastern Health is at the forefront of new technology while providing access to a live health-care environment for BD to test their products and services, including medical devices, hardware, software and innovative procurement methods,” the authority said in a news release.
Eastern Health CEO David Diamond was joined Tuesday by BD CEO Tom Polen and the company’s president for North America and chief marketing officer, Tony Ezell, to mark the occasion at the Admiral’s Green golf club in Pippy Park in St. John's.
“We see this as a unique opportunity in support of providing improvements for our patients, clients and their families,” Diamond said. “It is about identifying innovative solutions to positively impact on their health and quality of care.
“This partnership not only benefits Eastern Health, but the province as a whole, by delivering benefits to the patients, the economy and the future of innovative healthcare development in Newfoundland and Labrador.”
One example of BD’S innovation is a system called Healthsight, which is described as offering “safer, simpler, smarter medication management.”
Clients have reported the system not only helps in seamless management of medications, but reduces needless purchases and wastage.
“This is the first place outside of the U.S. that we have actually employed Healthsight, which is a critical tool that helps us to look at data and information across the health-care system,” Ezell said during Tuesday’s launch.
“These are the sorts of things that we hope to advance in this partnership.”
BD describes itself as one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world.
The company develops innovative technology, services and solutions that help advance both clinical therapy for patients and clinical process for health-care providers.
BD has a presence in virtually every country and partners with organizations around the world to address challenging global health issues.