By Sean Hogan, VP of Healthcare, IBM
Nine years ago, my wife and I faced a parents’ worst nightmare: our four-month-old son needed neurosurgery for a birth defect which, if left untreated, is very serious. But, we were lucky. We could entrust him to the world’s best pediatric surgeons at the Boston Children’s Hospital. After 48 worrisome hours at the hospital, he was released and today, he's an energetic with all the wonder and occasional drama you'd expect in an elementary school student.
Yet for too many children around the world, access to this level of world-class care is limited. Every year, nearly seven million children die before turning age five from conditions such as malaria, diarrhea, and birth complications, which are all treatable with today’s existing medical practices.
Here’s the problem: Not enough medical staff are being trained to apply the latest practices in pediatric care. Not enough knowledge is shared to keep these children from dying. In fact, there’s a worldwide shortage of four million skilled medical workers.
Niger, for example, is a nation with 6.6 million children and just 30 pediatricians. And at Beijing Children’s Hospital, 7,000 patients show up each day, which is 3,000 more than the institution is equipped to handle.
This crisis in pediatric medicine is what spurred my company and Boston Children’s Hospital to turn to the cloud. We’re using the technology to roll out OPENPediatrics, a new service designed from the ground up to help create the skilled, knowledgeable pediatric workforce that children globally need. The physician leaders at Boston Children’s believe our approach, which pairs the best of technology and community, has the power to transform how pediatric medicine is taught and practiced around the world -- and stem the tide of preventable deaths among children.
OPENPediatrics is an online network that lets doctors and nurses in countries around the globe share and tap into life-saving medical information. Available online or offline, its collection of resources spans the gamut from the basics of pediatric care to cutting-edge research and procedures. Medical professionals get the chance to virtually practice and learn through video seminars and simulation tools that help them hone new skills.
But it isn’t just a library. It’s a community. The network connects experts from around the world who want to share knowledge and best practices. It provides a place where medical staff on the ground can ask advice and give insights on what they’ve learned first hand about treating children in very different conditions than the ones we see in our hospitals here in the U.S. And it layers on analytics to match up experts with need.
The knowledge exists today to help children in every country thrive and grow. But, for too long medical knowledge has been walled up in a few medical institutions, primarily in the Western Hemisphere.
Now though, we have the technological infrastructure to share this critical information with the people who need it to save lives. Cloud technology helps make it possible.
As OPENPediatrics is being rolled out, its impact is already being felt. For example, one doctor in Israel credits a video animation, which walked him through a difficult procedure for placing a breathing tube in a premature baby, with helping save an infant’s life.
Knowledge is power. And there’s no more compelling example of how powerful knowledge can be than helping save a child’s life.
My own child’s condition was treated, and because of it, he’s healthy and thriving. OPENPediatrics is an important step to bring that same promise of quality treatment to every child who needs it.
Read more stories about how clients benefit from “Made With IBM.” Join the conversation at #madewithibm.
Sean Hogan is Vice President of Healthcare at IBM. Hogan leads IBM’s global healthcare business and specializes in advising healthcare organizations about healthcare delivery transformation. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and earned his undergraduate degree from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth.
