Innosight analyst Curtis Chan recently co-authored the blog post, "Swiffer Solutions for Health Care," with Eva Luo, a regular contributor to the IHI Open School for Health Professions blog. The post recounts the observational research Procter & Gamble did in developing Swiffer and offers up one health-care "Swiffer story": Project HEALTH, a nonprofit organization located in Boston that through observational research uncovers links between specific poverty conditions and poor health outcomes, then seeks to break those links.
According to the post: "This is the logic: The hospital is the site where health care is delivered — and with just a minor stretch is also a convenient site where psychosocial interventions can be introduced to better and more comprehensively improve the health of kids and their families. The systems redesign answer is a crew of motivated college students stationed in the hospital. If doctors feel their patients need assistance obtaining housing, have food insecurities, or can benefit from utilities bills discount programs, doctors can now refer patients to Project HEALTH volunteers who work with patients to obtain those resources right there in the hospital.
How could health care improve if observational research was more commonly used? Are there Swiffer-like solutions for every health care problem? Following the model of observational research itself: Let’s look and see."
