Dalton Shaull’s journey to co-found a number one medical workflow automation enterprise OmniLife Well being started with a automotive accident when he was a pupil on the College of Iowa. An damage to his hand required a nerve transplant, igniting an curiosity in medtech and how you can enhance the medical workflows inside transplant. Conversations with an uncle and a transplant surgeon make clear the advanced challenges concerned in transplant with multi-disciplinary groups, the time inside which choices should be made, and all of the communications to care groups which might be required. This was the spine behind Shaull creating FlowHawk™, a communication and collaboration platform that captures all of the communications between care groups that occur exterior of the EHR, beginning with organ consumption administration.
In 2018, OmniLife launched a safe transplant chat device to facilitate interactions between surgical groups, sufferers, and organ procurement organizations (OPOs) —non-profit organizations chargeable for organ consumption administration inside transplant. Shaull’s important achievement to safe a $1.5 million Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH) Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis (SBIR) grant, was used for a analysis examine aimed toward enhancing communication to extend organ donation acceptance and transplant charges.
“We had been in a position to display a 50% discount within the time clinicians spent on the telephone and the 30% enhance in transplant charges at hospitals utilizing our know-how,” Shaull stated.
Dalton Shaull
The findings of this examine, coupled with market demand, served as the muse for the following part of OmniLife’s development. The corporate expanded to fulfill market demand from a safe messaging chat device for transplant facilities to a complete medical workflow automation and collaboration platform, and in November 2022, Omnilife commercially launched FlowHawk. One of many largest boundaries to doing extra organ transplants is utilization of organs. In response to Shuall, many elements affect organ use. Though coverage is an element, scalability and useful resource availability are additionally essential. Organ transplant facilities are prone to a hospital’s operational constraints, together with restricted capability on account of occupied beds and the provision of surgeons.
Shaull famous that a number of parts are essential to a profitable transplant past the precise surgical procedure, comparable to anesthesiology, pathology, cardiology, diet, pharmacy, and discharge. These parts should be a part of the workflow to assist the transplant facilities function extra successfully and effectively. Shaull’s firm is eager about bettering coordination between these teams and the transplant heart.
There are lots of commonplace working procedures and checklists inside digital well being information (EHRs) however there’s a mass quantity of knowledge exhaustion – what occurs exterior the EHR — the place care and medical communications break down, significantly when caring for advanced sufferers involving a number of departments and completely different EHR methods. OmniLife additionally performs a pivotal position within the early phases of a transplant journey, serving to streamline referrals and supply transparency in affected person communication. At first of a transplant journey, because the affected person will get identified with organ failure, they’re referred to a transplant heart. The wait time for an organ might span a few months to a number of years, relying on the place within the nation the affected person lives and the organ they want. Different related elements embrace the variety of organ affords the transplant heart receives, whether or not and why they declined earlier affords, and estimated wait time to the day a suitable organ for transplant arrives. Relying on the scale of the transplant heart, a single heart might obtain from 30-40 to tons of of organ affords for his or her sufferers, Shaull stated. The facilities have to say no a great variety of organs on account of high quality or logistics points.
By rising case quantity, FlowHawk helps hospitals do extra transplant procedures. Its communication and collaboration platform accelerates transplant facilities’ evaluate of organ affords, helps them make one of the best choices for his or her sufferers, and accelerates the organ consumption course of.
One other advantage of FlowHawk is post-transplant care, which triggers a brand new set of workflows for in-patient discharge, outpatient ongoing care, particularly for the primary three to 4 months following surgical procedure. Transplant sufferers require frequent lab work to observe and stop rejection of the graft. The affected person must be monitored intently for six months to 1 12 months
“Hospitals require analytics information to evaluate and monitor survivability, which replicate efficiency and outcomes,” Shaull emphasised. “To make care cycles sustainable, hospitals should cut back these care cycles by 50% or extra or face unsustainable prices.”
As healthcare executives assess their operational constraints and vulnerabilities of guide processes, FlowHawk is quickly gaining acceptance nationwide by transplant facilities. It serves because the main communication and collaboration platform, enabling care groups to speed up communications, cut back the chance of errors, expedite decision-making, and mitigate danger publicity.
For the reason that launch of FlowHawk, OmniLife has helped transplant facilities nationwide to optimize their applications by digitizing medical workflows to streamline and standardize operations to create environment friendly, dependable, and cost-effective processes to enhance program and affected person outcomes.
OmniLife has skilled sturdy development over the previous 12 months. Trying ahead, OmniLife has set its sights on addressing organ failure, together with coronary heart and lung failure, and can also be contemplating growth into kidney and liver failure. Moreover, the corporate is exploring advanced cancers, and sufferers with advanced illnesses comparable to amyloidosis.
Shaull summed up OmniLife’s success this fashion:
“We’re not an organization with an answer searching for an issue. We’re searching for issues after which creating options by means of FlowHawk to unravel these issues. We’re additionally empowering care groups. We imagine that to enhance affected person security and affected person care, we should empower the folks offering the care. We take a provider-centric strategy, offering construction and standardizing care.
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