The cloud has brought a lot of benefits to individuals and enterprises, but nowhere are its advantages more stark than in the realm of healthcare. Cloud-based solutions allow health professionals to share information across geographic and national boundaries, improving both the knowledgebase of information and the quality of care available.
Pediatrics is one of those areas of healthcare that have seen benefits from cloud-based solutions. Around the world today, nearly seven million children under age five die from preventable and treatable illnesses like pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, most of them in rural places where skilled healthcare is not readily available or affordable.
IBM and Boston Children's Hospital recently announced they have teamed up to create a new cloud-based global education technology platform to change how pediatric medicine is taught and practiced around the world. The two companies, which say the initiative is the first of its kind, hope to use the initiative to improve the exchange of medical knowledge on the care of critically ill children no matter where they live. Called OPENPediatrics, the cloud-based technology platform aims to provide healthcare workers with the knowledge and skills they need to save children's lives during intensive care situations. The companies say that as the program expands, content will extend beyond critical care.
IBM has supplied the technology platform, and Boston Children's Hospital will provide the educational content, which includes seminars from international expert clinicians. By putting the OPENPediatrics platform in the cloud, IBM will be providing global healthcare workers with easier access to the latest medical information, training modules, best practices, and social interactions between users, even if their own nations lack the critical infrastructure for such educational programs.
"Nothing breaks down walls and brings people together like caring for a critically ill child," said Jeffrey Burns, MD, MPH, chief of Critical Care Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, in a statement announcing the initiative. "With IBM's technology and services arsenal and our critical care expertise, we partnered to bring our vision of stronger pediatric care to countries across the globe. In doing so, we're extending the reach of medical education to help save children's lives and laying the groundwork for the Digital Hospital of the future."
Edited by
Alisen Downey
