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September Summit To Launch Duke Institute for Health Innovation

Dr. Victor Dzau welcomes participants to a DIHI workshop.
Dr. Victor Dzau welcomes participants to a DIHI workshop.

After years of groundwork, the Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI) -- a new, enterprise-wide platform for promoting transformative innovation in health and health care through research, leadership, workforce training and entrepreneurship -- will be inaugurated with events Sept. 8 & 9.

"Despite Duke University and Duke Medicine's longstanding reputation in education, cutting-edge research and care delivery, it has historically been challenging for faculty from across the university to use their collective expertise and work with our health system to innovate in health care delivery," said Dr. Victor J. Dzau, chancellor for health affairs for Duke and president and CEO of Duke University Health System (DUHS).

"We have not offered a fertile environment for people to do research and make changes within the health system and, to me this is a missed opportunity."

DIHI took root more than seven years ago when Dzau assembled an "affinity group" of physicians to study the importance of leadership and innovation to the future of health care. This initial study led to funding from The Duke Endowment in 2009 to develop the Duke Medicine Initiative for Health Innovation. Interest in establishing a campus-wide initiative that would align faculty interests and expertise in health innovation, leadership and policy grew, and DIHI was born.

DIHI started monthly innovation workshops this past May. Approximately 100 participants from Duke University, Duke Medicine and the local community took part in these workshops, which explored health systems engineering, mobile health, care redesign, and chronic disease management. The next innovation workshop is on Aug.19 and will focus on online education.

"DIHI is a powerful vehicle for mobilizing talent from around Duke to transform health care and improve health outcomes through innovation," says Greg Dees, Rubenstein Senior Fellow in the Fuqua School's Social Entrepreneurship Initiative on Innovation & Entrepreneurship. 

"The core values that I find in the DIHI group are rigor, collegiality, and a search for new approaches that will make major improvements on the dimensions of quality, access and affordability," added Dees, who is also a senior faculty member at DIHI.

An inaugural Summit on Transformative Innovation in Health Care on Sept. 9 at Duke's Trent Semans Center for Health Education will highlight DIHI's two-day launch. The summit will bring together leaders in health innovation for an exploration of the future of health care, health innovation and the role of universities in driving change and health care innovation.

Speakers and panelists will include Dr. Mark McClellan, director of the Health Care Innovation and Value Initiative, Brookings Institution; Lord Ara Darzi, KBE, chairman, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College of London; Ray Baxter, head of Innovation Activities, Kaiser Permanente; health care economist and former Duke trustee Uwe Reinhardt Princeton University; and Sir Andrew Witty, chief executive officer, GlaxoSmithKline.

Attendance is open to all in the campus community, but slots are limited. For registration information and details about the Summit, visit: http://www.dihi.org/events-workshops/summit/.