Streamlining Health Care
Chronic conditions and diseases are on the rise worldwide. More than 10,000 Americans reach Medicare age daily, some whom will go on to develop multiple chronic conditions and account for a large share of Medicare spending. A population that is aging and changes in societal behavior are leading to an increase in common and costly long-term health problems. This, in turn, exerts considerable demand on our health care systems.
In this seminar, Professor Bijan Nahafi, Ph.D., provided an overview of Baylor College of Medicine’s Center to Stream Health Care in Place (C2SHIP) and the practical approaches being taken toward integrating technologies into long-term patient care. The Center is trying to ensure that patients with chronic conditions feel empowered in their self-care and attempted to improve health care for this vulnerable population. Chronic illness care involves maintaining personal independence in the face of a daunting situation and includes preventative measures to focus on optimizing wellness. These efforts build upon a recent National of Science Foundation (NSF), Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers award, which is a collaborative center between four academic institutes including Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), University of Arizona, Caltech, and University of Southern California as well as 15+ industries. The ultimate goal is to decentralize the traditional patient care and referral model and replace it with one that is patient-centered and implements AI into patient referral.
Najafi is currently serving in the Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas), Department of Surgery as a tenured Professor, Director of NSF Center to Stream HealthCare in Place (C2SHIP), Director of Clinical Research in the Division of Vascular Surgery, and Director of Interdisciplinary Consortium on Advanced Motion Performance (iCAMP). He completed his Ph.D. in Bioengineering as well as a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biomechanics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Tech and in Neuroscience at Harvard University. He has over two decades of experience in designing bio-inspired sensors for objective evaluation of healthy state of patients with locomotor dysfunctions as well as over 200 scientific publications in peer reviewed journals. He works with a wide network of clinical and bioengineering collaborators across the globe, primarily in the clinical areas of falls, frailty, gait, cognitive impairment, diabetes, remote patient monitoring and digital health. He has received multiple prestigious awards including the Most Influential Health and Medical Leaders award in the category of achievement in designing medical devices.