The Inflection Navigator Project

A lot of my effort in the past 1-2 years with the Szollosi Healthcare Innovation Program (www.TheSHIPHome.org) has focused on making the experience easier and better for patients dealing with an "acute inflection point" in their healthcare, such as the new diagnosis of cancer or a heart problem. Working with a great team at Northwestern University and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, we created "The Inflection Navigator" project, which brings together physician-friendly ordering workflows, system level protocols, care coordinators ("Navigators") and a web-based tool we developed to tie it all together.

We went live in April with a Hematuria Pathway, and then launched the Atrial Fibrillation Pathway in June, and finally the Cancer Pathway in September. We believe this combination of people, process and technology improves both the quality and efficiency of these situations, and does so in a cost-effective manner.

This recent article further explains our system and how we developed a web tool called "iNav", working with Northwestern University Biomedical Informatics Center (NUBIC):
http://cabig.cancer.gov/resources/newsletter/issueXXV/action.asp

Mike Gurley led the software development of iNav. Since it as based on open source code already developed for the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG), he posted the code and architecture online: http://github.com/mgurley/inav
Enjoy!