By Jordan Benadiba
As Women’s College Hospital (WCH) shifts towards a learning health system model and looks to apply innovative approaches across the Academics (research, innovation & education) portfolio, a new multi-phased operations program has begun – Project Launch.
“Project Launch aims to set quality improvement, education and research up for the greatest possible success through the creation of a seamless pathway for the initiation, execution and knowledge translation of all projects and studies at Women’s College Hospital”, explained Dr. Rulan Parekh, vice-president, Academics, WCH.
In Fall 2021, an academic process review team was assembled to determine areas of improvement and map out an updated process for launching a study or project. “Ultimately, we want to help elevate research, innovation and education. That requires creating processes with Academics that are straight-forward, streamlined and free of unnecessary delays or redundancies”.
The overarching goals of Project Launch include:
- Promoting integration between quality improvement, education and research
- Embedding standardized, centralized, and accessible processes
- Ensuring transparency with clear timelines
- Developing a scalable process for the learning health system
- Supporting new faculty/staff and team members with enhanced resources
- Educating on the compliance with ethical and regulatory standards
As the first step of Project Launch, Academics has developed an electronic tool, an initiation form, comprised of a series of survey questions specific to a team’s project or study concept. Once the form is completed an automatic checklist is generated outlining key contacts, links, resources, and other essential information.
This tool will help determine what resources a team needs to move forward and begin their work. Information from the initiation form will never be collected or fed into other systems, so teams can use it as many times as they’d like to explore different options or scenarios for their project or study.
As a multi-step program, Project Launch will roll-out over the course of 2022-2023 – as new processes and resources are developed, they will be announced across both Academics and WCH.