Robert Woods Johnson Medical School, Now Part of Rutgers, Collaborates on Technologies to Increase Efficiencies in Healthcare Practices

According to an article in Rutgers Today. as part of the creation of an Accountable Care Organization at the Robert Woods Johnson Medical School (now part of Rutgers), doctors and professors will collaborate to study some uses of technology to coordinate care.

For example, Xiaomu Zhou, an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Information, wants to study how access to information through the patient portal can improve communication between patients and doctors. “I want to understand how information technology can be designed to provide more information access to patients, facilitate communication and lead to better health outcomes,” Zhou said.

And Professors Kang Li and Susan Albin, in the School of Engineering, will use mathematical modeling and statistical analysis to study workflow in the primary care office and define the role of a patient care coordinator.

 “The availability of services from a patient care coordinator could reduce patients frustration obtaining care, fulfill doctors’ plans for how best to help the patient, and reduce the cost burden on the whole community with fewer emergency room visits and hospital admissions,” Albin, a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering is quoted as saying.

These projects are part of a coordinated effort to figure out how the healthcare system should work, and then apply that to practices, the article said.

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