"It's not sitting in a box by myself dreaming up what's going to happen in 10 years, but being in the hospital."
That's the philosophy of Phoenix Children's Hospital's executive vice president and chief innovation officer, David Higginson, who says he spends a lot of time watching how patients, visitors, and caregivers interact at the free-standing children's hospital, which has been named one of the nation's top children's hospitals four times in the past five years.
Higginson, who joined Phoenix Children's in 2011 and became chief operating officer in 2018, says the enthusiasm and acceptance of change he sees in patients and their families is energizing, as is "the impact you see on family members' faces."
One of Higginson's latest projects involves equipping every room at Phoenix Children's with Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant technology, which he says is "incredibly complicated for children" and needs to be figured out for the parents and caregivers who use it to access resources and coordinate care.
"We are driven by outcomes and need, but we are also fundamentally trying to treat all the patients we have with limited resources," he tells the Arizona Republic.
"We're not going to go out there
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Caroline Diehl is a serial social entrepreneur in the impact media space. She is Executive Chair and Founder of the UK’s only charitable and co-operatively owned national broadcast television channel Together TV, the leading broadcaster for social change runs a national TV channel in the UK and digital platform which helps people find inspiration to do good in their lives and communities.