The connected health innovation hub – OROT plays a key role in revolutionizing how health and medical technologies are developed to improve care. Clinicians, researchers, healthcare users and entrepreneurs are challenged to use innovative, human-centred design to create exceptional, lower-cost experiences for healthcare recipients.
OROT is part of the Integrated Health and Social Services University Network for West-Central Montreal (CIUSSS West-Central Montreal) and is one of Quebec’s first incubators in a healthcare setting. The network, consisting of nearly three dozen diverse facilities, offers services to the population across the continuum of care. OROT is based at the Jewish General Hospital, one of Canada’s leading healthcare centres.
OROT’s contribution is pivotal to Care Everywhere, the CIUSSS’s wide-reaching vision for care, which relies on digital technology to deliver care in the safest, most appropriate and most convenient location for healthcare users.
“At OROT, we create a shield of support and protection to keep innovators and entrepreneurs moving in a direction that maximizes their chances of prompt success.” — Danina Kapetanovic, Chief Innovation Officer and Head of OROT
“Everything starts with the clarification of ‘why’, a fundamental notion that guides every challenge upon which we have embarked.” — Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, President and CEO of CIUSSS West-Central Montreal
Anchoring the CIUSSS’s digital health program, OROT brings together healthcare professionals, users and private-sector entrepreneurs to scrutinize the network’s needs and problems, codevelop prototypes, accelerate commercialization and, ultimately, integrate the innovation.
Previously, some companies have faced obstacles because the needs of healthcare providers were not understood in depth. To avoid this pitfall, OROT gives entrepreneurs access to the insights of users and professionals, resulting in products that truly meet everyone’s requirements. By accompanying entrepreneurs through the chain of innovation process, OROT makes certain that user-centred solutions arise from a collaboration of partners and experts at all levels.
OROT has spearheaded many co-development partnerships, introduced and integrated numerous solutions, and supported award-winning clinical programs, including:
- Using AI during the COVID-19 pandemic to predict, one week in advance, how many patients would require hospitalization
- Deployment of a mixed-reality Hololens device to improve delivery of many aspects of care
- Development of a Command Centre, a clearinghouse for digital data about the CIUSSS’s activities.
- Administrators now respond more effectively to rapidly changing conditions, while preventing bottlenecks in patients’ healthcare trajectories.
- Prompt, effective deployment of telehealth since early 2020, ensuring continuity of support for those at home during the pandemic. OROT also contributed expertise to Quebec’s first Hospital@Home program.
