Sandy Kleffman of the Contra Costa Times visited Kaiser Permanente’s Sidney R. Garfield Center for Health Care Innovation, where researchers from Kaiser and other organizations come together to test their innovations in real-world situations.
The 37,000-square-foot warehouse in San Leandro, south of Oakland, was built in 2006 and contains mock living rooms, operating rooms and more.
“The goal is to discover unforeseen problems before health care firms spend large sums of money on innovations that sound great in the laboratory but don’t work in the real world,” Kleffman reported.
When Kleffman and other reporters visited, researchers were testing everything from a remote video diagnostic tool to the Nintendo Wii and its use in rehabilitation.
