About the AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange
The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Health Care Innovations Exchange is a comprehensive program intended to accelerate the development and adoption of innovations in health care delivery. This program supports the Agency's mission to improve the safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, and equity of care—with a particular emphasis on reducing disparities in health care and health among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.
Launched in the spring of 2008, the Innovations Exchange has the following components:
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Searchable descriptions of a wide range of innovations.
These descriptions of successful and attempted innovations provide information on the innovative activity, its impact, how the innovator developed and implemented it, and other information that you can use when deciding whether to adopt the innovation.
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Learning networks. Through the learning networks, you can connect with
innovators and other adopter organizations to learn new approaches to delivering care, develop effective strategies,
and share information.
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Educational resources. This site offers you a variety of resources designed to help you learn about the process of innovation, the process of adoption, and the steps you can take to make your organization more receptive to innovative approaches to care. These resources include written materials and opportunities to participate in Webcasts and discussion groups.
Purpose of the Health Care Innovations Exchange |
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The Innovations Exchange is being designed to address a major challenge in health care delivery: the slow diffusion of
innovative strategies and activities across health care providers. Every day, health care practitioners develop new,
effective ways to provide better care, but that information does not move easily beyond institutional walls or across
health care silos (e.g., from hospitals to nursing homes, or from private physician practices to community health clinics).
As a result, great ideas are limited in their implementation—and providers are constantly reinventing the wheel because
they are unaware that tested solutions already exist.
AHRQ's solution is to provide health care practitioners with:
- A standardized way to document innovations,
- A centrally located and searchable repository that all health care decision makers can use to
quickly identify ideas and tools that meet their needs, and
- A way to network with like-minded innovation adopters.
Users of the Health Care Innovations Exchange are expected to be a diverse group—physicians, nurses,
administrators, allied health professionals, and others—with the common thread being their commitment to
improving the delivery of health care.
Governance of the Health Care Innovations Exchange |
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The Innovations Exchange is being maintained by a diverse and experienced team led by Westat under a contract with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Two groups of experts provide guidance to Westat and AHRQ and help to ensure the usefulness of the services and information provided by the Innovations Exchange.
Expert Panel
Composed of 13 nationally known experts in health care delivery and innovation,
the purpose of the Expert Panel is to provide strategic guidance on key aspects of the Innovations Exchange, including:
- Sources of important and emerging innovations;
- Partnerships with other organizations to further the dissemination of health care innovations; and
- Ways to reach and satisfy the many potential audiences for this effort.
Occasionally, Expert Panel members may provide commentary on innovations related to their specific areas of
expertise.
Editorial Board
The role of the Editorial Board is to offer advice on key strategic, design,
and implementation decisions necessary to launch and maintain the Health Care Innovations Exchange,
and to guide the selection of individual innovations. The six members of the Board are nationally known
editors and authors on health care quality, evidence-based science, implementation science, disparities,
and innovations.
Members of the Editorial Board also help identify and recruit Contributing Editors who have significant professional
editorial or writing experience and expertise related to innovations in areas such as health service delivery, quality
improvement, disparities reduction, organizational change, health professional education, health care administration,
and informatics. The Editorial Board will also support the team in selecting innovations that require expert commentary,
writing commentary themselves and inviting contributing editors to comment on specific innovations.
Learn more about our experts.
Last updated: March 28, 2008.
