Partnerships
New Collaboration with HP Enhances Patient Care

SPRING 2008 -- Two of the Packard family’s namesake organizations have joined together in a new $1 million effort to achieve safer, personalized, and more effective care for children and their families. 

In November, HP contributed technology valued at nearly $580,000 to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, coupled with a cash grant of $500,000 from the HP Company Foundation. 

Left to right: Susan P. Orr, member, LPFCH Board of Directors, member emeritus, LPCH Board of Directors; Mark Hurd, chairman of the board and CEO, HP; Marcela Perez de Alonso, chair, HP Company Foundation; and Chris Dawes, president and CEO, LPCH

The technology grant consists of more than 500 units of high-performance HP equipment, including notebook and desktop computers, monitors, and LaserJet printers. The HP notebooks will be available to families with children on extended hospital stays so that parents can stay connected to their relatives and jobs. Patients who are restricted to their rooms because of weakened immune systems will also have access to the computers. 

Other HP equipment will support a comprehensive electronic health record system called LINKS. Larger monitors have already been installed in the pediatric and cardiovascular intensive care units. 

''These new, 24-inch displays allow care teams to see the bigger picture,'' says Jin Hahn, MD, chief medical information officer and co-director of the Hospital’s Clinical Transformation Program. ''This is crucial in intensive care settings for viewing flow sheets and large amounts of patient data at a glance.'' The equipment will be integrated into Packard outpatient clinics this spring. 

The cash grant from the HP Company Foundation is funding a one-year research project designed by Atul Butte, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Pediatric Bioinformatics at Packard Children’s, and Paul Sharek, MD, MPH, chief clinical patient safety officer, to further improve the Hospital’s exemplary patient safety record.

The interdisciplinary pilot project brings together renowned leaders in quality, safety, and bioinformatics from the Hospital, HP Labs, and HP Life Sciences. 

''We are designing an automated, data-driven awareness of patient needs using pattern-recognition algorithms,'' says Chris Longhurst, MD, MS, physician lead, clinical informatics at the Hospital. ''In effect, we want to immunize our patients against harm.'' 

Marcela Perez de Alonso, chair of the HP Company Foundation, said that the joint projects are ''a great opportunity for us to build on our nearly two decades of partnership with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. It is also a welcome engagement in innovation that will make a difference in the future of children’s healthcare.'' 

''These two grants will help us advance pediatric safety and quality, empowering Packard Children’s to better achieve our mission of caring for children and expectant mothers,'' says Christopher Dawes, the Hospital’s president and CEO. ''We are excited to come together with HP in an exchange of knowledge and technology to address critical children’s health problems in Silicon Valley and around the world.''    

find out more

	Related Info
	Packard Children's News