Opinion Column

August 4, 2004

'Engineering' better health care requires all of Purdue's resources

By Joe Pekny

Since the announcement two weeks ago of funding for the Purdue Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, there has been considerable discussion about what "engineering" health care means. It most definitely does not mean engineering human beings — providers or receivers — out of new health-care delivery equation.

Joe Pekny

In fact, the goal of the Regenstrief Center is to use engineering principles to systematize the areas of health care precisely in order to free practitioners — doctors, nurses and support personnel — to spend their time with patients and to focus their attention on patient concerns.

We recognize that re-engineering the delivery of health care is a huge undertaking, which is why I compared it to Purdue's contribution to the space program. But while Purdue is known for its engineering, science and management, those schools can't accomplish this sky-high mission by themselves. The Purdue Regenstrief Center will also involve many liberal arts faculty in areas such as sociology, health communication and kinesiology, as well as researchers in our schools of pharmacy, nursing, health sciences, consumer sciences, technology, agriculture and even veterinary medicine.

Some initial areas of research at the Purdue Regenstrief Center will include improving the safety and efficiency of patient care, providing more efficient deployment of physicians, nurses and other health-care personnel, and better coordinating inpatient and outpatient treatment.

The Purdue Regenstrief Center formally officially starts operation in January, so we're still in our brainstorming, startup-enterprise phase. We are in the process of finding all of the university's researchers who are studying and teaching in areas related to health care. We are also looking for partnerships with hospitals, clinics and other health-care organizations and businesses, so we can set up "living laboratories," where Purdue researchers can spend extended periods of time not only looking at facts, figures and theories but also talking to the human beings who deliver and receive health care.

The story of Sam Regenstrief, who endowed the Regenstrief Foundation that funded our new enterprise, is instructive in understanding our new enterprise. Sam was a Viennese Jew who immigrated to Indianapolis in 1919 when he was 9 years-old. He grew up to be a manufacturer who popularized the low-cost home dishwasher, at one time producing 37 percent of the world's dishwashers in Connersville, Ind. He viewed automated dishwashing not as an end in itself but as a means to free housewives from a menial chore.

Sam Regenstrief was an authority on industrial production techniques who was frustrated by what he saw as a confused and inefficient health-care system. The Purdue Regenstrief Center is an effort to realize his dream of bringing to the health-care system the same type of approaches he applied in his business life in order to achieve better and more efficiently delivered health care for everyone.

Sam Regenstrief had his dream of a more efficient health-care system more than 30 years ago when he established the Regenstrief Foundation. And although Sam died in 1988, we're dedicated to helping achieve his vision — and that vision is making people's lives better.

Joseph Pekny is a professor of chemical engineering and the director of the e-Enterprise Center at Discovery Park, where the Purdue Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering will be located.