Clinicians at the Indiana University Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science at the Regenstrief Institute and IU Center for Aging Research have developed and published an agile methodology that they say can reduce implementation time of technologies for evidence-based medicine from a decade down to two years. 

Executives said that the methodology provides a catalytic platform for transforming the existing healthcare delivery system into a patient- and family-centric, high reliability, learning healthcare delivery system.

It often takes healthcare systems 17 years to implement only about 15 percent of evidence-based healthcare solutions, said Malaz Boustani, MD, who leads the Agile Implementation team.

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Employing the Agile Implementation methodology, scientists at Indiana University and the Regenstrief Institute implemented an evidence-based collaborative care model within two years, and they have sustained this model for a decade.

“This is personal,” Boustani said in a statement. “I want my own family and my patients and their families to get the best evidence-based care with great value, and I want this to happen now. With Agile Implementation, we can effectively and sustainably compress the discovery to delivery translational timeline."

Boustani and colleagues developed and have sustained the model for 10 years. They reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations while broadening the definition of a patient to include the family members who enable cognitively impaired and depressed individuals to live in the community.

"Agile Implementation: A Blueprint for Implementing Evidence-Based Healthcare Solutions" is published online in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

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