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 designed 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.
The Innovations Exchange has the following components:
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Searchable innovations.
Profiles of successful and attempted innovations describe the innovative activity, its impact, how the innovator developed and implemented it, and other useful information for deciding whether to adopt the innovation.
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Searchable QualityTools.
Practical tools can help you assess, measure, promote and improve the quality of health care.
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Learning opportunities. Many resources describe the process of innovation and adoption and ways to enhance your organization's receptivity to innovative approaches to care. Resources include expert commentaries, articles, perspectives, and adoption guides.
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Networking opportunities. You can interact with innovators and organizations that have adopted innovations to learn new approaches to delivering care and developing effective strategies, and share information. Posting comments on specific innovations is one way to connect with innovators. Types of comments include asking questions or responding to questions about how an innovation works, and mentioning additional resources and lessons learned from adopting, implementing, and sustaining an innovation.
Purpose of the Health Care Innovations Exchange |
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The Innovations Exchange aims to increase awareness of innovative strategies and activities among health care providers in a timely manner. Every day, health care practitioners find better and more effective ways of delivering health care. However, the diffusion of their innovative ideas is slow and rarely reaches beyond institutional walls or across health care settings (e.g. from hospitals to nursing homes, or from private physician practices to community health clinics). As a result, health care providers unnecessarily duplicate each other's efforts.
The Health Care Innovations Exchange addresses this problem by providing:
- A central repository of searchable innovations and QualityTools that enables health care decisionmakers to quickly identify ideas and tools that meet their needs,
- A standardized description of innovations and QualityTools, and
- Opportunities for learning and networking with like-minded adopters of innovations.
A diverse group of individuals uses the Innovations Exchange ranging from nurses and health administrators to policymakers and students.
Governance of the Health Care Innovations Exchange |
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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) contracts with Westat, a consulting firm in Rockville, Maryland, to operate and maintain the Innovations Exchange. Two groups of experts provide guidance to Westat and AHRQ to ensure that the information and services provided by the Innovations Exchange meets the needs of users.
Expert Panel
Composed of 13 nationally known experts in health care delivery and innovation,
the Expert Panel provides 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.
Editorial Board
The Editorial Board provides guidance on the selection of content for the Innovations Exchange and key strategies to enhance the adoption and implementation of 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 with expertise in such areas as health service delivery, quality improvement, disparities reduction, organizational change, health professional education, health care administration, and informatics.
Learn more about our experts.
Last updated: April 13, 2009.
