Institutes & Centers

Improving Healthcare Delivery and Consumer/Patient Health with Digital Health and Data Intelligence

The Healthcare Delivery Institute (HDI) at WPI is a university-wide multidisciplinary research and innovation institute, founded in 2011 to drive collaborative research, innovation, and education to impact healthcare delivery and consumer/patient health. HDI leverages WPI's distinctive interdisciplinary expertise across a broad spectrum of disciplines critical to addressing healthcare challenges, with a focus on applying digital technologies and IoT, process design and systems engineering, data intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, and enhanced user experience design. The Institute’s affiliated faculty, along with their research teams and students, work with leading industry, healthcare provider, government, and other organizations around the globe. The resulting solutions lead to new products, processes, and tools.

With its partners, HDI develops, creates, and demonstrates many user-driven innovations in real-life test environments, such as the living lab of Worcester and surrounding communities. Along with strategic relationships with the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) and the Visiting Nurse Associations of New England (VNANE), HDI has collaborated with over 10 healthcare provider organizations across the continuum of care.  The result is a living learning lab for healthcare innovation in central Massachusetts centered at HDI at WPI, healthcare graduate programs, thought leadership programs such as symposia and innovation forums, and workforce talent.

Current research activities and interests include: mHealth, health information technologies, sensors and wearables, wireless technologies, internet of medical things, patient engagement and user experience, health systems modeling and design, health data mining and intelligence, sleep, cybersecurity in healthcare, behavioral health and wound image analysis.

Our Six Core Areas of Research Expertise:

  • Digital Health and IoT
  • Data Intelligence and Machine Learning
  • Bioinformatics
  • Cybersecurity in Healthcare
  • Health Systems Engineering
  • User Experience and Decision Making

Focused on Six Key Strategic Challenge Areas:

  • Healthcare beyond the hospital (community and residential, workplace, on the go)
  • Health systems design
  • Acute/post-acute care and other care transitions
  • Wellness and prevention, population health management
  • Healthy aging with technology
  • Disease diagnosis, management, and therapy

Partner With Us

Our strength lies in our ability to partner with organizations around the globe that are working to solve strategic healthcare challenges.

Ways to Engage

  • Sponsor and collaborate with us on applied research projects
  • Donate funds, equipment, tools to support our research and development
  • Donate funds to our Spark Innovation Fund to provide seed grants to researchers on promising ideas
  • Fund faculty and student internships to collaborate with your organization in an area of healthcare improvement or innovation
  • Engage faculty with subject matter expertise as consultants or speakers
  • Co-develop, or enroll in, education programs
  • Contribute to or sponsor thought leadership activities, such as symposia and seminars
  • Sponsor graduate students and post-doctoral researchers

Contact us to learn more at 508-831-6199 or wpihdi@wpi.edu

 

News Release
2016 Healthcare Delivery Institute Brochure
Improving Healthcare through Systems Engineering, Design, and Data Intelligence

News

Digging Deep to Improve Healthcare
February 23, 2017
New App Will Buzz When You’re Buzzed
December 19, 2016
See More News

Announcements

November 18, 2016
Sharon Johnson - Health Systems Engineering
November 18, 2016
Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian: Privacy and Security in Healthcare
November 18, 2016
Soussan Djamasbi, User Experience and Interface Design
April 01, 2015
HDI Launches Collaboration with Visiting Nurse Associations of New England

Healthy Competition: UMass-WPI Course Hunts for Doctors with Ideas to Invest In

This article from the Telegram & Gazette profiles the Physician Leadership Development Program developed by UMass Memorial Medical Group and WPI's Healthcare Delivery Institute. The program provides emerging physician leaders with a development opportunity that prepares them to lead teams in an era of rapid operational change and reform. Program participants are awarded three graduate credits.

Read the Article

Healthcare in the Right Hands

As part of their overall research interest in how technology can improve the delivery of healthcare, Diane Strong and Bengisu Tulu, faculty researchers in the Foisie Business School, apply funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to create apps that give patients more control over their own well-being, reduce the need for doctor visits and other interventions, and to improve the quality of care that physicians and other healthcare providers can deliver. 

Managing Your Health? There's an App for That

The unique aspect of this collaborative Institute is its holistic approach to innovation. The faculty and students always think about the marketability, implementation, profitability, and life cycle of any concept, product, or process.
Denise Fletcher
VP, Healthcare, Payer & Pharma & Life Sciences
Innovation Center of Excellence LEO-US, Xerox