One year ago, eHealth NSW, HealthShare NSW, Health Infrastructure and NSW Health Pathology (NSWHP) partnered to create a facility that allows you to prototype and test ideas before they can be turned into real-world solutions.

Cel­e­brat­ing its first anniver­sary in August 2023, the Health Pro­to­typ­ing Cen­tre (HPC), is a ded­i­cat­ed space where clin­i­cians, sys­tem experts and con­sumers can col­lab­o­rate to tri­al new innovations.

It’s the per­fect space to exper­i­ment with nov­el con­cepts, explore pos­si­bil­i­ties and rapid­ly test ideas and designs to learn if a con­cept works or not, before bring­ing it to life. These health pro­to­types can be as sim­ple as explor­ing new tech­nol­o­gy or design­ing a state-of-the-art pathol­o­gy laboratory.

Mar­tin Cano­va, NSWHP Direc­tor Strat­e­gy & Trans­for­ma­tion and Act­ing Direc­tor Clin­i­cal Oper­a­tions, reflect­ed on the one year anniver­sary, shar­ing “I am immense­ly proud to have estab­lished the HPC with our part­ners. This vision­ary ini­tia­tive is tes­ta­ment to our unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to advanc­ing health­care innovation.”

“With this cen­tre, we are shap­ing the future of patient care, diag­nos­tics and ser­vice deliv­ery. We are empow­er­ing our ded­i­cat­ed teams to col­lab­o­rate, ideate and bring rev­o­lu­tion­ary solu­tions to life. Togeth­er, we are pro­pelling health­care for­ward to fos­ter a health­i­er and brighter tomor­row for our com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

In the HPC’s first year, 25 projects were run through the cen­tre, out­per­form­ing the orig­i­nal goal of ten projects. NSW Health Pathol­o­gy com­plet­ed five projects in the HPC. Two of these projects involved pro­to­typ­ing the lay­out of our Black­town and West­mead pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ries, with anoth­er cur­rent­ly in flight and more expect­ed in the years to come.

“Pro­to­typ­ing our pathol­o­gy labs before they’re built allows us to find out what will and won’t work before cost­ly and def­i­nite final instal­la­tion,” said Dr Alex Gar­rett, Ser­vice Design­er at NSW Health Pathology.

“It’s much eas­i­er to explore and design our lab lay­outs when the instru­ments are made from card­board instead of hun­dreds or thou­sands of kilos of real equip­ment with spe­cialised util­i­ties require­ments. The process also allows our staff to con­tribute to the design of their lab and expe­ri­ence what the future of their work­place and work­flows could look like at full scale.”

The HPC pro­vides the per­fect space for NSWHP to test emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, like an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) head­set to enable telepathol­o­gy (prac­tic­ing pathol­o­gy from a dis­tance), and to exam­ine cur­rent chal­lenges for ser­vice deliv­ery and pain points for staff work­ing in anatom­i­cal pathology.

“It’s been a great expe­ri­ence to learn and explore how new tech­nolo­gies can be inte­grat­ed into the pro­fes­sion of anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy,” said Ravite­ja Kan­nekan­ti, Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy Trainee at NSWHP.

“It’s excit­ing to con­sid­er how cur­rent process­es can be enhanced, so that we can con­tin­ue to improve our ser­vices for the peo­ple of NSW.”
Want to get a clos­er look at this inno­v­a­tive and col­lab­o­ra­tive space? Jour­ney through the HPC by watch­ing our vir­tu­al tour video.

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