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We see meaningful opportunities to accelerate what’s already in progress, build on everything we’ve done, and continue discovering and innovating ways to make our patients better. To do so, we need access to resources that are aren’t available to us today. Following are just a few examples of how we will deploy funds raised by the Accelerate Ability Campaign. We will continue to …
Shorten the time frame for scientific discovery.
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We’ve proven that we can deploy pilot funding to shorten the time frame required for scientific discovery; for example, cutting in half the time between the spark of an idea and winning a multimillion-dollar federal grant. Our Vision calls us to create and replicate such critical efficiencies, expanding scale and scope to more quickly meet the needs of our patients. Our patients are understandably impatient; they want solutions now.
Attract and retain leading scientists and clinicians doing work of critical importance to our patient populations.
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We’ve already recruited top scientists and clinicians, but we need greater resources to attract both additional scientific and clinical leaders. These leaders require funding for staffing, equipment and technology to run their practices and labs with maximum capacity, innovation and results — all focusing on work that is of greatest benefit to society.
Refine and expand our outcomes assessment system — the Ability Quotient (AQ) — and its infrastructure.
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We took on extensive analysis of our massive inpatient outcomes database (powered by our fledgling Electronic Data Warehouse) to create the AQ, a proprietary predictive modeling tool. The AQ enables precision medicine in rehabilitation practice, thereby customizing treatment by individual. Our inpatient AQ pilots were very successful. We must now expand use of the AQ to include all diagnoses and levels of care — thereby delivering greater precision and predictability, and better outcomes. Our EDW also provides access to data supporting a full range of analytics — from clinical to operational-decision support.
Support unique specialty programs for a rapidly growing number of patients
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We need to expand capacity for providing therapeutically valuable quality-oflife services that are key to living a full life, but that are not covered by insurance — sports and fitness; music, art and pet therapy; Child Life programming; peer mentoring; educational resources; assistive technology and vocational training. Similarly, we try to offer housing to out-of-state families. Demand exceeds our financial ability to provide all of these services. We want to make our unique programs available to the greatest number of patients.
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Now, our Vision calls us to do more in these areas and others. Accelerate Ability will help us raise funding to realize this next level. Shirley Ryan AbilityLab has shown it is worthy of the initial investment that gave birth to this revolutionary research hospital. We’ve proven that by integrating medicine and science, we advance human ability. We need you to help us bridge the gap between what we have and what we can do, with what we must do. For the people who count on us, advances in ability can’t come soon enough.