Gira S. Morchi, MD Pediatric Cardiologist, DivisionChief, CHOC Cardiology and Co-Medical Director of the CHOCHeart Institute
This month the Mi4 Team met with Dr. Gira Morchi to talk abouther role as an innovator at CHOC. Dr. Morchi, we had the opportunity to partner with you to co-create parent/patient educational heart modules. Can you share thoughts on the process? When we made the heart modules, the most interesting part for me was dealing in a realm that I had no familiarity with. I enjoyed seeing how this was just the tip of the iceberg in applying new technologies and working with people who aren’t involved in practicing medicine, and how we were able to come together to apply our respective areas of expertise to create something to help our patients and families. I think they will really appreciate the ability to learn about their child’s condition and how we treat their child in this unique way. It is so different than the way we learned things when we were in medical school and to see this whole other side is fun and exciting. What was the innovation process like for you was it different than you anticipated? I think the part that surprised me was how it really could be my own vision of the heart. Because the team was building it from scratch every wall every chamber was being created the way that I envisioned it to be. Knowing that we can make adjustments to every aspect and really make it our own is amazing. We were able to tailor the modules to how we think people who are learning could understand it the best. Having a team of non-medical creators and a resident with different levels of knowledge contributing to this really added to the final product. What would you like to share with colleagues who might want to innovate ways to provide patient and parent education? One of the things that was intimidating to me at first was just the word innovator. I don’t think of myself as an innovator, and I imagine a lot of us do not. But we are definitely problem solvers because that is what we must do daily. If one approaches innovation with the point of view that, “I have this problem that I want to solve” and presents it to that team framed in that way, that can be the first step and things can move forward from there. As opposed to approaching it as, “I am going to make this whole new module or device from scratch and make it on my own,” because it can be overwhelming to look at it from that perspective. We should think of innovation and the use of augmented reality as another tool in our tool kit of things we use every day to solve problems. Dr. Morchi, we had the opportunity to partner with you to co-create parent/patient educational heart modules. Can you share thoughts on the process? When we made the heart modules, the most interesting part for me was dealing in a realm that I had no familiarity with. I enjoyed seeing how this was just the tip of the iceberg in applying new technologies and working with people who aren’t involved in practicing medicine, and how we were able to come together to apply our respective areas of expertise to create something to help our patients and families. I think they will really appreciate the ability to learn about their child’s condition and how we treat their child in this unique way. It is so different than the way we learned things when we were in medical school and to see this whole other side is fun and exciting.
