Our Lady of the Lake and LSU College of Engineering Announce Innovative Partnership

11/2/2017OLOL LSU Partnership

BATON ROUGE – The LSU College of Engineering and Our Lady of the Lake have partnered to create a new healthcare systems engineering collaborative, the first of its kind in Louisiana. The two organizations will work together to pursue effective solutions for advanced healthcare and improved human wellness in the Baton Rouge community and across Louisiana. 

"We are so proud of this partnership with Our Lady of the Lake, which is representative of one of our core values as a college – bettering the state of Louisiana and the lives of its citizens," said Judy Wornat, dean of the College of Engineering.

The partnership, similar to programs at Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Georgia Tech and Northwestern, will focus on working with industrial engineers, clinicians and patients to identify and solve healthcare-related problems.

"Our unique, innovative partnership connects education to real-world application in order to solve complex healthcare problems and continuously improve patient outcomes," said Our Lady of the Lake President and CEO K. Scott Wester. “Our Lady of the Lake is proud to partner with LSU to bring this program to Baton Rouge and to be at the forefront of innovative solutions to improve patient experiences and quality of care."

As part of the collaborative, the organizations will work together on real-world solutions to improve patient care by focusing on areas such as lean healthcare process improvement, data-driven healthcare process changes and quality-led engineering healthcare. LSU’s College of Engineering also will develop a Master of Science in Healthcare Systems Engineering program to help expand the population of healthcare specialists with a systems engineering perspective in Baton Rouge and across the state.

“As Louisiana’s flagship university, LSU is responsible for working to solve the biggest challenges facing our state,” said LSU President F. King Alexander. “Unfortunately, some of Louisiana’s most pressing problems are health-related. The Healthcare Systems Engineering program is an important step forward in LSU’s commitment to positively impact the health and well-being of Louisianans. The LSU College of Engineering’s new partnership with Our Lady of the Lake demonstrates one of the many opportunities we have to apply LSU’s expertise to benefit our state.”

Healthcare systems engineering as a science produces superior methods of patient care delivery by incorporating efficiency and reliability into evidence-based medicine. The Healthcare Systems Engineering program at LSU will introduce students and healthcare professionals into systems fundamentals of industrial engineering. The application of this program will create a continuous learning environment and generate knowledge of quality care delivery while improving the health of our patient population.

Pending Louisiana Board of Regents and LSU Board of Supervisors approval, students will be able to enroll in classes for this program in the 2018-19 school year. Courses will all be online and open to students and healthcare professionals from anywhere in the world.

About LSU College of Engineering
The LSU College of Engineering is dedicated to creating engineers who can transform ideas into reality to solve society's problems and improve the quality of life. It cultivates leaders with a strong sense of global awareness, an entrepreneurial spirit, and great communication skills. It also endeavors to transform the lives of the citizens of our state, the nation, and the world through research and innovation, instruction and learning, and outreach and engagement.

About Our Lady of the Lake 
Our Lady of the Lake is a not-for-profit 800-bed medical center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with more than 7,300 employees committed to building a healthy community through excellence in patient care and education. With a Regional Medical Center, dedicated Children’s Hospital, and 300-provider Physician Group, Our Lady of the Lake provides comprehensive healthcare services for common to complex conditions. Our Lady of the Lake is a primary teaching site for graduate medical education programs and is recognized in the areas of heart and vascular, trauma and emergency care, stroke, cancer care, minimally-invasive procedures and more.

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Contact: Joshua Duplechain, Director of Communications, 225-578-7833 (o), josh@lsu.edu