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Greg Jacobson MD, CEO and co-founder, and Mark Graban, Chief Improvement Officer, conducted a one-hour webinar hosted by the Texas Association for Healthcare Quality called "Kaizen and KaiNexus: Making Improvement Easier." Leigh Humphrey, MBA, LMSW, CPHQ TAHQ, Education Chair & Past President, said, "This was one of our most exciting and well attended webinars to date. Hearing a practical way to implement kaizen is a great topic for our members who are serious about daily improvement." During this hour, Mark discussed the foundations of the “kaizen” approach to improvement and Greg told the story of how KaiNexus came to be and the impact the company and its software has made to date, including multiple examples of implemented “Opportunities for Improvement.”

On March 19th, KaiNexus released the first version of the KaiNexus Mobile app for iOS devices. Now, users can log into KaiNexus on their iPhone or iPad and submit an Opportunity for Improvement, with the option of attaching a picture right from the device. They can even use the voice recognition features of the iPhone to dictate their title, description, and proposed solution. Greg Jacobson MD, CEO and co-founder, said, "We are committed to making improvement easier. The iOS app is another example of how KaiNexus is doing just that.“

KaiNexus comes out of beta with the signing of Centra Health (Lynchburg, VA). Chris Thomson, MD, Medical Director of the Centra Emergency Services Group, commented, "Centra Emergency Services Group is looking forward to adding KaiNexus to aid in its implementation of Lean principles - ideally it will become the foundation of this improvement work.”

Rule 4 Consulting (Portland, OR) has formally signed a partnership agreement with KaiNexus. “We are excited to partner with Rule 4 Consulting because they share our belief that healthcare organizations need to engage front-line staff in making meaningful improvements on a continuous basis,” says Mark Graban, Chief Improvement Officer at KaiNexus.

Greg and Mark wrote a piece called "Putting the 'Continuous' Back into Health Care Improvement" that was featured on Quality Digest. The piece highlighted some of the history and origins of the word "kaizen" in continuous improvement, emphasizing the importance of daily continuous improvement that engages everybody, everywhere, every day, as opposed to relying solely on episodic improvement events.

Mark and Greg were the guests for the first hour of "The Lean Nation" radio show on June 21. Mark kicked the show off with an update on his upcoming book "Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Improvements." In later segments, they both discussed continuous improvement in healthcare, the KaiNexus product, and Greg's experiences that led to the formation of the company.

KaiNexus has signed a beta license with the University of North Carolina Health Care System. "Achieving high quality care in L&D helps to promote patient safety; best outcomes for mothers, newborns and families; cost savings; and staff satisfaction," said Nancy Cheschier, MD, Clinical Professor and Director of Prenatal Diagnosis. "KaiNexus will help us achieve these goals by connecting our multidisciplinary staff so we can discuss and implement their best ideas about how to improve our systems and environment."

Mark Graban has joined in the company in the role of Chief Improvement Officer as KaiNexus transitions out of beta testing and goes to market with its web-based software. View the press release. Read Mark's blog post.

KaiNexus has hired Steve Good to serve as Principal Architect for its web-based software that makes improvement easier for healthcare organizations. Steve brings vast experience with the technologies that KaiNexus is built on.

We are excited to announce that we have gone live in three departments at Vanderbilt University Medical Center! "With over 700 users, the Adult Emergency Medicine Department, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Department, and the Nephrology Department will provide an excellent large scale test for KaiNexus and its capabilities. Connecting users across an entire organization will showcase KaiNexus' ability to foster collaboration and hold people accountable to each other to improve." said Matt Paliulis, CTO and Co-Founder of KaiNexus. KaiNexus hopes to expand the test to other departments at this world-class medical center, benefiting VUMC and KaiNexus.

KaiNexus hits the ground running in the New Year! We are pleased to announce that we have just gone live with our first beta test site.

"Dallas-based KaiNexus LLC intends to become 'the first company to offer software designed to deliver a quality improvement program for health care organizations,' according to information published by Co-Founders Greg Jacobson, M.D., and Matt Paliulis."

Each year the Vanderbilt OTTED chooses a few promising ventures to highlight in its Annual Report. KaiNexus is proud to be featured as one of these companies and encourages you to download and read the report (we are mentioned on page 17).