Project & Program Updates
Safety Innovation Summit Shares Cross-Sector Safety Solutions
On February 29, the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) and the Pittsburgh Technology Council convened 130 Pittsburgh leaders for the Safety Innovation Summit to discuss the region's long history of safety accomplishments and to share safety interventions and approaches that have proven successful in multiple industries. The Safety Innovation Summit reaffirmed Pittsburgh's immense talent and assets spearheading safety developments, philosophies, and strategies in transportation, energy, manufacturing, medicine, and construction, among others.
Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD said PRHI's commitment to patient safety and the reduction of error in health care was the initial inspiration for the Summit. However, after a deeper look at the region's legacy and current strengths, the goal for the Summit was to plant a flag in Pittsburgh as the "Safety Capital of the World", make connections and share critical learnings across industries.
"We have it all here in our region. We have the academic giants, entrepreneurs, and safety science degree programs to build up the workforce," Dr. Feinstein said. "The brainpower, resourcefulness and workforce to claim the title. Today's dive into our present assets is the platform on which to build an even greater leadership role in the future."
A former employee of Alcoa, working with the late Paul O'Neill at the height of his influence as "the Safety CEO," Pittsburgh Technology Council President and Chief Executive Officer Audrey Russo shared how O'Neill told her it was her job to make sure Pittsburgh is safe and to foster environments where people are safe to grow, safe to learn, safe to innovate, and safe to break boundaries.
"We need to create an opportunity for the intersections of tech and health care and come to the table with our deep roots with industry and creating a safe working environment," Russo said. "Let's plant the flag."
The full-day Summit was formatted with one-hour long panels, set up as hearings from each industry, providing an opportunity for each sector to share critical insights into how they've approached safety in the past and how they're building on that progress when looking to the future.
In his welcome remarks, Kent McElhattan, founder of Industrial Scientific, former Chairman of the National Safety Council Board, and President of the McElhattan Foundation, shared his Foundation's vision to eliminate death on the job by 2050. He underscored that significant progress has been made with workplace fatalities being reduced from 50,000 to 5,000 from 1911 to 1997, however getting below 5,000 has been a challenge he hopes technology and collaborative efforts like the Summit can start to address.
To set the stage for the panels, Jan Wachter, ScD, MBA, former professor of safety sciences, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, provided an overview of Western Pennsylvania's legacy in industrial safety, including the impact of Crystal Eastman, a lawyer, activist, reporter, and the mother of industrial safety, who tracked workplace deaths at the turn of the century and was involved in drafting several pieces of legislation aimed at improving working conditions and protecting workers, including the first workers' compensation law in New York State. (More about Pittsburgh's labor history in Jan's op-ed here.)
Department of Community & Economic Development (DCED) Deputy Secretary of Technology and Entrepreneurship Jen Gilburg shared the Shapiro Administration's ten-year strategic plan for economic development in Pennsylvania which serves as a blueprint to invest in economic growth to compete, make government work at the speed of business, building workforce, to foster innovation, and build vibrant and resilient communities. Among the goals of the plan is the elevation of Pennsylvania from its dismal ranking of 48th in the nation for startup activity. Gov. Shapiro's 2024-25 budget includes $600 million in new and expanded investments to enhance DCED's ability to implement the strategic plan and better serve businesses.
A fireside chat with Christopher Johnson, Co-CEO, TeleTracking, a Pittsburgh-based company providing patient flow automation solutions to the healthcare industry, discussed the frontiers of safety surveillance and the barriers tech innovators face in the healthcare sector. Johnson noted the decades-long lag between the invention of the stethoscope in the early 1800s and its use among doctors. Johnson said there is always a hesitancy to introduce an innovation into the healthcare space.
"We're still working on it," Johnson said. "Health care is the most complicated business on the planet. It's a difficult environment with the most physically, mentally, and emotionally challenging job, and there is a trust problem around AI in particular." Despite the challenges, TeleTracking is working on creative ways to leverage its logistics infrastructure and data to improve care at the bedside.
In her closing remarks, Dr. Feinstein summarized some of the key themes of the conference including the inseparability of safety, transparency, and open disclosure; that safety can't simply be engineered—and it's more than the actions of individual actors. Safety depends on a culture that needs to be cultivated and celebrated throughout an organization. Safety is collaborative work, across teams, units, settings and disciplines. The increasing convergence of safety and technology suggests that great innovation and progress are possible, and those breakthroughs could and should happen here in Western Pennsylvania. We've earned our leadership role across many industries, across centuries, across academic institutions and disciplines.
Other expert panelists who participated in the Summit included: Raghu Arunachalam, CEO, WorkVis.io; Paul Bartlett, principal engineer and head of systems engineering, Near Earth Autonomy; Nat Beuse, chief safety officer, Aurora; CDR Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, PhD, Biological Technologies Office Program Manager, DARPA; Marc Ferrari, administrator/training director, Pennsylvania Laborers' Education & Training Center; Zane N. Frund, PhD, MPH, MBA, executive director and global leader, Materials/Chemical Research & Sensor Development, MSA Safety; Frank Guyette, MD, MS, professor of emergency medicine, University of Pittsburgh; Kevin Kelley, representative, Local 449 Steamfitters; Himanshu Khurana, vice president of engineering, Industrial Specific; Karen Lightman, interim executive director of Safety 21 and executive director of Metro21: Smart Cities Institute, CMU; Todd Moore, vice president of safety, CONSOL Energy; Ken Morris, safety representative, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5; Michael Pinsky, MD, professor of critical care medicine, Bioengineering, Cardiovascular Diseases, Clinical & Translational Science, and Anesthesiology, University of Pittsburgh; Shawn Quimby, VP of operations technology, CNX; Chandan K. Sen, PhD, MS, associate vice chancellor for life sciences innovation and commercialization, University of Pittsburgh; Evan Sevel, VP for Growth & Innovation, Digital Intelligence, Wabtec; Phil Spinella, MD, Professor of Surgery and Critical Care Medicine, co-director of the Trauma and Transfusion Medicine Research Center, associate medical director of the Center for Military Medicine Research, University of Pittsburgh; Kelly Trapani, Head of Environmental Health & Safety, Gecko Robotics; and Craig Waller, CEO, Rewyndr.
Moderators included: Steven D. Irwin, JD, PRHI Board Co-Chair and partner of Leech Tishman; Michael Wagner, CEO, Edge Case Research; Pam Walaski, President-Elect, American Society of Professionals Board, and part-time faculty member, IUP Department of Safety Sciences; Joseph Losko, PhD, assistant professor in safety management, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania; and Ron Poropatich, MD, Director, Center for Military Medicine Research, University of Pittsburgh.
Read coverage of the event by the Pittsburgh Business Times.
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