RWJBarnabas CEO on Innovative Cancer Treatments

As part of our Future of Healthcare series, Steve Adubato speaks with Barry Ostrowsky, President & CEO, RWJBarnabas Health, about the use of innovation and technology in cancer treatments and social impact initiatives helping those in vulnerable communities.

3/30/19 #303

Excerpt:

"Welcome to State of Affairs. I'm Steve Adubato. We're coming to you from the Agnes Varis NJTV Studio in beautiful Newark, New Jersey. It is my honor and pleasure to introduce Barry Ostrowsky, who's the President and Chief Executive Officer of RWJBarnabas Health. Barry, let's jump right into this. This is part of an ongoing series we're doing on the future of healthcare. The connection between RWJBarnabas Health Rutgers as it relates to cancer care, talk about it. Yeah. We're excited, of course, about our partnership with Rutgers. One of the things that Rutgers has is the state's only designated cancer center, which is the Rutgers Cancer Institute, which is located in New Brunswick. We've decided to take that Cancer Institute and spread it throughout our healthcare system, so that every venue we have will have services that are generated by that Cancer Institute. The research will be done primarily in New Brunswick at a new home for the Cancer Institute that we're planning right now, and it will be constructed over the next number of years. And what most people don't know in New Jersey is that Cancer Institute is a world leader in something called precision medicine, where we're now treating patients with cancer using their own biological blood and other types of injections that we use, where we feed back to the patient that which they have. The best way to, in fact, it will be the best way to treat many of these cancers. So that is the home of that kind of research. We also do clinical activity there. But the clinical activity throughout our system will, in fact, be linked to the great experts of the Cancer Institute. In fact, that is why the question about the future of healthcare, because that is, in fact, part of the direction. And technology has a lot to do with it? Innovation has a lot to do with it? Well innovation and technology, and I have to tell you Steve, the future of health in the United States, and we make a distinction between healthcare and health. Frankly... You make a...? ...our mission is about the health of the community. Healthcare is, frankly, just vending healthcare services. We feel our mission is to enhance the health of all those that live in our communities. So there's really, at least, a dual pronged approach to that. You have to have a platform that's clinically based, that has academics, that has research, so that you can assure folks who live in the communities that they can access the best clinical care. But three and a half million New Jerseyans, frankly, can't afford the basic needs of life, and..."