Health care agencies collaborate as well as compete here

Attending Innovation Tri-Valley’s 9th annual Innovation Forum, you cannot help but be impressed by all that’s going on in health care and the life sciences here.
The forum focused on health care, a timely topic given the announcement this month that the John Muir health system was going to purchase the other half of San Ramon Regional Medical Center. It has owned 49% since 2013.
Rick Shumway, the CEO of Stanford Health Tri-Valley, is also the chair of the innovation group. During his remarks he emphasized that the hospitals certainly compete to provide their patients with the best experience and services they can, but they also collaborate. During the pandemic, the CEOs of the East Bay hospitals started a Monday afternoon conference call that continues to this day. He cited examples of a hospital missing an item needed in surgery and other hospitals quickly backfilling to serve the patient. The same goes when one hospital is running out of beds.
The takeaway is that we are fortunate to have the caliber of health care that is available here with both major teaching hospitals– Stanford and the University of California San Francisco—having facilities and/or collaborations in the market.
The fast-moving program also included comments from Dr. Jason Singley, a long-time Livermore resident and dean of the College of Science at Cal State East Bay. The main Hayward campus has satellite facilities in Concord and Oakland. One of Innovation Tri-Valley’s goals in its 2040 Vision is bringing a research university into the area. Singley suggested that with Cal State they already had one nearby.
He also made news when he announced that Cal State is going to establish a College of Health starting in the fall of 2024. Singley noted that the nursing program at Cal State was established 50 years ago and had trained thousands of nurses for local health care organizations.
Speakers also reminded attendees that the impetus for mapping the human genome came out of the national labs and both Lawrence Livermore and Sandia had licensed technology that has sparked formation of startups here such as 10X Genomics that has its roots at the lab. Principals in the first company Quantalife that was sold to BioRad now have moved on to form at least five other startups in the Tri-Valley’s innovation economy.
Remember, the gross domestic product here in the Tri-Valley was $42 billion and that number is five years old—it’s certainly grown since.
One nice inclusion in the program was Lisa McNaney, founder of Culinary Angels who announced last week that she will move into a different role once a successor is located for her. The angels prepare and deliver nutritious meals to East Bay residents fighting cancer and their caregivers. She said she loves to share the message that proper nutrition is critical for better outcomes. She’s moving into a role that will allow her to focus on sharing that reality.
Innovation Tri-Valley also released its 2023 Human Health Index for the area. You can check it out and contribute to it at the index http://https://innovationtrivalley.org/tri-valley/2023-innovation-index