Houston innovator powers health care innovation by collaboration — inside and outside of the hospital setting

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 202

Michelle Stansbury, vice president of innovation and IT applications at Houston Methodist, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo courtesy of Houston Methodist

It might surprise most to know that Houston Methodist doesn't have an innovation department within their hospital system — at least not one set up as you'd imagine, with a team specifically dedicated to innovation. Instead, Houston Methodist's Digital Innovation Obsessed People, or DIOP, consists of leaders across departments.

Michelle Stansbury is one of those leaders. As vice president of innovation and IT applications at Houston Methodist, she oversees the system's IT department and serves as a leader within its innovation efforts. This includes the Center for Innovation Technology Hub — which opened in 2020 in the Texas Medical Center location and opened its Ion outpost last week.

Stansbury explains on the Houston Innovators Podcast how effective this distribution of innovation responsibilities has been for Houston Methodist. With everyone having a seat at the table — operations knows the biggest problems that need solutions, IT knows how to deploy technology, etc. — implementation of new innovations has been sped up.

"If we partner together, we should be able to succeed fast or fail fast," she says on the show. "We've been able to find a solution, pilot it, and, if it works well, roll it out at a speed that most other organizations have not been able to do. It's been highly successful for us."

The newest way Houston Methodist is mixing up how it brings in innovative solutions to its team and patients is by taking its team outside of the Texas Medical Center and its hospitals in general. Now, Houston Methodist has a permanent tech hub in the Ion, owned and operated by Rice Management Company, on the lower level of the building, completely open to any of the Ion's visitors.

"We've always had a great partnership with Rice. This almost felt like an extension with Houston Methodist and our Rice collaboration with the Ion," Stansbury says. "Our main goals have been how can we utilize the talent that's housed out of that facility."

She explains that the new hub is an extension of the original hub in the TMC hospital, and that innovators who are interested in collaborating with Houston Methodist — especially those with solutions applicable to health care — can visit the Ion hub as an entry point.

Both hub locations showcase pilot technology Houston Methodist is working on, and that technology will then get deployed out into its hospital locations — and especially its Cypress hospital, which is being billed as being the "smart hospital of the future." The construction is underway and expected to deliver in 2025.

Stansbury shares more about this ninth location for Houston Methodist as well as more details on the new tech hub on the podcast. Listen to the interview here — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

From Your Site Articles
Meet MIA — Houston Methodist's new voice technology assistant. Photo via Getty Images

Houston hospital introduces first-of-its-kind voice technology into its operating rooms

Hey, MIA

Hey, MIA. Start surgery.

These are the words Houston doctors are learning to say in the operating rooms, thanks to a first-of-its-kind voice technology developed by the Houston Methodist's Center for Innovation in collaboration with Amazon Web Services. In the same way we use programs like Alexa or Siri to make our everyday tasks easier, the Methodist Intelligent Automation, or MIA, is allowing medical professionals to improve the way they interact both with technology and patients alike.

"There's been a push in the industry for a long time that people sitting behind computers and typing and staring at a computer screen is inadequate," says Houston Methodist Chief Innovation Officer Roberta Schwartz. "There's been a desire to return people back to each other rather than physicians and look at a screen and patients look at a doctor looking at a screen."

Currently in its pilot phase, MIA is working to do just that through two key functions that shift the way medical professionals work in what Schwartz calls the "era of electronic medical records."

The first is through operating room voice commands. Here medical professionals can run through a series or checklists and initiate important actions, such as starting timers or reviewing time of anesthesia, through voice instead of by typing or clicking, which can become cumbersome during lengthy and highly detailed surgeries. Information is displayed on a large 80-inch TV in the operating suite and following surgery all of the data captured is imported into the traditional EMR program. The technology has been prototyped in two Houston Methodist O.R. suites so far and the hub aims to trial it in a simulation surgery by the end of the year.

Additionally, the hub is developing ambient listening technology to be used in a clinical setting with the same goal. Houston Methodist and AWS have partnered with Dallas-based Pariveda to create specialized hardware that (after gaining patient permission) will listen into doctor-patient conversations, transcribe the interaction, and draft a note that is then coded and imported directly into the EMR.

"For EMR the feedback is that it's clunky, it's click-heavy, it's very task oriented," says Josh Sol, who leads digital and clinical innovation for Houston Methodist. "Our goal with the Center for Innovation and this technology hub is to really transform that terminology and bring back this collaboration and the patient-physician relationship by removing the computer but still capturing all the pertinent information."

The ambient listening technology is further off and is currently in user acceptance testing with clinicians.

"They've had some great feedback, whether it's changing how the note is created, changing the look and feel of the application itself," Sol adds. "All feedback is good feedback at this point. So we've taken it in, we prioritize the work, and we continue to improve the application."

And the hub doesn't plan to stop there. Schwartz and Sol agree that the next step for this type of medical technology will be patient facing. They envision that in the near future appointment or surgery prep can be done through Alexa push notifications and medication reminders or follow up assessments could be done via voice applications.

"It's all going to be of tremendous value and it's coming," Schwartz says. "We may be taking the first baby steps, but each one of these voice technologies for our patients is out there on the horizon."

The new tech hub at Houston Methodist has trained hundreds of physicians in telemedicine practices. Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Houston Methodist tech hub focuses on telemedicine training amid COVID-19 outbreak

virtual care

Houston Methodist's recently opened its new Center for Innovation's Technology Hub in January, and the new wing has already been challenged by a global pandemic — one that's validating a real need for telemedicine.

The 3,500-square-foot tech testing ground was renovated from an 18-room patient wing and showcases new digital health technologies like virtual reality, ambient listening, wearables, voice control, and more. The hub was focused on giving tours to medical professionals and executives to get them excited about health tech, but in the middle of March, Josh Sol, administrative director of Innovation and Ambulatory Clinical Systems at Houston Methodist, says they saw a greater need for the space.

"We turned the technology hub into a training center where physicians could come on site and learn telemedicine," Sol says. "We had some foresight from our leadership who thought that telemedicine was going to be heavily utilized in order to protect our patients who might go into isolation based on the outbreak."

The hub has trained over 500 physicians — both onsite and digitally. Sol says that at the start of March, there were 66 providers offering virtual care, and by March 25, there were over 900 providers operating virtually. On March 12, Houston Methodist had 167 virtual visits, Sol says, and on March 25, they had 2,421. This new 2,000-plus number is now the daily average.

"Telemedicine is here to stay now with the rapid adoption that just happened," Sol says. "The landscape will change tremendously."

Another way new technology has affected doctors' day-to-day work has been through tele-rounding — especially when it comes to interacting with patients with COVID-19.

"We are putting iPads in those rooms with Vidyo as the video application, and our physicians can tele-visit into that room," Sol says.

It's all hands on deck for the tech hub so that physicians who need support have someone to turn to. Sol says the hub used to have a two-person support team and now there are eight people in that role.

Sol says the iPads are a key technology for tele-rounding and patient care — and they are working with Apple directly to secure inventory. But other tech tools, like an artificial intelligence-backed phone system, an online symptom checker, and chatbots are key to engaging with patients.

"We're looking at how we can get our patients in the right place at the right time," Sol says. "It's very confusing right now. We're hoping we can streamline that for our patients."

The hub was designed so that in case of emergency, the display hospital rooms could be transitioned to patient care rooms. Sol says that would be a call made by Roberta Schwartz, executive vice president and chief innovation officer of Houston Methodist Hospital.

The Center for Innovation at Houston Methodist has opened its new Technology Hub to showcase its efforts to advance digital health. Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Photos: Houston Methodist opens new hub to showcase health tech of the future

what's next for health care?

Houston Methodist is regularly exploring new digital health technologies, but, until recently, lacked a proper space to demonstrate their vision for the future of health care. Now, with the Center for Innovation's Technology Hub, the hospital has just that.

The tech hub opened earlier this month in Houston Methodist Hospital in the Texas Medical Center. The 3,500-square-foot tech testing ground was renovated from an 18-room patient wing and showcases new digital health technologies like virtual reality, ambient listening, wearables, voice control, and more.

"Basically this space is like a laboratory for digital health innovations," says Josh Sol, administrative director of Innovation and Ambulatory Clinical Systems at Houston Methodist. "It's an opportunity to bring doctors, administrators, and subject matter experts to talk through what digital health could be at Houston Methodist."

The tech hub has re-imagined the experiences patients have and demonstrated the effect technology can have in various experiences — from the waiting room or outpatient care to at-home health and a voice control-optimized patient room. There's a virtual reality demo room that showcases the hospital's use of VR for distraction therapy, as well as for a doctor to demonstrate a surgical procedure for his or her patient.

"Part of this space is to change culture within the organization to promote this type of technology and really grow it because we think we can have some really positive impacts with our patients with these collaboration tools.

The space also features coworking space for industry experts — like Amazon or Microsoft — to come in to co-create, Sol says. Houston Methodist was also the first hospital in Houston to sign up for Apple Health's beta program.

Tours are open to industry professionals, vendors, and staff.

"We're excited for what the future can bring with this space," Sol tells InnovationMap.

Click through the slideshow to see some of the tech hub's rooms and the technology featured.

An interactive space

Houston Methodist Center for Innovation Technology Hub

Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

The purpose of the new tech hub is to allow visitors to interact with technology Houston Methodist is exploring, as well as to tell the story of the hospital's innovations and its patients. The screen upon entry to the hub is one of the only 8K touch-screen monitors and allows a viewer to tap through to see a layout of the hub as well as to hear a story of one of Methodist's patients.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston-area lab grows with focus on mobile diagnostics and predictive medicine

mobile medicine

When it comes to healthcare, access can be a matter of life and death. And for patients in skilled nursing facilities, assisted living or even their own homes, the ability to get timely diagnostic testing is not just a convenience, it’s a necessity.

That’s the problem Principle Health Systems (PHS) set out to solve.

Founded in 2016 in Clear Lake, Texas, PHS began as a conventional laboratory but quickly pivoted to mobile diagnostics, offering everything from core blood work and genetic testing to advanced imaging like ultrasounds, echocardiograms, and X-rays.

“We were approached by a group in a local skilled nursing facility to provide services, and we determined pretty quickly there was a massive need in this area,” says James Dieter, founder, chairman and CEO of PHS. “Turnaround time is imperative. These facilities have an incredibly sick population, and of course, they lack mobility to get the care that they need.”

What makes PHS unique is not only what they do, but where they do it. While they operate one of the largest labs serving skilled nursing facilities in the state, their mobile teams go wherever patients are, whether that’s a nursing home, a private residence or even a correctional facility.

Diagnostics, Dieter says, are at the heart of medical decision-making.

“Seventy to 80 percent of all medical decisions are made from diagnostic results in lab and imaging,” he says. “The diagnostic drives the doctor’s or the provider’s next move. When we recognized a massive slowdown in lab results, we had to innovate to do it faster.”

Innovation at PHS isn’t just about speed; it’s about accessibility and precision.

Chris Light, COO, explains: “For stat testing, we use bedside point-of-care instruments. Our phlebotomists take those into the facilities, test at the bedside, and get results within minutes, rather than waiting days for results to come back from a core lab.”

Scaling a mobile operation across multiple states isn’t simple, but PHS has expanded into nine states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arizona. Their model relies on licensed mobile phlebotomists, X-ray technologists and sonographers, all trained to provide high-level care outside traditional hospital settings.

The financial impact for patients is significant. Instead of ambulance rides and ER visits costing thousands, PHS services often cost just a fraction, sometimes only tens or hundreds of dollars.

“Traditionally, without mobile diagnostics, the patient would be loaded into a transportation vehicle, typically an ambulance, and taken to a hospital,” Dieter says. “Our approach is a fraction of the cost but brings care directly to the patients.”

The company has also embraced predictive and personalized medicine, offering genetic tests that guide medication decisions and laboratory tests that predict cognitive decline from conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s.

“We actively look for complementary services to improve patient outcomes,” Dieter says. “Precision medicine and predictive testing have been a great value-add for our providers.”

Looking to the future, PHS sees mobile healthcare as part of a larger trend toward home-based care.

“There’s an aging population that still lives at home with caretakers,” Dieter explains. “We go into the home every day, whether it’s an apartment, a standalone home, or assisted living. The goal is to meet patients where they are and reduce the need for hospitalization.”

Light highlighted another layer of innovation: predictive guidance.

“We host a lot of data, and labs and imaging drive most treatment decisions,” Light says. “We’re exploring how to deploy diagnostics immediately based on results, eliminating hours of delay and keeping patients healthier longer.”

Ultimately, innovation at PHS isn’t just about technology; it’s about equity.

“There’s an 11-year life expectancy gap between major metro areas and rural Texas,” Dieter says. “Our innovation has been leveling the field, so everyone has access to high-quality diagnostics and care, regardless of where they live.”

Aegis Aerospace appoints Houston space leader as new president

moving up

Houston-based Aegis Aerospace's current chief strategy officer, Matt Ondler, will take on the additional role of president on Jan. 1. Ondler will succeed Bill Hollister, who is retiring.

“Matt's vision, experience, and understanding of our evolving markets position us to build on our foundation and pursue new frontiers,” Stephanie Murphy, CEO of Aegis Aerospace, said in a news release.

Hollister guided Aegis Aerospace through expansion and innovation in his three years as president, and will continue to serve in the role of chief technology officer (CTO) for six months and focus on the company's technical and intellectual property frameworks.

"Bill has played an instrumental role in shaping the success and growth of our company, and his contributions leave an indelible mark on both our culture and our achievements," Murphy said in a news release.

Ondler has a background in space hardware development and strategic leadership in government and commercial sectors. Ondler founded subsea robots and software company Houston Mechatronics, Inc., now known as Nauticus Robotics, and also served as president, CTO and CSO during a five-year tenure at Axiom Space. He held various roles in his 25 years at NASA and was also named to the Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium Executive Committee last year.

"I am confident that with Matt at the helm as president and Bill supporting us as CTO, we will continue to build on our strong foundation and further elevate our impact in the space industry," Murphy said in a news release. "Matt's vision, experience, and understanding of our evolving markets position us to build on our foundation and pursue new frontiers."

Rice University launches new center to study roots of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

neuro research

Rice University launched its new Amyloid Mechanism and Disease Center last month, which aims to uncover the molecular origins of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other amyloid-related diseases.

The center will bring together Rice faculty in chemistry, biophysics, cell biology and biochemistry to study how protein aggregates called amyloids form, spread and harm brain cells. It will serve as the neuroscience branch of the Rice Brain Institute, which was also recently established.

The team will work to ultimately increase its understanding of amyloid processes and will collaborate with the Texas Medical Center to turn lab discoveries into real progress for patients. It will hold its launch event on Jan. 21, 2026, and hopes to eventually be a launchpad for future external research funding.

The new hub will be led by Pernilla Wittung-Stafshed, a Rice biophysicist and the Charles W. Duncan Jr.-Welch Chair in Chemistry.

“To make a real difference, we have to go all the way and find a cure,” Wittung-Stafshede said in a news release. “At Rice, with the Amyloid Mechanism and Disease Center as a catalyst, we have the people and ideas to open new doors toward solutions.”

Wittung-Stafshede, who was recruited to Rice through a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas grant this summer, has led pioneering work on how metal-binding proteins impact neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Her most recent study, published in Advanced Science, suggests a new way of understanding how amyloids may harm cells and consume the brain’s energy molecule, ATP.

According to Alzheimer’s Disease International, neurodegenerative disease cases could reach around 78 million by 2030 and 139 million by 2050. Wittung-Stafshede’s father died of dementia several years ago.

“This is close to my heart,” Wittung-Stafshede added in the news release. “Neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are on the rise as people live longer, and age is the largest risk factor. It affects everyone.”
View All Listings