Henry Ford's Model G Patient Gown Named Edison Awards Finalist

DETROIT – A new patient gown, developed by Henry Ford Innovation Institute, has been named a 2015 Award Finalist by the Edison Awards™. The new patient gown will be recognized at Edison Awards Gala on April 23 in New York.

Called Model G, it will be the first new patient hospital gown designed in nearly a century to blend style and comfort for the patient with essential clinical function needed by the patient’s health care team.

“Our No. 1 goal with this design was fixing the backside of the gown – patients’ biggest complaint – while still allowing the health care team full access to the patient,” says Michael Forbes, a product designer at the Innovation Institute at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where the new gown was invented and tested by patients.

“The patient hospital gown is the one object that actually touches every single patient in health care, so a simple change – like closing the backside – can have a big impact on a patient’s hospital stay or outpatient procedure.”

The new patient hospital gown – resembling a wrap-around robe that completely closes in the back and front – was created and tested at Henry Ford to be safely used for inpatient hospital stays, clinic visits and medical tests, including MRI and CT scans.

Henry Ford is working with fellow Detroit-based legend Carhartt, a premier American work wear brand, to manufacture the gown, with 35,000 due to arrive in March for patients across Henry Ford Health System’s 29 medical centers and six hospitals, which annually handle 90,000 hospital patients and 3.2 million outpatient visits.

The Innovation Institute plans to establish additional licensing agreements that would grant rights to produce the Model G design for other interested customers and health care systems.

The distinguished awards, inspired by Thomas Edison’s persistence and inventiveness, recognize innovation, creativity and ingenuity in the global economy.

Award winners will be announced April 23 at the Edison Awards Annual Gala, held in the historic Ballroom of The Capitale in New York City.

Edison Award nominees are judged by more than 3,000 senior business executives and academics from across the nation whose votes acknowledge the finalists’ success in meeting the award’s stringent criteria of quality.

Originally established in 1987 by the American Marketing Association and now a program conducted by Edison Universe, the Edison Awards™ have honored some of the most world’s most innovative new products, services and business leaders. The Awards are named after Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), whose extraordinary new product development methods garnered him 1,093 U.S. patents and made him a household name around the world.

Learn more about the Henry Ford Innovation Institute.

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