Ashish Atreja on Platforms for Innovation
Episode 1659th December 2019 • This Week Health: Conference • This Week Health
00:00:00 00:11:34

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 Welcome to this week, health Events where we amplify great thinking with interviews from the floor. My name is Bill Russell Healthcare, CIO, coach and creator of this Week in Health. It a set of podcasts and videos dedicated to developing the next generation of health leaders. We wanna thank our founding channel sponsors who make this content possible, health lyrics and VMware.

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So, uh, this is the final of our interview series from the Chime Fall Forum. This is with, uh, Dr. Ashish Atia from Mount Sinai in New York. Uh, Mount Sinai has a strong innovation program. . And I, I grabbed Ashish, uh, following his presentation, uh, where they highlighted a platform that several health systems are using, uh, around innovation.

Uh, systems including Rush and Mount Sinai have adopted it to deliver their digital front door. Uh, have a listen and I hope you enjoy. All right. So here we're from the, uh, chime fall forum, and I'm joined with, uh, Ashish Atia, who is a, uh, physician by trade and, uh, but also an innovator. So you're at, uh, Mount Sinai.

Why don't you, uh, remind us of your role, what you're doing? Happy to, and I called this role as my third and the fourth career journey. Uh, my first, uh, career phase was as a physician, um, and then my second was as an informaticist . Where I did EMR implementation at Cleveland Clinic Health System. My third was mostly innovation.

And this is great because as a physician we never trained how to be creators. So we use digital health to create. And the fourth, which I'm so proud of right now, is more transformation role. How do we take things which have been innovated and transform the entire health systems with that? So that's my control in, in that Juan perspective.

Yeah. So, uh, you and Shafiq just presented and, um, . It, it's always entertaining to have Shafi there, but he's a huge fan of the platform. And you were talking about the digital front door. And uh, so talk to us a little bit about that platform and, and what you've been able to do at Mount Sinai. Absolutely.

So it came as a, there's a lot of, uh, features we built initially at Mount Sinai that got licensed out. Um, the platform is supported by a neutral third party vendor called RX Health, which is spinoff from Sinai. Um, and uh, and I think the goal is to create a glue between different health systems. . Um, and uh, it started off with a simple vision that can doctors prescribe apps very much like they can prescribe medication, right?

Right. Kind of simplify the process because we were seeing so much fragmentation in digital health space. Um, and the goal was we'll never be able to take that stuff in inside a health system if we can unify it. And that was three years ago, featured in NPR and now it has around eight health systems partners with.

The goal is can each health system go transform with other health system by going beyond just apps analytics by stitching together . Different digital assets. So you have a, you have a platform that sits above all the clinical data stores. Mm-Hmm. , um, and uses the right technology, different technology, but the right technology for the right use case That is correct.

And moves the data back and forth. But what you're able to do then is, um, regardless of what the EHR is. Yeah, I'm able to create an app that works at Rush, and then an app that works at my, that app will then work at Mount. I don't have to redo the app every time I go to a new Exactly. We call it a, a shared use case where you can plug and transplant the same, uh, technology, but the same implementation science to achieve, uh, repeatable, replicable results.

And within 90 days. Wow. So where, um, where is it in use and what problems are people solving? Yeah, so we have around more than 200, 300 pathways created, uh, for patients so far. Um, and, uh, I think the most common cause, which we have seen, uh, is um, um, I would say that five or 10 top cases. So one is we have an entire perioperative presurgical, uh, peri transitions of care toolkits we call it.

Um, so no matter what surgeries, what. Seizure, what transition of care is it can support them because there's a lot of, uh, hidden revenue leak that's happening there. Um, but some of the things hospitals I shared in with Shafi stock is very interesting. Like, Hey, can you prescribe patient portal app and can you prescribe to all the patients that need it?

And can you do it in a much more scalable manner than ever was possible before? Uh, and that is fascinating to learn from each other. Yeah. So I, so Shafi shared some stuff. Uh, so what's Rush doing with it today? Yeah, so Rush actually just started, uh, process. So I think part of it is we, we start this core transformation kind of umbrella and then we start on this journey.

So one of the things which, uh, Russia and exemplary is uh, uh, they have actually a very good, um, integration point, fire base, integration point with Epic EMR, so they can activate faster any digital asset for. Faster and earlier than any other health system in the country. So one of our stuff is the things we have validated, can they activate that much more earlier?

Um, and the three or four use cases we are discussing, but we haven't finalized the use case right now. Wow. So what's the, um, what are you finding out there as you go into the market? I mean, what's the, as you talked to clients as. Talk to potential clients for this solution? I, I assume you're doing, are you representing this solution at this point?

Uh, kind of. I mean, it's, it's, uh, until you find ACEO, you're, yeah. Something we are looking for, you know, as, as the growth happens, expanding the team and, uh, um, yeah. So I think, uh, the goal is you, you want to take the, you wanna put your DNA. Of creating a bigger value, uh, and at least, uh, create that success strategy from an innovation investment that has happened.

Um, and then there are bigger and better people who can just take it from there. How, um, so talk about the implementation. So I'm ACIO. I'm sitting here going, Hey, I'd like to jumpstart our innovation that we're doing at our health system. And I, I, uh, procured the solution, put it in place. Is there like, can I

Acquire the stuff that maybe Mount Sinai's doing, the stuff that's Rush doing as well. So those individual applications are available to That's correct. We call them as digital assets. So some digital assets come pre-baked with the platform. Okay. And some you can license it. And those are all orchestrations we are doing on the platform itself.

So there's a health education platform, variables, uh, telemedicine. Um, so many of those digital assets are already there. And you can choose, it's kind of a menu. You can choose, Hey, my first thing is to actually do pre-procedural care, or I want to reengage every patient with electronic health education.

Uh, or I want to turn on remote patient monitoring in that space. So you, based on your problems and your strategic priority areas, we said these are the best fit use cases, which are already validated in other health system. You can just turn on, or maybe this one is currently being developed and not validated, but actually completely fits your need.

So you may be the early adopter, or you may be the third adopter, or you may be the 10th adopter in that regard. So how, um, what's the, I think it's, it's obvious, but what's the value proposition for developers and do you have a developer community starting to form around this? We, we have started, uh, in an API based, we have, I think his journey is very recent.

So I wouldn't say the developer community is very mature, but it's a complete API driven platform. So when we go to a health system, we actually say, if you have development team, we can open those APIs for you. Um, and so, so we become kind of a distribution and kind of engagement, uh, and stitch that digital asset with other digital assets to make it whole.

So for example, if you're creating a mini app, but that requires telemedicine as a backup. We can stitch that with the telemedicine in the backup. So you, you've mentioned telemedicine. I mean, so if I was developing for this, are there like components I can pull in and That is correct. Just, just blocks.

That is correct. I, I could drop telemedicine in and That's correct. And some sort of routing and communication. I, I can shoot off texts. I can. So really it's, uh, it, it's, it's an orchestration pro for orchestration platform. On top of a lot of disparate. That's correct. So it's a whole, we call it RX stitch engine, where you can stitch things together, uh, and then we bake with the implementation science that gets the recipe.

So think of the stitching together as the raw food or the raw vegetable, and then the, the, the implementation science as what cooks it and bakes it. So you can actually make it palatable. So do you have a, uh, an API that you publish that's out there? Yeah, we, we published some of the API we haven't published completely, but I think that's a journey we want to take more and more.

That's great. So what would you tell CIOs health systems that are out there? You had a pretty big crap actually. This is great. I think great engagement, uh, the great goes to Shafiq. Um, and I think, uh, and Shafi said the word, which I would, I would actually resonate. The most exciting phase for ACIO is actually now Yeah.

Uh. But what makes it exciting is not that what we learned can be done, what we have not learned can be done is what makes it most exciting. Yeah, it is. It is exciting and I think it was pretty rousing for the, for the group that was in there, Ashish. Thank you very much for that. Lord, it was a pleasure. I appreciate it.

s going to be, uh, going into:

And hopefully you learn something from it and something that you can apply at your health system. Uh, for those who are going, who are going to the spring chime forum around the, uh, HIMSS event, uh, I'll be doing something very similar. . , I'll announce that, uh, sometime after the first of the year. Uh, but if you'd like to sit down with me, just, just let me know.

Drop me a line, drop me an email. Um, you know, uh, pinging me on, uh, Twitter or LinkedIn. Um, and, uh, you know, let's, let's get you on the show. Uh, with this episode, we now go back to our normal schedule of Friday interviews with influencers and Tuesday Newsday, uh, where we look at the news, which is impacting health.

It. Uh, this show is a production of this week in Health It. For more great content, you check out the website this week, health.com or the YouTube channel as well. Special thanks to our sponsors, VMware and health lyrics for choosing to invest in developing the next generation of health leaders. Thanks for listening.

That's all for now.

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