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Today on Newsday.

I think we need to meet the patient where they're at. and leverage all different mediums of technology to help them stay healthier longer. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health. where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time. Newstay discusses the breaking news in healthcare with industry experts

Now, let's jump right in.

(Main)

So we're going to jump into three different articles and we went thematically a bit about AI innovation, complexity of care, financial strains, technology adoption, workforce impact. What's fascinating, Laura, is Thematically, these are happening across the industry. You could pull any article to cover these.

And so when you think about some of the things we're talking about, just high level, when I say those things, transformation, complexity of care, adoption, workforce impact, what are you seeing out there?

I think it's still going to continue to come down to governance and application rationalization.

I just think we keep coming back to that. And you talk about adoption and every single one of those articles, each a little bit different, right? You think about the article that was talking about using AI to really get intelligence about predictable medicine With the whole drug industry.

It is about the comfort level. And so one of the things that was interesting about this article about pharma firms buying into the promise of, they said AI shortcuts. And I think that diminished what really the intent of it is. And that's the fact that the company that's doing this is Antiverse. The design, Precision antibody targets.

Moving drug development from trial and error to focus data driven design. It takes 15 years. To bring a drug to market, a billion to one to two billion dollars. And this will significantly reduce that timeline or that time frame in using things already. You've got Google, DeepMind, NVIDIA, Microsoft and others that are investing.

Yeah, I think the whole drug industry, though, that's going to be a big leap for a lot of clinicians.

And if you think about the 15 years to get, a drug from inception to trial, all the QA rounds of testing that need to go through that phase. If I'm a clinician, I'm going to want more proof in the pudding. And, we see even in our business, having clinicians really be willing to embrace Automation.

And so they've got to be together out of the gate. I just think, bringing it in and that communication and the whole change management aspect of this is going to be critically important in order for it to be successful.

To your point, if you are using governance as an example to follow the evolution of where this is headed, then you're understanding how integration of AI and drug discovery can be faster, more efficient treatment, cost savings, improved outcomes.

It can give you a competitive edge, except being really aware of the fact that any kind of regulatory and ethical considerations and drug discovery need to also be front of mind in the conversation, data privacy, the transparency of your algorithms. And the thing I think about all the time is our risk and AI for predictions or other.

Yeah. And, no doubt, especially for the large academics, research hospitals, this can be a huge competitive advantage. Even now, if you look at what's happening with a lot of things that even Epic is doing, where you can now see somebody else within an ecosystem that has similar symptoms, to be able to collaborate more effectively on. research or drug indicators that can make a real difference for a patient that's sitting in front of you in a doctor's office. If you think about that competitive edge that the health systems, the academics, the whole research arm of these large academics, if they embrace this, I think the first or second that really do this, it's going to be a huge competitive advantage, And here's what else I love about it. If you are able to take all of that data and then also see where there are other like patients. So you can help to remove some of the bias of a geographically centered area. Then you [00:06:00] apply the DNA or genomic testing to rapid drug development. That is such a revolutionary component right there.

Like that entire equation to me says, maybe not in my specific lifetime, but imagine what it means for diseases or chronic conditions today. That you're the wrong patient at the wrong time in terms of the advancement of the type of care or treatment plans that are available.

And if you think about some of the chronic illnesses or even certain cancers that affect socioeconomic groups to be able to think about rural communities and make a real difference in healthcare for people that don't have the kind of access for whatever reason that maybe you and I have, either because we're in healthcare, we know a lot of people, we live in a major city.

We're aligned with a major research, academical, medical center. I think the opportunity to really make a difference for all patients is significant.

I believe it's on Netflix. And the conversation about the importance of collaboration between clinicians and technology developers to improve patient safety and quality of care, except that sometimes the slow adoption or too many point solutions end up creating almost an effective clogging of the system.

How do you differentiate where you do lean in to say a spotlight on maternal health or, in this article, creating a command center that was inspired by NASA, some of the VR technologies being used to reduce sedation needs in surgeries. As we think about making patients safer in hospitals, but it does require this appropriate aggregation of solutioning, how do you get past the too many things at once, too many pilots, too many perspectives, in order to focus on the right one?

There's so much noise, there's not enough focus. And that's why I think the whole landscape of what we're doing with AI and machine learning needs to be done in an incremental, very methodical, very engaged way with clinicians that can be a voice. Out to the population so that there's just more adoption, in that article, he still went on to say that adoption continued to be a problem, even though we identify that this would really work. I think it's like anything it's just about connectedness, relationships, communication early and often.

I think about too, what you talked about in terms of a barrier for innovation as clinicians. may not have time to innovate full time. entrepreneurs have a hard time getting buy in from hospitals to adopt the technology.

If there is that secret sauce for suggesting a need for greater hospital support for new technologies, I How important is it from your perspective that a clinician comes out of medical school and practices for a period of time before becoming almost an entrepreneur or the innovator of some of the technologies that can address maybe the reason that they didn't go into full time care for a longer period of time in their profession, or what their peers are telling them is they're just going to get burnt out from having so many things pulling at their time and their capabilities.

Now, depending on, how much time they did doing it in their residency versus their research versus all of a sudden becoming an innovator and this great entrepreneur, I don't know what the right balance or mix is, but the human component of this, and if you think about caring for a patient, that, from my perspective, cannot get lost in all this, or we're just not going to get the ultimate value out of it.

clinical champions from the hospital that can basically end up being the advocate and the cheerleader to get their colleagues to want to buy in. This is basic change management from my perspective and just making sure you have the right people at start to take that to the trajectory.

I just think it will make a difference with adoption. And having a physician with the influence to be able to say, I'm a surgeon, I want to use VR to reduce sedation during surgeries for things that make sense for things like orthopedic surgery or burn treatment and wound care for infusion for someone who is going through cancer, even childbirth and labor.

Yeah, and if you think about virtual reality like that, you meditate, right? Think about where you can take your own mind to try to really augment this with, just your spiritual well being and using this technology to help you work through pain or work through whatever it might be.

That was very cool to me to read.

It is very cool, especially since the third article we polled is the rising complexity of hospitalized patient challenges in healthcare systems. And it's very specifically talking about Today, patients are generally older, they take more medications, they have multiple active medical problems, which has doubled the complexity compared to 15 years ago.

Like our answer of prescribing something for multiple chronic conditions, getting in front of the chronic condition with some of these therapeutics is a pretty groundbreaking space because think about how many people are going to be aging into that generation or into that area in the next 20 years.

If we get in front of that now with some of the things we've already been talking about, it definitely changes the dynamic.

Yeah, and if you think about the DRG landscape, and you think about that population of people, it's going to , continue to have a huge financial impact on our health systems.

don't have that, or those that live in more rural areas that don't have that. But if you think about the command centers and some of the capabilities with cameras and Just feeding information. Last year I remember I did a post about Cleveland Clinic had a hospital at home and literally it was a command center and it was the best experience that my dad had.

It allowed him to be at home with his dog. He was happy. There were a couple little tweaks and things that were happening, but generally speaking, he was an acute inpatient at home being monitored by a command center with people coming in, including even diagnostic clinicians coming in.

And, even my dad, who was completely technologically incapable, , he couldn't even send a text. They figured out a way to have a device that could talk to him and remind him to do things in his home. I think we need to meet the patient where they're at. and leverage all different mediums of technology to help them stay healthier longer.

As the CIO leaning beyond the technology, which so many CIOs do today, you have to have the operational and financial acumen, because if you're thinking about solving problems from the perspective of, hey, I need to address the compression of financial margins due to what you shared about fixed DRG payments.

People are all coming together to plan for what's coming and not what's just happening in the moment.

Exactly

right. And I will tell you, just going through that experience from technical perspective. It was a team of people that , this all was coming from the CIO from the technology group, swarming in on my dad's house and setting all this up.

And there were so many different mediums to be able to deal with somebody who wasn't good at using their smartphone versus somebody that would be. And if you think about this and the capability to take care of. The elderly in our rural communities as well. It's just astounding to me and I will tell you and I've said this Repeatedly over the last year, in the 30 years that I've been in this business, I have never seen a CIO's job so hard as it is today, and what is expected of them.

And that is no easy feat.

It's not. You start thinking about who's surrounding you. If you're the CIO, you may or may not have digital in there as well, but it's all digital. You may or may not have the innovation or the experience or the other pieces that are now multiple roles in the organization or even see the chief AI officer.

If you can bring those people together effectively, then that is where you start to see that Organizational change management take root and actually work. It too can be as formulaic as governance. As long as those people agree that they are there for the same reasons, they will tell you fundamentally that they are.

And yet sometimes those structures make it really messy, especially in bigger hospital systems. And I've been in a two hospital system, 200 hospital system goes back to. The roles and responsibilities and relationships that allow you to advance the care. Yet, there always has to be a champion. And often it's the CEO that is reminding people of that mission and how we can get there.

Yeah,

I'm starting to see, I don't know if you're seeing this our more strategic CIOs, I think, recognize they absolutely have to have an operational, CIO underneath them, or sometimes more than one, because there's no possible way that you can do it all, and the requirements now, I think, are so fundamentally different for that top box.

in terms of the technology landscape for our health systems.

And we keep seeing the transition of leadership. And so part of being successful in any role is what I was just telling, managing up, training your boss. When you have constant turnover, that three plus year cycle of different executives coming in and out of hospitals, having to re explain the story over and over again, you are hopeful for the continuity of Why we're doing certain things versus having to re justify it every time.

Although it is a constant scenario that our CIOs face today, which only adds to the complexity of what you shared about how hard the job has become.

Their clinicians actually work at the top of their license. So we've got to continually come up with solutions that can help them manage this body of work.

It's something you do better than anybody in your domain. When you think about you reduce manual workload, you accelerate system implementations.

You have seamless high quality performance. It's part of that digital fabric. And what I love that SureTest does, and this is me plugging for you, is Hey, you've got a reliable platform. It's compliant. It optimizes systems and you're enhancing patient care and operational outcomes. That's a story I'm bringing to my board about the partnerships and the strength of what it allows us to do throughout the rest of our organization.

So thank you for a product you bring that we all want to use as CIOs and for your leadership and advisory perspective on how we keep making this industry better. I love conversations with you.

And, you know how I feel about that. It's not enough. Not saying anything's better or worse, just different perspectives. I think different perspectives across the board will just continue to make us, Be more diverse, more resourceful, more collaborative and I think in order to get all these things that we talked about today really moving, it's got to be about relationships, it's got to be about connectedness, and it's got to be about trust, and, to have the ability to be even a small part of that is what jazz is mean every day in our space.

Yep, we keep amplifying voices around us with our male allies and anything is absolutely possible. Yeah. I agree, my friend. Laura, always appreciate you. That's Newsday. Thank you for listening. And that's all for now.

Thanks for listening. That's all for now