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 Welcome to this Week in Health It where we amplify great thinking to Propel Healthcare Forward. My name is Bill Russell Healthcare, CIO, coach and creator of this week in Health. It a set of podcast videos and collaboration events dedicated to developing the next generation of health leaders. This episode and every episode since we started the c Ovid 19 series.

Has been sponsored by Sirius Healthcare. Special thanks to Sirius for supporting the show's efforts during the crisis. Don't forget, we've gone to three shows a week now Tuesday, we cover the news on Tuesday Newsday, and we have interviews with industry influencers on Wednesday and Friday. This Friday, however, we are observing a holiday, so we are dropping a show on Monday.

I'm always looking for technologies that I think can have a significant impact on health. . And thermal imaging is one of those technologies that really finds itself at the right place at the right time. It's not a silver bullet, but it gets us a long way towards reopening our society and returning to normal.

Today I speak with two industry leaders in the field who I got a chance to hear, talk about this technology back in December, and I don't think any of us anticipated how important it would become just six months later. I hope you enjoy. All right, today we're joined by Joe Klein and Jeff Kel. Good. Uh, good morning you two and welcome to the show.

Yeah, good morning. Uh, you know, I wanna do a show to explore thermal imaging, and I saw the two of you discuss this topic back in December of last year at an event that I was speaking at. And, uh, you know, I'm really excited to have the two of you on the show for, for a deeper dive. This

idea back in December. Uh, that, that this technology will be as important as it is today given all the things that have gone on. Um, Jill, uh, how about we. Sure. Um, you, you know, in December, I don't think any of us saw or knew what was coming at us. Um, the, the interesting thing about this is that this virus has, um, helped transform some of these niche solutions like thermal imaging and kind of put 'em front and center.

Um, and I've been in it space for probably 25 years, and I'm not sure that I've ever seen something, um, be transformed and reemerged and, um, added. Uh, at this pace, uh, updates and, and regulations are happening in real time, so it's a, it's a very exciting and interesting time here. All, I guess before we get too far into this, we should talk about, you know, what is thermal imaging and get an overview.

Uh, and back to your original question, I, uh, could not imagine that this, uh, was, uh, gonna be. Happening, uh, back in, uh, December of this past year, but, uh, actually kind of excited 'cause I, I think there's some very valuable things that not only you can do with this, with Covid, but before, but, uh, to your question, uh, what would you do with Covid, but even other diseases and other, uh, uh, situations within the, uh.

Organizations, uh, going forward. So, uh, the technology itself is, uh, measures energy and it measures thermal energy, and it's a little different than what you see on a camera, but there's some similarities as well. And, uh, what we, what we're doing is looking at, uh, skin temperature and how that ends up, uh, correlating to someone's, uh, body temperature.

And we have a good indication of whether somebody is febrile or not. Well, how, how accurate is it at this point? Uh, well, it's actually the, the sensor technology is extremely accurate. And so the challenges that may, uh, uh, make the accuracy change a little bit are the scenarios in which it is, uh, uh, the measurements are taken.

So, uh, the thermal sensitivities, uh, are, are phenomenal at less than, uh, 50, uh, millikelvin, uh, sensitivity. So you can pick up, uh, very, very subtle, uh, temperature changes. But there are many things that have to go on in measuring temperature. So, uh, we like to make sure that when we're working with our customers, that, uh, they, they, uh, we can help them set up so that they can get the best temperatures, uh, temperature measurements and accuracy so you can get down to a half of, uh, degree of Fahrenheit inaccuracy.

And that's generally the spec that, uh, the, um, uh, reputable camera and thermal imaging, uh, companies provide. So, all right, so I'm sure I'm gonna have more technical questions as we go along, but is this the same? Same with thermal imaging is the same thing as cameras. I can get a, you know, $50 thermal imaging thing from Best Buy, or I can get a $5,000 thermal imaging camera from.

You know, from somebody else and they, they run the gamut. Is it, is it, is it sort of the same? Absolutely. That's absolutely correct. Um, I'd probably say the, the, the ranges are anywhere from, uh, well, you can have real small thermal sensors that you can, uh, purchase for your oven or your grill or in your kitchen.

And those are, are in the, you know, sub hundred dollars range. Uh. And then there's, uh, getting into more thermal imaging. You might start around 500 and you can go, uh, is, is uh, up, up even above 10,000 depending on your configuration. Alright. Just to add, just to add to that, I think one of the advantages that the solutions that are coming to market right now is most of them are being paired with an IoT platform.

Um, which brings the machine learning and the AI and the analytics, uh, to these things, uh, to help, um, provide notifications or to do, uh, detection of face masks or, or whatever else, uh, technology they add on at the time. So that's interesting. So, all right, so let's start talking about the applications. So people have gotten this far into the podcast.

They're saying, okay, why is this such a big deal? Why are you guys talking about this today? And I think a lot of people understand that, you know, we're essentially able to tell if somebody has a, a higher temperature at this point, which is an indication of covid. I mean, obviously it's that it's dry cough and other things, but this is one of the early indications of it.

So to be able to, to do that at the door of a facility or before somebody goes into a sporting event or somebody you name it, has a lot of, uh, a lot of value. So talk about some of the applications and, and who do we see using this today? So I, I think, um, most organizations who have a large amount of employees that they need to bring back to work and they need to do it safely, um, it, it's a, it's serving a critical role in reopening our, our arenas and our airports and our hospitals and, you know, basically any place where there's a large amount of folks that are coming in, um, I, I think it's, it's key for those

Uh, employers to make sure that they provide that sense of safety to their employees as well, because that's, you know, part of their responsibility. It, it reduces their concerns. And it, you know, the interesting thing is it's not new. Um, they've used this technology with SARS and, and mirrors and other outbreaks that have happened.

Uh, I think one of the things that it does do for us versus a handheld camera, um, it reduces the time to enter those spaces and to enter them safely. We'll get back to our conversation with Jill and Jeff in just a moment. Now here's a brief message about thermal imaging from our sponsors. Countries around the world begin to reopen.

Companies are faced with an unprecedented challenge, finding an effective and discrete way to ensure a safe work environment. Workplaces of all sizes can use thermal imaging solutions. Can non-invasively screen workers, customers, or visitors for. Elevated body temperatures helping identify those who might be sick.

Autonomous screening systems can be easily mounted to an entrance wall or cart to efficiently provide accurate data to a targeted set of users when appropriately used as part of a safe workplace initiative. These advanced solutions can minimize the spread of disease, help reduce costs associated with employee illness, or show your commitment to protect employees and customers.

So, um, we actually had a pre-call yesterday and we were talking about this and, and some of the things didn't really dawn on me. Um, but we, we really do have to take a picture in a way that doesn't take an awful lot of things from the background into account. And we almost have to set uping system of some kind for in front.

This, which one, you know, share a what? Some of the considerations are as you are deciding how and where you're going to use this kind of technology. Yeah. So ultimately you wanna get people as they're coming in, but uh, you have to be, just a simple, basic example is if you have a door that's swinging open and that leads out to a, a parking lot.

Sort of what you would end up picking up on that, uh, the blacktop or the asphalt that's, uh, sitting there, if it's been a hot day, that'll influence the measurement. So you've got outside factors that can influence the measurement, and there are techniques that you can use either in how you place, uh, the cameras and where you set things up and or equipment that you use.

To, uh, remove some of those, uh, or factor in some of those, uh, variables that can happen with you setting it up. But ideally, you'll want to place . At some point where people were coming in and, uh, and then as they pass to, uh, areas where they're working, you'd be able to take a measurement and, uh, or there's even self measurement, uh, techniques that can go on as well.

And then, uh, depending on what their temperature is, you can decide, uh, what the next steps in the process would be is maybe they shouldn't enter, maybe they have to take additional questions that, uh, that, uh, as part of the overall process or even get, uh, another temperature tech, uh, to verify. Yeah, so, so Jill, you talked about this being integrated with, uh, with ai and I could see that, you know, so it actually in on my, make sure it's not person's behind me or anything to that effect.

Um, but couldn't it also be integrated into a lot of other like systems? Uh. And actually this is gonna lead to a privacy conversation, but the, you know, couldn't it tie into, uh, time tracking? Couldn't it tie into Sure. Uh, sure. Just a lot of things. You know, what, what we're seeing today is, you know, right now everyone is, they know that they have to have some sort of thermal imaging as they bring people back to work.

Um, so that's the demand today. Uh, the demand. Tomorrow, uh, is PPE monitoring. It's contact tracing. It's integrating with their access controls, um, social distance monitoring. All those things are coming shortly after this. Um, but in addition to that, the next phase is to truly use those IoT platforms that are, that are joined with these.

So you'll see, um, smarter businesses happen out of this. You'll see organizations transform their operations to reduce cost. Um, they'll actually . Some folks even take the data to monetize it that they get from these IoT sensors. So it, it's a very exciting time in this space. Yeah, I would imagine. So. Uh, let, let's talk a little bit about, um, uh, what's the best way to say this?

The, the, the policies that you would put in place at an organization. Right? So I'm gonna implement this. Maybe not for a baseball. I'll just put something on the ticket that says, Hey, you have to pass through thermal imaging, that kinda stuff. But for bringing my people back to work, I've had some conversations with CIOs and they're part of the overall discussion for the health system.

The clinical workers have been coming back to work while they never left work, right? The clinical workers have been there, uh, but now they're bringing the nonclinical people back and they're, they're struggling. And this is probably part of a, an overall solution to, uh, make people feel more comfortable and.

A little, uh, another level of security, um, for, uh, and safety for the organization. What kind of things are, are people looking at in terms of policies to protect, uh, privacy and, and those kind of things? Um, I, I guess one of the things that when we start talking to clients, you know, we, we make sure that they include all the appropriate stakeholders when they have these projects.

So those stakeholders are hr. You need facilities there, you need your security team. Um, legal is very important. Uh, safety and health is somebody else that we kind of bring into this. Uh. The other thing that we, we want folks to do is we want them just to look at the design first and then determine what solution they need to implement.

Um, look like, as you said, we've talked about location is very important. Understanding your traffic flow, how many people are coming through are very important. Um, so there's a lot of different considerations. Uh, the other thing that's, it's something to consider is it's in extremely high demand. Um. Lots of, uh, organizations across America want this and they want it now.

So you've got a bit of a, a supply chain and demand scenario going on here as well. You know, Jeff, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is when, when you were presenting last December, uh, you were talking about all sorts of applications of putting these in the, in the patient room. Um, now obviously that has.

How it was. It was fascinating to me how much data these things generate and all the potential applications for it. Can you talk a little bit about some of the things we were talking about in December imaging? In the, uh, in, in the hospital room. Yeah, so, so we were talking about thermal imaging in LIDAR at that time.

Uh, but the, the combined, uh, combination of the two, uh, you can start to look at, at movement, but also then, uh, monitor temperature changes, right? And this is nice because it allows, um, uh, real time, uh, commun, uh, uh, data to be communicated. Now, depending on what you wanna capture, uh, you can generate a lot of data or you can simply just get messages.

Uh, that are very, uh, small that would indicate, uh, changes in temperature, uh, different types of movement that might be going on as a result in Yeah. But we can also, can we also like, protect, you know, one of the things is handwashing in the room. Mm-Hmm. . And it becomes even, uh, during a pandemic becomes even more, uh, important.

So we can actually monitor some of. Around the floor from room to room. Right? Well, well actually, we've been able to show, uh, with POCs, uh, with, with, uh, health systems, um, uh, the, whether even the proper procedures are occurring, right? Sometimes in the rush of the moment, uh, uh, a uh, a particular step may be missed and.

Well, it's not, so, I, I, well, it, it may be important for, for many different reasons, but, uh, the beauty of it is, is that, uh, we can help, uh, compliance and even something like bed turns, right? Was a, uh, patient turned in, uh, their bed, uh, uh, how many times, right? There's all sorts of, uh, debates as I'm sure you're well aware within hospitals about how many times, uh, uh, a patient might have been turned or not.

Well, you can have a, uh, uh, effectively a non uh. Uh, identifiable, uh, view of, uh, someone actually performing a, a bed term. Right? So you, you could do this in a private, uh, uh, well, I don't know if I wanna say HIPAA compliant, but I would say anonymized fashion and know that someone actually did that, uh, procedure in that room at that time.

So the thermal imaging can tell us a lot about what. The LIDAR can tell us a lot about where, right. And you can combine those two, uh, with, with AI and, and other, uh, uh, uh, uh, I'll call data orchestration technology, uh, to be able to, to provide some very interesting insights. So. I had, uh, Patrick Anderson.

I'm gonna ask you guys, you know, for potentially, I mean, without maybe naming names, but you know, where you've seen this go into where this has been put into place. But Patrick Anderson with, uh, city of Hope, uh, was talking in one of our covid series, uh, podcast. He talked about how they, they implemented this almost immediately in their, uh, in their hospitals at the front door.

So that essentially as people were walking in, I think they, they actually had to walk up to a kiosk, get pretty close to it, but essentially it monitored the temperature of the people as they were coming in so that they could, you know, really identify which staff was potentially at risk test.

That they were doing at the time, and they wanted a way to say, okay, is anybody showing any indication? And then we're going to, you know, escalate and do the proper testing for those people. They, they did it pretty early on. They identified. Are, are, are you seeing that really generally across the board and in different organizations at this point?

Jill? You know, we, we see it, uh, in manufacturing facilities. We see it in restaurants. Um, uh. Travel. Um, so you know, Amazon, Toyota, Walmart, Starbucks, uh, carnival Cruise Lines, all, all of them are looking at this. So it's, it's across most industries. Wow. So we could, we could actually have a shortage. Uh, and that's what you were trying to describe before, there could be a shortage of, of this technology just, just outta supply chain at this point.

Correct. Wow. It, so are we, are we seeing that already or is it, is it, uh, is there still ample supply of, of, it's a. It's a textbook scenario for supply, uh, supply and demand. Um, alright. Is there, is there something that differentiates the, uh, software, Jeff, as you're looking at this, this stuff? Uh, well, there's, uh, there's two different types of, of measurement techniques.

Uh, uh, one where they're using what's referred to as a calibrator. Uh, it's black bodies, the, the . Official name for it, uh, uh, to make sure the measurements are accurate. Another uses a sampled average of people and, uh, they're both, uh, accurate. Uh, uh, there's, uh, FDA approved models of both, uh, for, um, uh, five 10 K clearance.

Uh, and, uh. Their software will, uh, look for particular places on the face. Some will use different techniques to make sure they're getting the best quality measurement. And it, it just, it really varies, uh, uh, uh, based on, um, uh, the, the vendor. Right. And I, I just, I keep, I. I think an important point to make here, it's, it's really important to, uh, work with a consultant or, uh, a system integrator to sort of make the right choices because not all software is the right choice for each environment.

Uh, and, uh, you, but you can usually find something that works just right for a customer. So, yeah. You know, I didn't properly introduce two of you to start, so, um, actually. It's, it's typical. Bill Russell move here at the end of the show I'm have you who?

And, uh, you know, how do you support this technology, I guess, today? So, Jeff, we'll start with you. So, I, I'm an industry consultant. Uh, I've had quite a, a few number of years in, uh, healthcare and, uh, technology. Uh, I'm, uh, uh, have a graduate degree in electro optics and, uh. Just, uh, happy to be able to, uh, be working in that space, uh, inside of healthcare, uh, today.

So, uh, I, uh, just again, an industry consultant. I guess probably the easiest way to describe my, describe, I help the industry with picking out thermal and, uh, imaging solutions. Got it. Uh, uh, Jill, could you introduce yourself and how you support the technology? Sure. Uh, my name is Jill Klein and, uh, I am the senior leader of IoT at Sirius.

Um, I help, uh, pick the right vendors for our clients. I, I meet with clients. I do some high level consulting. I also sit on, uh, two boards. I sit on Compt as IoT Advisory Council and also Tech Data's, IOT and Analytics Advisory Council. Um, throughout my career, um, I've been very . Passionate about it. Uh, I started way back when at a small cow spotted company in, in North Sioux City, South Dakota called Gateway.

So, um, it's been, it's been a fun ride. Wow. And, and IoT is really changing the game. We are generating an awful lot of data at the edge right now. It's, it's a, it's, uh, interesting. We've, we've had a couple conversations. You know, I wanna thank you guys for coming on the show. If people want more information on, uh, on, on thermal imaging, is, is there a way they can reach out to you or find out more information?

Absolutely. Uh, sirius com.com is our website. Uh, and it's, the solutions are out there along my contact information is there as well. Fantastic. Thanks again for coming on the show. I really appreciate it guys. Thanks, bill. That's all for this week. Special thanks to our sponsors, VMware Starbridge Advisors, Galen Healthcare Health lyrics, Sirius Healthcare and Pro Talent Advisors for choosing to invest in developing the next generation of health leaders.

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