Today in health IT, report of 96 percent of health tech leaders recognize AI's competitive edge.

It's actually a research article from Arcadia talking about CIO's strategic influence in healthcare and identifies AI's impact on the workforce. My name is Sarah Richardson. I'm a former CIO for several healthcare systems, most notably within HCA and Optum, and now president of the This Week Health 229 Executive Development Community, where we host a set of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare, one connection at a time.

For 500, you can join the exclusive Yellow Hat Club, which has over 60 members and is growing. And the founder of that club is Bill Russell, who has joined us today.

Hey Sarah, how's it going?

It's going well and happy Friday.

Yeah, it's it's exciting. We're actually in DC today. We're actually recording this early, but on Friday we will be in DC hosting another 229 event, CMIO's.

And we're going to be doing one with leaders talking. It's our first topical 229 round table. We're going to be talking about AI with I think 13, 13 or 14 CIOs and healthcare leaders. Relevant article for today.

Absolutely. The report highlights that literally 96 percent of technology leaders in healthcare know that it's a competitive advantage.

The survey also talks about it's increasingly seen as a tool for improving operational efficiency, enhancing patient outcomes, and supporting decision making in the healthcare sector. And we're also finding about those data driven decisions involving more people in the organization. It's a strong consensus among industry professionals.

And the importance of integrating AI into healthcare technology strategies. So a couple key points I thought were interesting. I'd love your thoughts on this as well. 96 percent is a huge number. It's up year over year and even month over month in some cases. But when we think about the biggest concerns about data privacy and integration challenges, that's where I'm really curious to see where our crowd leans into while we're here in D.

C. But it's really going to be about optimization of management and analysis of the electronic health record to identify opportunities to improve. outcomes. What are your thoughts on that?

I, by the way, I believe that the best, the biggest opportunity for AI lies in what you just said. I also think it's the longest, it's the farthest in terms of reachability, like really delving into the medical record.

We had a conversation about summaries and chart summaries and how valuable it would be for AI. to 100 percent accurately generate a chart summary of a complex care patient. It would just be, it would save so much time. It's unbelievable, but we can't trust it yet. It's that the problem is that a hundred percent, because it has to be a hundred percent, even though we know that from time to time, nurses and others make mistakes when they're putting those charts together, the computer has to be right a hundred percent of the time, as it should be.

Their computer should be right a hundred percent of the time. And we're working with. Agent models we're working with antagonistic models. In other words, one AI says one thing, the other AI model is an antagonist, and it creates a better back and forth to create a better record. But still that a hundred percent is elusive.

You and I talked on Tuesday about the work that Mercy, is it Mercy?

Yeah.

That they're doing in nursing and how much money they are saving in nursing. I think workflow. If we look at workflow, if we look at that model where AI provides information that informs a workflow that used to require somebody to dig in and find and all that other stuff, but we still have a human in the middle, which people will, this is going to be the new catch word, by the way, there's going to be a new phrase, cloud first is going to be human in the middle.

It'll be welcome. I think it will be in the workflow area. It will be computer vision. Identifying things quicker. But a lot of this savings, I think it's going to come from labor savings because we have a talent we have a, not a talent shortage. We just have a shortage of labor.

We do have a shortage of labor.

Although I don't like to talk about AI in terms of how much. Money it saves every time. To me, that defeats the purpose of why it's been introduced to healthcare. To me, that's a secondary or tertiary effect. You think about it is addressing workflow shortages. It is bringing the joy back into caring for patients because they're not in front of the computer all of the time.

It's really that technology enabled workforce. It's also giving greater access and equity opportunities for populations that need us more than ever. I'm going to lead with those aspects of what AI can do for us. And then we get to quote unquote save the money and make additional investments across our facilities because sometimes we're competing protect that versus, new beds as an example.

Do you think it depends on which presentation you're doing? So if I'm presenting on a budget, I'm going to be talking about the savings, but if I'm presenting to, to, to the nurses or to the doctors and whatnot, They're like, saves 150 billion, again, so what? Are you, but if we talk to them in terms of cognitive load, they might appreciate that.

But if we talk to them in terms of pajama time and, getting them more quality time at home and with their family and practicing at the top of their license yeah. I guess it depends on which presentation I'm giving. I'm going to be able to talk in both languages, if you will, the financial language and the in the clinical language if I have to.

I would, and I'd have those scripts prepared with the people who are my partners that have to either co present or support the information I'm finding. So always, as a CIO, had my CFO involved in any business case I was presenting, and I'd ask the question, how heavily do we lean in with a financial lens?

Because if the CFO is not on board, then it always just gets crushed in some conversation.

So let me ask you this. I haven't talked to a CFO lately. So this is purely conjecture, because I'm assuming you haven't talked to many CFOs lately. How do you think the CFOs are viewing AI? What is the, that would be an interesting conversation.

What is the CFO's, Viewpoint on AI today.

I just did a Flourish Podcast with Kim Hodgkinson, who's been CFO in several healthcare systems and she's a fellow in both ACHE, and HFMA and her thought, and I love it because she was a nuclear physicist before she became an AI. CFO is you always have to evaluate the financial and human impact and they come together as an equation and really understanding what that means.

And she's the data will speak for you, but you have to add a human element to the story. She found that as a CFO, that's where she actually got the most traction in an organization. She's I'm going to live by the numbers. And then every time you introduce the story of the human impact, that's where you're going to have the right outcome.

And you can listen to it when we chat, but she's also done a few other shows. across our industry. That's what she shared and I would love to test that out against CFOs that we talked to find out what additional perspectives could be there.

Yep, you got to reach, you got to reach the heart. That's an interesting perspective.

on that and I appreciate that. So what's the what's the so what?

My so what for why CIOs and healthcare care about this is goes back to your data privacy and security and how expensive it can be to get the data governance and ongoing data quality. and lineage really funded. That's a hard thing.

Most people think it's a one and done, and you're probably not doing an LLM on this. You very well are taking your private data inside your organization. If you can get that a hundred percent right back to your earlier point, where does the human get inserted in that process? You start to train and you have quality data, you're training your own organization.

So you're getting a hundred percent correctness with the human that can sign off on it. That's a big win. And that's going to lend itself to. How you have interoperability, you're sharing that information across other EHRs that they can trust. You're obviously going to get a cost and ROI impact coming on that.

And the change management aspect that we always talk about, preparing teams and workflows for what an AI driven transformation can really look like. And then, It's ethical AI use, ensuring the tools are unbiased and equitable in patient care. You get that formula right, and you have what you need to continue to put AI in other aspects of your organization.

Wow, you can't do that brought of us. So what you took all mine. Geez. On Tuesday on Tuesday, I said, you have to cultivate your champions with stories and things around AI. So absolutely. You're cultivating your champions. I'm going to, I'm going to piggyback on your AI within IT. You have people that are dying to play with AI within your IT organization.

Give them the chance. You may not have. The quality data and that kind of stuff. And, maybe have them stand up sandboxes and whatnot. There's plenty to do in this space. It's moving so rapidly. It's really fascinating to talk to architects who are playing with this and I'm like, man, it sounds to me like you're playing with a completely different model than you were two months ago, and they're like, two months ago, I'm playing with a new model than I was two weeks ago.

It's it's. moving. And so you're going to want to give some of your more creative technical people, the opportunity free up some of their time and give them the chance to play around with this stuff in a safe environment. Now, clearly. Not Hey, we're kicking off the, it doesn't even have to be.

We're kicking off this healthcare project. It's more along the lines of let them play around with the models, let them learn how to train a model. And you may never train a model, but it would be interesting to have somebody on your staff who knows how to train a model. Because there, there could be a case where it makes sense for you to do that.

Yeah, so I'm piggybacking piggybacking. Is that a word? Yeah. Piggybacking on something you said.

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