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  Thanks for joining us on this week in Health IT Influence. My name is Bill Russell, former Healthcare CIO for 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health. IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged. Today we're joined by John Gro, large, the President and CEO of Hillrom.

And I think you're gonna be surprised to find out that Hillrom has made huge advances in the digital space. I know we see their name on beds and we see their name Welsh Allen. They, they've acquired Welsh Allen, so you see their name all over the hospital in the clinic setting, but they're digitally enabling that portion of the business.

And they have also made significant acquisitions on the digital side as well. And we get to talk about that. In addition, we talk about leading and leadership. Being the president and CEO during a pandemic, as well as a time of significant cultural change in our country and around the world. And, uh, John, share some great insights with that.

I learned a ton from it and I think you're gonna enjoy it as well. Special thanks to our influence show sponsors serious healthcare and health lyrics for choosing to invest in our mission to develop the next generation of health IT leaders. If you wanna be a part of our mission, you can become a show sponsor as well.

The first step. It's to send an email to partner at this week in health it.com. Just a quick note before we get to our show. We launched a new podcast today in Health it. We look at one story every weekday morning and we break it down from an health IT perspective. You can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts at Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, overcast, you name it, we're out there.

You could also go to today in health it.com. And now onto today's show. All right, today we are joined by John Lar, the CEO of Hillrom. John, welcome to the show. Thank you, bill. Good to be with you today. Well, I, I'm, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. The, the inter interesting thing is, you know, I, when I share my sponsors with people, they, they often look at me funny because I have big tech consulting, cybersecurity, you know, tech, tech, and then they go.

You have, you have, you have great brand awareness in, in the ben side of the business, but that doesn't really tell the whole story. Give us an overview of what Hillrom does to really kick us off. Yeah. Well Bill you, you make a good point. rom's got a very powerful brand, uh, in the mind of procurement and CNOs and, and

Historically with, with our bed business, but we've diversified significantly over the last couple of years through acquisitions. So it might surprise your listeners to find out that almost 25% of our revenue today is actually in connected care devices and not beds. So care communications, connected devices that, that are utilized in the physician's office.

Mo patient monitoring devices from our acquisition of Welch Allen. And that's the fastest growing part of our business is, is what we have been focused on, is the connected care portion of our portfolio. The business is structured in three businesses. You know the the historical legacy business around our beds in the ICU and med surg.

I. We have a, a large and growing or equipment and, and video integration business. And then we have our frontline care business, which incorporates Welsh, Allen has cardiology in it, vision care products, as well as patient monitoring. I, if we rattled off all the brands, I, I don't think people would, I think they'd be shocked.

I mean, Welsh Allen is one of those that sort of surprises me. I see that every time I go into a room, into a clinic room or whatnot. I, I didn't, I didn't originally put that into the hill bucket of businesses. But you, you also made some digital acquisitions as well. Yeah. We acquired a company in Sarasota, Florida called Volt.

Volt Medical and they're a communications company. Well, with mobile communications, they were the number two player with smartphone technology inside the acute care environment. And they were recently bought, uh, acquired another company called Excel Medical. It's also an MDI medical device integration, uh, company to help integrate all the third party equipment into this communication ecosystem that we're developing.

Wow. So we're, we're gonna talk. It's this week in health. It. So we're, we're gonna talk, uh, a fair amount about the technology side of the business. We're gonna talk a little bit about pandemic, a little bit about leadership. We're gonna go in a lot of different directions, but I, I wanna start with really, you know, taking a look at the, the monitoring of just about everything I.

We were trying to figure out how much density they would have to plan for, for their wireless network, in their care settings, in their, in their patient rooms and their or, and their other things. And we started counting the, the number of IP devices and started to estimate the number of IP devices. It, it's really through the roof, the, the amount of.

From all sorts of devices. Where are you seeing digital really? And, and not only your, your digital acquisitions, but also your traditional business. I mean, we're, we're tracking everything now. Yeah. You know, it's a great question. Across our portfolio, we have about 1.3 million devices that are connected or connectable into this ecosystem that you're referring to, and that ranges from care settings in the acute.

Care, uh, environment in med-surg and ICU and the or, but also in primary care 'cause of our Welsh, Allen, you know, legacy and, and business in that category around cardiology, around vision care, which moves us into the retail pharmacy environment in the, in the future. And also in the home, we have a respiratory care business that, that actually is both in the acute care setting but also in the home.

And uh, and those devices are also connected through, through wifi or Bluetooth. So, so we're, we're in all, all of those care settings from acute to the office, to retail, to the home. And, and we, what we're really pulling, you know, pulling together is having a way to continuously across those care settings.

Monitor patients and, and improve patient care. Yeah, the, I mean, the pandemic really did move care. Do you think that represents a permanent shift at this point? I think a big part of that's gonna be a permanent shift. There'll probably once, once things, you know, return to, you know, a post pandemic environment, whatever that might look like, there'll probably be some natural return to conventional face-to-face in-person care.

But I think the telehealth horse has left the proverbial barn and is never to return. And, and, and I think over the long time, over the long term, certainly telehealth, but also remote patient monitoring and remote patient diagnostics are going to be become more and more prevalent in the future. As well as, you know, improving access to care, uh, just by going to a retail pharmacy setting and getting more and more of your care done at a, a Walgreens or ACVS or a Walmart or a grocery store that's getting into pharmacy.

You know, maybe I don't have enough gray hair, but it feels to me like there are so many. As, there's so much movement going on in healthcare right now that the, the CMS move to reimburse higher levels of acuity out of the home is, is really interesting to me. Obviously, the retail pharmacy aspect, the CVS, the Walgreens and, and, and their moves, Amazon care and their moves, there's just so many things going on.

How, how is ROM really positioned on this? Shift that that is going on, not, not necessarily away from acute care hospitals because they will continue to do that level of, of, of care in those settings. Just the, the amount of care that has been pushed out and continues to be pushed out. How, how is RO positioned for that?

Yeah, so we've, we have seen the beginning of, of that, that move to a more convenient environments like the home or retail environments. I'll give you a couple of examples. In our vision care business, we have a diabetic retinopathy, uh, screening device. As well as a vision screening device that we use in schools and in other non-conventional locations for vision screening.

But diabetics, you know, unfortunately, well under half of them get their annual vision screening test done, and that's because access to a specialist is so difficult. So this device we've created as well as the whole . Kind of ecosystem around it that covers reimbursement as well as specialists Interpreting images that are gathered is, is now very well established and is moving into a pharmacy environment of one of the large national pharmacy chains that we discussed.

I can't mention the name, but it's in a pilot phase right now, and we would expect by the end of the year that it's in a full rollout. And what this is, is allows patients who have diabetes to come into a pharmacy have a, a picture taken with a, a device that literally takes 15 seconds to do a, an exam or, or an image of both eyes.

That image is then sent, uh, to a specialist to interpret. And if there's a, a diagnosis that needs treatment, it's captured early and adult blindness is prevented. So that's one example of moving care into a retail setting. And, and I'll probably get into another one later around the primary care office and how do you expand, you know, telehealth services for primary care physicians that, that can also digitally capture images and or vital signs and, and do a, a more robust telehealth visit with a trusted device.

Like a, like a well shall monitor. You know, it, it's fascinating to me how, how powerful and I, I do this all the time on the podcast, and if people watching the video know I'm holding up my iPhone right now, but it's amazing how much care can be done through this. I, I, more and more I'm just seeing devices connected to this, to another device.

You know, grabbing information, sending it, taking pictures, sending it to a care physician, a caregiver of kind.

Reach into these remote. Where's digital gonna take us?

You know, just that use case that you just mentioned and just the number of use cases that we're seeing emerge out there. Yeah, it's, it's really an exciting time and in innovation and connected devices are the start of that, and then, and then adding in this digital intelligence, whether it's AI or human intelligence that can interpret the data that's being collected.

In a productive, meaningful way. 'cause you can collect a lot of data and as you know, as a, and your audience knows data is one thing, but you have to have meaningful insights where someone can filter through that data. So it's, you know, it's actionable and usable in a way that, you know, integrates with their workflow and allows enhanced productivity, not, not a step back in productivity.

Yeah. So I think this whole, this whole space is. Clearly taking off. It's an exciting time to, uh, to, to, to think about the future of healthcare in these new settings and how smartphones and connected devices and digital technology is really gonna help enable the future. You know, it's, it's, I mean, that leads into one of the next questions I wanna ask, which is around the clinician experience.

I, and I have had those conversations where they're like. They're like, no MAs, no more. I, I cannot possibly handle another piece of data. You're, you're asking me to take data from, uh, consumer devices, from remote devices, from all over the place. At this point, the, the, the clinicians were really grappling with burnout prior to the pandemic.

Uh, the, the pandemic obviously didn't help that situation at all. How do you approach.

So they're already, you know, stressful situation. It really starts with understanding, being in the shoes of those clinicians, whether it's a doctor or nurse or or other caregiver, and understanding their workflow and how do you integrate into that workflow without being disruptive to them, and then in fact enhancing their, their experience as a, as a caregiver.

You know, the consumer smartphone is a great analogy, right? I mean, the, the effort behind creating a frictionless experience with Uber or with Amazon or with any other online kind of B two C, uh, successful business on, on a digital platform. Is what we're trying to achieve here. That doesn't come accidentally, right?

I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into, as you know, and your audience knows to, to make things simple and concise and act and, and streamlined. It takes a lot more effort to do that than to just collect data and dump it on somebody. So we spend a lot of time making sure that we're integrating with the workflow that we're, you know, not providing false information or, you know, information that's, you know, not need to know information at the time.

Filtering it in such a way where it's customizable, interoperable, but also, you know, importantly actionable, uh, at the point that, that the, uh, that data is being gathered. So it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort, and we're, and we're, we'd rather be patient and do that the right way, so it has a longer, uh, trajectory of traction and success in the marketplace.

I, I, I, I wanna ask you some leadership questions. Uh, I'm gonna ask you about culture in a minute, but the, the one that I think is a natural to this follow on to this question, which is, you know, there's, there's a lot of outside companies, there's a lot of digital companies trying to come into healthcare.

You're a healthcare company that is becoming digital and really emerging as a digital player. You know, which, which do you think is easier? Which do you think is, is harder? Is it changing the culture to, to really adapt to digital? Or is it learning healthcare and coming in with the digital perspective? I think they're both difficult actually.

And I, and I think that's where partnerships come into place. We, we have an important partnership with Microsoft as an example for Cloud-based . Development, but also they're helping us with the Internet of things, internet of medical things in some of our development work and, and we do other development of partnerships with, with companies like Apple and, and, and, and Amazon and others.

So I, I think I. You know, developing the right partnerships and, and, and having those become productive and meaningful is, I, I think, a better path forward. 'cause it's very hard for both the tech companies to commit to healthcare and, and the, the difficulty of really, really understanding how healthcare works and how it's, it's not as easily scalable as a lot of, uh, consumer applications or business applications.

But on the other side, you know, a conventional med tech company. It doesn't have all the digital expertise and things from ai, uh, to cloud services, to, you know, even some software programming that we need some help with. Yeah, that's really, I mean, the partnership aspect of it's really fascinating. Uh, you know, last year and, and I, as I talked to CEOs this year, this is one of the areas I really wanna, uh, you know, year every CE had to grapple with to what I would call once in.

In our culture as a result of the, the Death of George Floyd, talk us through your approach to these events as a, as a leader of a global organization. Yeah, so we are a global organization, about 10,000 employees, uh, doing business in over 80 countries. About 25% of our, actually about 30% of our revenue is outside the United States.

So, you know when, when these events occurred, both the Pandemic and the George Floyd murder. You know, it was a time, it was, it didn't take long for us to jump into action and for me to jump into action. And, and I think it starts with one of our core values as a company that's always been in our DNA and, and it's one of our core values is around respect and, and respect for one another, and respect for, for every human being.

So when that, when this occurred. You know, we, we, we were quick to respond to it with, with even a public statement. We kind of doubled down on all of our activities around diversity, inclusion, and belonging, which has been something that I've really accelerated as I've come to Hillrom, and it's, and as I've tell, tell our employees, you know, diversity, inclusion and belonging is a non-negotiable.

You know, we. We have to represent our communities inside of our company. We have to engage with all members of, of, of the, of our communities in, in the work we do, uh, in order to fulfill our mission of, of improving and enhancing outcomes for patients and caregivers. So it's been something we've been working on for quite some time.

We have a tremendous number of, of, of, of groups, of employees, resource groups that have been in place that are open to all employees to join. With various, you know, various interests. But following the George Floyd events of about a year ago, we, we doubled down and, and collected a group of our black leaders together and asked them what can we do more?

And they came back with a really well thought out proposal that we call Reach and Reach stands for representation education. Awareness community, and then the age stands for hillrom. So we've been really working at all these, all these different aspects around education and awareness, but importantly representation of our, of our minority groups and our black employees within Hillrom.

And I'm very pleased to, you know, to tell you that. You know, my leadership team today, over half of them are women. One, one quarter of them are, are black. Our board is cons constituted of over one third of, of, of women on our board, as well as has representation from the black community. So I think we're making good progress with some meaningful, you know, tone from the top and, and examples from the top of the organization.

But we have a long way to go. Yeah. Uh, so reach, representation, education, awareness. What, what was c? Community. Community, with our communities. Yeah. Yep. And then, and. I'm sorry, I was, I was taking notes. That's a phenomenal framework for, for really thinking through bringing the whole community together and having the conversations.

How do you ensure that all voices are heard within Hillrom? Is there, I mean, do you have forums? Is there, is there a way for, for people to be heard? Do you, have you set that up? Yeah. Really. At a, at a, at a corporate level, or is that just happen? No, it's been intentional and we've, you know, we've.

Consistently talked about the importance of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Well before the George Floyd event occurred, we've had employee resource groups that have started with a professional women's group, but then has rapidly expanded to include, you know, people with disabilities. Military, our black community, our Hispanic community, and these are global groups around our company and, and they're open to all employees.

So the women's group as an example, you know, there's a lot of men who join that group, women's group to, to learn and understand and, and help with advancing the careers of women in our organization. So, and same thing for all of our resource groups. So those resource groups and, and we have. Kind of roll up their leadership into what we call a, a Diversity Inclusion and Belonging council, which I'm the chairperson of, and I meet with them on a quarterly basis.

And we review our progress as well as what our, uh, initiatives are for continuing to advance our, our culture inside the company. I mean, this is one of the things I'm seeing, which is really encouraging, is a lot of CEOs are leading these efforts are, are really engaging in the conversations and making sure.

That this, this takes, there was sort of a, I don't know, sort of a cynical look at it. Like, you know, we've been talking about this for decades. Why is this gonna be any different? I think one of the reasons that I'm seeing is I'm hearing more and more CEOs saying, I'm involved in the conversations. I'm listening.

I, I'm leading these efforts. And I, I think that speaks to the, the, the really, the permanence. The, the, the momentum of this change? Yeah. I think it's critical that the, the senior most leader in organizations, you know, carries a, not just, not just talks to talk, but has to walk the talk. And, and that can be uncomfortable times, but it's so, it's such an accelerant.

In fact, it's one of the most gratifying parts of my job, to be honest with you, to be able to see the impact that ACEO can have on the culture of the company. And, and over a very short amount of time how we as an organization have embraced diversity, inclusion and belonging, have seen measurable impacts, and really how it allows everyone to bring their best self to work and contribute to the mission of the company.

So it's been really the most gratifying part of my job. So as, as ACEO, I'm, I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about the pandemic at this point. Mostly from just a, an office standpoint, return to work and those kind of things. You know, as ACEO, you had to be obviously concerned for the safety of your employees.

That's first and foremost. But then there's also this aspect of. How do you continue to get work done when everybody goes home and everyone's working outta their office, and in a lot of cases, this is a new environment for a lot of the, of staff and whatnot. How, how are you thinking about the return in a, a post pandemic world and, you know, is it gonna be the same?

I mean, you're, you're a global company. It's, it's, you really have a lot of variables at play here. Yeah, so specific to office employees, it's, it's a good conversation to have. I, you know, very briefly, you know, about half of our employees are in manufacturing roles, so their, their work did not change.

Safety protocols were in instituted very quickly and we're very proud of our safety record there. And also our field service, uh, team, which is well over a thousand people in the United States alone, that their lives didn't change very much either. So as it relates to office-based employees, I've been really impressed with how rapidly we, and, and it looks like almost every other organization adapted to digital tools and virtual work and work from home.

It's been stressful and especially stressful for young families who, who have all been, you know, kind of relegated to the home and they have, you know, children that have educational ages in the backgrounds while they're trying to do work on online. But the commitment and dedication of the employees to, to work at all hours and, and make themselves available and, and show that real grit and determination to, you know, continue to fulfill our mission for patients and caregivers on the front line really was a mission moment for, for most of our employees, but to really feel like we had an important role to play.

Particularly early on in the pandemic as ICU capacity was being challenged and, and ventilator supplies were, were being, were in demand and we were part of ADPA order to fulfill ventilators for the the stockpile. So it, it turned in that that mission moment turned into a real transformative opportunity for us to embrace digital tools.

Luckily, we just launched Microsoft Teams a month before the pandemic, so the timing was really good for all of us to jump onto Microsoft Teams as the platform. And of course, you know, nothing against other platforms. They all work great. But, uh, but it's been, it's been interesting to see how productive we actually have been.

It is come at a cost 'cause people have, I think there's been a, been a mental toll for a lot of our employees, you know, with the environment of working at home. But we're now just at the beginning of coming back to work in our offices in various parts of the world where it's safe to do so, and we're, you know, we're adapting some interesting work, work protocols to do that.

You know, I, I've, I've worked from home for. A fair amount of my career and it, it is hard to separate home and, and work in, in one of my offices in, in the past, I actually had a, a sign over the door, which essentially saying that you're, you're leaving the office, right? You're, you're, you're going home.

After I was walking out that door and it was just a reminder that, you know, there is a, there is a separation between the two. It it, this is, this is gonna be. Yeah, yeah. We, we could talk about care providers, I mean, on care providers. We're really worried about the overload that we've seen. They obviously have jumped in to really address the pandemic as, as you know, the, the, the heroes that they are.

I mean, they're working long hours. They're, they're, they're doing exemplary work, but our, our office staff office sometimes doesn't, and, and really the manufacturing workers and whatnot. Don't get that kind of recognition, but they're, they're also, you know, braving a situation where early on in this pandemic, we didn't know what we didn't know.

Yes, we put protocols in place, but I was talking to somebody the other day and, you know, the first time I went to Home Depot after we really understood what this pandemic was, I, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if I should touch a box. I didn't know if I should touch a cart. I, I was concerned, and if we go back to that timeframe.

These people were going to work. They were, they were doing the things to make those ventilators and, and those kind of things. What, what do you think are, are we gonna have to do some things post pandemic to really de-stress? The, the situation we've been working at a pretty, uh, you know, high pace, a fast clip for the last couple of years.

Yeah. We've been, we've been really conscientious of that throughout this last, you know, 12 months. Of making sure we're supporting our employees, you know, with resources, uh, both financially and non-financially, to help them through this, you know, mental health resources, . And, and really just our, our communications, and I think I've seen this across a, you know, our, our caregiver CEOs as well in, in the acute care environment, speaking to many of them.

You know, just making sure that communications were very frequent, very, very consistent from the top, you know, kind of filtered out all the middle, you know, of the organization so that, you know, we've, we've found a new, profound way to, uh, to reach, uh, all of our employees. We've gotten, you know, the interesting thing about that Bill is that our employee engagement is actually increased during the pandemic, which we were quite surprised to see.

We did a survey early on and a survey a few months ago, and our employee engagement actually went up a little bit. So I, I think it's, you know, for, we feel good about how we manage through it. Again, it was a mission moment. So when you have kind of a purpose like that in the organization, people feel like they're contributing to the pandemic and not, not suffering from it.

And, and I think that made a big difference for us as well as some of the other things we did for all of our employees. What, what do you think the lasting impact on your company is going to be as a result of. I think we're, we've catapulted ourselves into a, a digital environment and, and our collaboration across, you know, a global organization with 10,000 employees scattered around the world, has come together because of this digital medium.

I think now after 12 months, we're a little tired of doing everything on Zoom call for office-based employees, and we're, and we're dying to get back to the office and see one another. 'cause we're really missing a few elements of human interaction that we've, that we really value. I. Around collaboration and brainstorming and, and teamwork and, and relationship building and career networking, uh, that we, you know, that thoroughly are not advancing as well in a virtual environment.

So we're, we're looking forward to getting back to some type of hybrid, which I'd be happy to talk to you about my thoughts on that. Yeah. Well, well, you know what I'd.

Have you put your vision hat on it? It always amazes me, CEOs, they have to, they have to be into the operations, they have to be community builders and, and, and really, you know, encouragers and those kind of things. Psychologists and, and whatnot. But, but, but they're also, they also have to be visionaries.

And we'll look and we'll look at those tools and say, wow, that . How do I, how do I live without that? It's, it's such a productivity boost to use these new tools, uh, that will be developed in the next 10 years and, and we have today to improve care, to improve access to care. To lower cost and really allow us to gain more access to acute care resources in non-acute environments.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting, I look forward to the really getting about a year past this and having those conferences where we, where we all sit down and talk about what and what. In preparation for, you know, potentially some, some event like this happening in the future. Yeah, and I mean, I think telehealth is one of the best examples, right?

I mean, a lot of things changed to really unleash that and uh, and it just took off. And, uh, part of that was government intervention on reimbursement, which was a really important, you know, artificial barrier that was in the way. Now that, that's outta the way, the expansion of telehealth and moving more and more care into the home or into a retail environment, it's gonna be really fascinating to see what, where that goes.

Yeah. So let, let's talk about innovation for a little bit. There's, there's just a, and this is probably the understatement of the century. There's a ton of. Health tech innovation at this point, what area do you expect innovators will make the most progress with regard to the, the clinician and the patient experience?

You know, I think, I think, you know, one area that we're gonna make sure we pay good close attention to is cybersecurity, interoperability, and, and ensuring that the trust of the data is always there. You know, we, we view a lot of the tools we have and a lot of the, the equipment we have as . Trusted brands, whether it's Wal Shallon or Hillrom or others, we don't wanna lose that trust.

And we've spent a lot of time making sure that those foundational issues are, are well in place so that we can advance in the areas of, you know, taking vision care into a retail environment, taking respiratory care outside of the emergency department and into the home, and preventing patients with COPD, uh, from coming into the hospital on a frequent basis because they're being monitored.

With their therapy at home. Similarly with other, you know, respiratory ailments. I think our ability to diagnose cardiology arrhythmias is going to significantly change in the future, where you don't need to have a, a hold their monitor strapped to a patient, you know, for, for 24 hours you're gonna send them home with a patch.

They might even get that patch at a pharmacy, but wear the patch for seven to 10, seven to 10, or seven to 14 days. Send it in for interpretation and data, and then you go to the cardiologist when they have the actual report and have done the complete, you know, review of the diagnostic portion of that while you are in the comfort of your own home, rather than having to see your GP and then a cardiologist and then wear a device and maybe two months later, you know, getting a diagnosis.

Uh, so I think that the. The, the, the workflow, the patient experience, the patient engagement and the quality of, of diagnostics is going to really increase. And that, I think that's a very interesting area to keep an eye on. And it's an area that we're investing in both organically and inorganically to look at, you know, how can Hillrom play a bigger role in certain disease state areas?

We know we have expertise and we have, you know, the trust of doctors and nurses, uh, to go into that area. Yeah. I mean, last question, I mean, the, the, you know, it's, it's from the CEO perspective, there's so much change happening. There's so much investment, there's so much going on. How do you continue to make Hillrom a leader?

How do you continue to, to keep them the front of innovation? How do you foster that culture of innovation? Yeah. We, I, I, I, I think it's knowing our roots and knowing where we're strong. We have a very trusted brand in the, in the eyes of nurses and, and physicians in their primary care office or, or in respiratory care, as an example.

Where we, where we know we have a gap is with CIOs, right? And, and, and, and, and getting our name recognized within in the CIO office that Hillrom is a connected care company. Uh, and that over 25% of our business today is connected care, and that's the fastest growing part of the business and where we're investing our r and d dollars as well as our capital to, to make smart acquisitions, uh, in this area.

And I think the more we do that and prove that we can bring solutions that allow real-time patient monitoring in the home or in the hospital to intervene sooner and prevent expensive interventions and reduce costs and improve quality. I. I think those are the areas where we, we have the opportunity to shine and, and drive that realtime communication onto a device like a smartphone inside the, uh, physician's office or inside the acute care environment where you get real actionable data at the time you need it and not from, you know, a data warehouse that it's been sitting there for a day or even for six hours, where it's no longer as valuable as the real time, you know, data that can be sent to a caregiver.

You know, I hope, I hope we're talking a year from now and you're telling me how every CIO is saying, we, we now understand that Hillrom is a digital company and, and, and the things that you guys are, are, are bringing to the table. Because I, to be honest with you, when, when I, I had the conversation with Hillrom late last year about being a sponsor, I'm like, I'm not sure it's a good fit, and I'm a former CIO and I just, I didn't recognize.

How much innovation and how much investment in the digital and the connected care space that you guys have done. And, and I, I hope when we're talking a year from now, it's just, it's just common knowledge that Hillrom is a digital company. Well, thank you Bill for that, and I, I look forward to having that conversation a year from now and tracking our progress.

That's an exciting time and we're, we're excited to play a part in that, John. Thanks. Thanks for the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. What a great discussion. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, from these kinds of discussions, please forward them a note. Perhaps your team, your staff.

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