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Today in Health IT, we are discussing. What should healthcare organizations know about AI PCs? Today's episode is brought to you by Omnissa, the first AI driven platform enabling seamless, secure, personalized work experiences.

Discover more at ThisWeekHealth. com / Omnissa. My name is Sarah Richardson. I'm a former CIO for several Healthcare systems, most notably within HC and Optum, and now the president of 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.

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AI PCs in Healthcare: Opportunities and Challenges

Alright, today we are discussing should Oops, start over. Today we are discussing what should healthcare organizations know about AIPCs, and I'm joined by Drex DeFord, president of our 229 cyber and risk community. Drex, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. I always love being on with you. It's always fun to be able to do things together like this.

And so this is an interesting one, and I immediately thought of you as, in terms of a thought partner on this conversation, because. Yeah. The article discusses how healthcare organizations can benefit from AI PCs, which feature advanced chip design for higher performance efficiency. They're also expected to help address clinician burnout by automating repetitive tasks and improving productivity.

However, before adopting these technologies, healthcare organizations must consider device management, data governance, and compliance issues. I want to throw out there, especially from your perspective, Healthcare shown we may lag behind in other industries because of tech adoption and the modernization to meet demand is really out there and necessary.

But these remote patient monitoring programs, hospital at home, they extend beyond the walls. Things like virtual nursing and what healthcare systems have concerns about for compatibility, interoperability, regulatory. I always think of that security lens. When you saw this, what came to mind for You So we just finished a, 229 summit in Washington, DC, and I sat in the CMIO room.

So there was a lot of discussion there about artificial intelligence tied to clinical operations, improvement, the governance of AI, all those kinds of things. So when I look at the story, I think the story maybe is like a kickoff for us to talk a little bit about artificial intelligence.

I think machines like that, machines that are built specifically for AI are it's a great idea and I think it will help, It will help us use that technology more effectively. The pragmatic person in me thinks about things like, and you mentioned it, like tech debt. We have a lot of places who have a lot of PCs that are actually very old and still have a lot of work to do to catch up and new tech like that often brings, Security patching and update concerns and those kinds of things.

And then there's always the question about the balance of the work. Whatever the AI implementation is going to be, the balance of the work between what happens on the machine and what happens in the cloud, and then the whole issue about misconfiguration of the cloud and, the other issues that cause us to have.

sometimes unintentional breaches. So there's a lot that goes possibly into this story and into this discussion. But but the conversation in DC was, pretty fantastic. Just listening to some of the ways that, that some of the clinicians or all of the clinicians, or all the CMIOs there were thinking about using artificial intelligence.

So if we think about this from a posturing and setting up your organization to potentially get in front of some of that tech debt longer term, the ability to bring on the new programs that require either higher NPUs and neural processing units and task execution as a CIO. Would you bring in these machines ahead of some of that so that these pilots can work more effectively, or how does it help you to really structure some of the budgeting and implications that need to be a part of this in your organization?

Yeah, no, I think the pilot idea and again, going back to the conversation with the CMIOs, lots of pilots going on, lots of things that are like early test phase. And even in some cases. There were maybe two potential vendor partners involved in some of those pilots. So there was almost like an A B testing going on.

I think when you think about technology like this, AI PCs or advanced PCs that kind of help with that kind of artificial intelligent operations. That idea of doing pilots and maybe doing AB testing and figuring out how you really want this to work where do you want the processing to be?

Sometimes it's not even your choice. Depending on whether or not this is tech that you're building to run in your health system or it's tech that you're buying from someone else, there may be some limitations as to where and how these machines can even be used in that process. So I think it's on a case by case basis, look at what you're trying to do, look at the tech you're trying to use, and then do some testing and see what works best for you and your end users and ultimately what drives the best ROI and the best safety, the most effective care for patients and families.

Lessons from the Past and Future Outlook

It reminds me of when we started putting packs in place and how expensive some of those machines and monitors originally were. I remember going and speaking with our board, and this is literally over 20 years ago, and saying these devices are 5, And it was like, what's going to be the advantage to us for bringing these in now?

How does it create better patient quality? How does it create better opportunities for the clinicians? This feels eerily similar. And I'm wondering if things that you remember from that time period, in terms of okay, how scalable is it? Back then, we actually didn't talk about cyber as much, but I remember the interdisciplinary collaboration that occurred between IT, between clinical staff, and even compliance in terms of how we were going to store these images and for how long, as an example.

If you were to go back to that and say what worked and how we start to introduce those conversations today, what would you say to CIOs? Yeah, there, there are so many things about that, I think, perspective wise, looking back at the, the, convert, words that we use today

that we didn't really use back then, things,

talking about

things like physician burnout.

That may have been some of what we were trying to get to the with monitors like these, it's better for the, it's better for the doc. This is just better from a green perspective to actually use digital images instead of developing x rays. And I know we sound really old when we talk about these things, but these are some of the things we went through for years and years.

This was the traditional way of. Those groups of physicians, that's how they provided care. And we were talking about working with them. Radiologists were always on the cutting edge of this stuff. But how do we change the way that they work? So that they can become more effective. They can help more patients.

They can save more money. A lot of this winds up going back to what's the ROI hard and soft. And how does that come across? But a lot of our experience, a lot of that sort of perspective from those previous projects always plays well into how we think about what we're doing in the future, it should anyway.

It does. And so what I love about what you said is, yeah, it may have happened a long time ago, but there are a few opportunities in your career where you get those leapfrog moments that may be PAX, that may be cloud, and that may be some of these AI driven capabilities, where at least you're going to have the foundation that you need.

So when people are asking for it, or you need these pilots to be successful, you have the infrastructure and the right conversations in place to make it happen. Yeah, for sure. That that experience and that perspective and that experience in perspective, both in being successful and failing can be super valuable in being able to show up and say, I know where in this new project there's probably going to be some potholes, we should avoid those.

Always love your perspective and teaming up with you for these episodes. Thank you for being with me today and don't forget to share this podcast with a friend or a colleague. That's all for now. Thanks for listening.