• 02:33 Operational Strategies and Client Success
• 06:38 AI and Automation in Healthcare
• 16:53 Speed Round and Closing Thoughts

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Executive Interview: Preventing Your IT Problems Before They Happen with Vik Patel

GMT20241105-162125_Recording: This episode is brought to you by TIDO. TIDO provides managed integration services, EHR, data migration archiving, workflow automation, and 24x7 monitoring to ensure seamless data exchange and improved operational efficiency.

Dealing with capacity challenges in data or integration projects and operational optimization issues, leverage TIDO's AI driven solutions to reduce costs and enhance patient care continuity. Ready to elevate your healthcare IT strategy? Visit ThisWeekHealth. com slash TIDO today and discover how

GMT20241105-162125_Recording: innovative solutions can transform your organization

Let's connect.

Patience. He's also been a friend of the show and an engaged partner with this week Health. So I'm especially excited for today's conversation. Vik, welcome back. It's great to have you.

Vik Patel: Thank you. It's exciting. I know we see each other, what is it, every month? Every other month, either online or in person, but hopefully in person very soon.

But yeah, no, excited about doing this online executive interview with you. So. Let's get it started in this really busy UGM week. I know you might be in Wisconsin.

Sarah Richardson: I am in Wisconsin. And while we're recording, by the time this airs, I have no idea where I'm gonna be. That's half the fun it could be.

Vik Patel: Sure. Our story really began in Kentucky at a hospital called Hardin Memorial Health, which is actually now part of Baptist Health.

And when I worked there, I saw the challenges in health systems firsthand. It's not just about capturing the information, but it's also making sure all the internal and external systems talk to each other. And, making use of data analytics, reporting automation to reduce the burden on providers.

So I started developing some solutions there and I noticed how much interest there was, and that's how Tido was born. And actually the hospital, the health system became our first client and they were gracious enough and they said, we will sign up for all your solutions. So that made it, a little bit easier, but since then.

[Mic bleed]

Sarah Richardson: Most people don't know that it means this is done. That's how you came up with the name for the company, and so how do you make sure that your operational strategy stays aligned with solving some of the biggest pain points that you see with these health systems?

Vik Patel: It starts with listening. You spend a lot of time with. Not just leaders, even the frontline staff, the analysts, the clinical team members.

You have to spend time with them to understand the challenges and, whether, if it's integration related, if it is just the workflow related you, you do have to listen. I think that's where it starts from. And then. From there, like our strategy has always been about keeping things more practical, right?

Like reducing complexity, automating where we can, and then making sure that all the patient care is not disrupted. At the end of the day, we do see ourselves as an extension of the IT team, and it keeps us focused on solving their problems.

What are some of the themes you're hearing most from your clients right now?

Vik Patel: What I'm hearing most from the CIOs and the technology leaders. The biggest thing is all about doing more with less. I think this comes up more and more the staffing shortages, the rising costs. So I think those are huge challenges and the key to having the right solutions implemented.

In the right way, right? It's not just about, okay let's put more technology on top of technology. So that's been our focus with every solution that we deliver. And that's why over, more than 15 years now, we have been able to help organizations save more than $45 million.

Sarah Richardson: It really is better, faster, cheaper.

Vik Patel: yeah, I'll give you.

An example where we partner with our health system for Tido Connect, which is our managed integration solution along with our Tido Mitre ai, which is our proactive monitoring solution. And, before we implemented these solutions, it used to take them over an hour to identify, to diagnose the issues, right?

To diagnose integration or application issues. Probably in the off hours and on weekends it will be even more, right? So that can definitely affect patient care. And with our solutions that time to diagnose issues, it dropped to 60 seconds. And, we reduce the staff call-ins.

But he said, it's, I love it that we also have time to talk about other things. We have time to talk about sports or what's going out in the world. it is just the way of him saying that he appreciates that we don't have to talk about issues, right? Like we actually listened, we implemented the right solutions and it had a huge impact on the operations.

So, anyways, the execution, he really appreciated our team executing it really well, and obviously our partnership.

But today you've got. People wanting and need ai, the automation aspect, moving things to the cloud, et cetera. How are you helping your clients adopt some of these technologies and not add technical debt to the equation?

Vik Patel: And by the way, that's, I think it was James Wellman.

Sarah Richardson: It was James.

Vik Patel: Our amazing wise friend.

He is soul love, by the way. Like every time

Sarah Richardson: everybody loves James,

Vik Patel: everybody loves him. Yeah. But yeah. So back to your question. Again, I would say for us it's never about adding technology for the sake of it. It has to start with the problem that we are solving and.

The risk with AI automation or cloud is that if you don't actually know the problem that you're solving or grounded in the real needs, you're just creating more technical debt, right? And so that's where for example, our MIDR-AI solution, like it doesn't add any more burden to it, or clinical staff, like it works behind the scenes.

the implementation time. It's so fast, right? Like, and it's EHR and engine agnostic and all that stuff. So we actually put in a lot more time to make sure it was done that way for a reason. And that's why our partners are able to say like, Hey, yes, these guys know what's happening and they are able to find issues before they happen.

And that's the beauty of it. But they don't need to see that, it should be that seamless.

Sarah Richardson: How are you working Vik, with teams to overcome some of that? I think that fear, anxiety, doubt. We talk about you've got storied interface guys. This has been their job for a long time and now you come in and you basically automate their roles, which can be great if someone's trying to plan for someone else's retirement needs documentation.

Vik Patel: From day one, it's not about replacing anyone. And it is just more about doing more with less because they're already struggling, they're already burnt out, and they can't take any vacations. even if they're taking their vacations, they're still on call.

That's not the way to go. And at some point, yeah, people will just either leave or many times I feel like some of these really experienced engineers they're taking on early retirements, right? It's like, oh, I'm done, like this has. Taken up so much of my life, so many years so that we see that happening.

But for us it's always about building the trust. And if you don't build that trust, I feel like it always creates more hurdles for implementation for the teams to get along.

But yeah, you just have to be upfront, see how things work, how the teams will align with each other and support each other.

Set that. Brings that immediacy to their other C-suite peers, to the board, et cetera. When you have those conversations with an organization, they're planning to put your serVikes in place, what is the sort of genesis of what all that looks like?

Vik Patel: Yeah, so it kind of depends on the solution that we are talking about, but let's say if you go back to the integration or automation, I think there's always some immediate wins that you can do, especially

for security. So, we start with an assessment and for most of our solutions, and the assessment gives us a very in-depth view.

So that's always been our strategy. It has worked. And then obviously in between all that stuff, you still have to keep the ongoing projects, the ongoing operations going and that's what our technology aspect comes in, right? With our Mitre AI monitoring solution. That's an immediate win because as I was just saying, the implementation doesn't take very long.

So once that's in place, now you have the AI watching and proactively telling us if something is not working. And that's huge because now you're preventing the burnout, not just from our team, but even, if they have somebody on their existing integration team for everybody, it's good because nobody's sitting around looking at a dashboard, to see what's working, what's not working, what the errors are, that, that's where I think it makes sense to use ai.

Yes. Then go on for the, for more and more clinical use cases.

Sarah Richardson: Nobody actually wants to manage the hairball. That is their interface engines and all the connectivity, and yet it usually is people having to go in and check all the time and after upgrades and changes.

I also remember when you and I were on a either conversation, a call in person at someplace, and one of your clients said, Hey, we have an upgrade this week. And you're like, yeah, my team will be on. It was like, your team is an extension of their team as you noted, and it was just one less thing they actually had to worry about because after every.

It does it automatically. And that was such a win for so many health systems.

Vik Patel: I think we are discovering more and more, but I, on average. Like it ac it increases your capacity up to 50%. we started the whole monitoring piece selfishly, we started it for our team because we manage integration for so many health systems and, we can't ha have it really costly engineers sitting around.

Watching stuff. And then we also had support people doing that, but even that, they were missing, right? Even if you look at the dashboard, it's not that easy to see when there is an issue because things may be connected, but it's not actually working. So we did it for our own use.

Obviously we want a senior engineer to step in when it says yes, it's time, things are, it's not working.

Sarah Richardson: Yeah,

Vik Patel: this is what, but it tells you exactly where the problem is. So that cut out like many hours of diagnosing right there without anybody ever having to call in. So,

Sarah Richardson: What do you believe is the biggest opportunity right now for health systems to use AI and operational intelligence to be more efficient and patient focused?

Let's just say the next three years, because it's all changing so fast.

Vik Patel: Three years is a long time, so I'm, it's

Sarah Richardson: now I'm gonna,

So. I'm just going to predict for the next very near future. And yes, there's so much talk about ambient listening and some of the other tools, but I would say I think non-clinical use cases, we are going to see a huge explosion on that. Especially like I have seen workflows where you have multiple people manually.

Touching things at so many steps, right? It just doesn't make sense. It's very cumbersome, did this person reply? There might be emails involved in there. And then so many different touch points. That's where I see AI kind of taking over and learning, on the go and making adjustments.

I feel like a lot of those apps. You will see a lot more integration of those AI apps within the EHR. So yes, the EHR will come up with their own integrations, their own AI built in, but I feel like it will get easier to integrate more external AI apps. And that's why we are also focusing on our AI Data Lake solution, just for that reason.

Because we know. We have been able to do that from an integration standpoint. We have been able to integrate all these amazing solutions, all these apps, right? Like it's there's so many amazing developers, so let's make it easier for them. That's why we are doing the same thing on the AI Data Lake initiative.

That maybe sometimes we get bogged down as healthcare executives and don't get to look through as much. Thank you for that perspective. Are you ready for speed

[Mic bleed]

Vik Patel: Yes, let's do it. I have no idea what these questions are.

Sarah Richardson: All right. One thing that you would tell your younger self if you were starting out in healthcare it today.

Vik Patel: Listen more. take A little time, just reflect know, sit back and it's amazing the thoughts that will come to you, but you have to give yourself a little bit more time to think.

And it may look like, oh, we are slowing down. But it's actually the opposite. And I tell my team this, right? Like some of my younger engineers and I'm like, go slow to go fast. Like, they'll be showing me something and it's like, and I'm like, slow it down. You just missed this. And he is like, how did you see that?

I don't regret anything, but I would tell my younger self, slow it down and you would actually go faster.

Sarah Richardson: Isn't it interesting how when we're young we're expected to somehow know and have the answer and that's how we're rewarded because we've gone through that whole like mechanism of, years and years of schooling.

As we get older, we actually like to be wrong more often because we have the freedom of learning without being embarrassed about. Failing, I suppose. I don't know. It's all these different parameters that I totally agree with you. If you could just slow down and listen a little bit more. Thank you so much, Vik, for joining us today.

I always love chatting with you and hearing about your perspectives. For those who are listening and wanna learn more about your work and what Tido is doing in healthcare, where's the best place to go?

Vik Patel: Go to Tido inc.com or find us on LinkedIn It's easy to find. I think if you Google Tido Inc it should be pretty easy to find us.

GMT20250714-172930_Recording: Thanks for joining this executive interview on Flourish with Sarah Richardson here at This Week Health. We believe every healthcare leader needs a community to learn from and lean on. Join us at this week, health.com/subscribe. Share this conversation with an emerging leader. That's all for now.