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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Advancing Digital Access and AI Innovation with Joel Vengco of Hartford HealthCare
00:16:08
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant leader from Hartford Healthcare. We're joined today by Joel Vanko. And Joel Vanko serves as a Chief Information and Digital Officer. We are so excited to visit with Joel because not only is he a great leader, Hartford Healthcare has made this incredible commitment to digital healthcare over the years into being an incredibly adept and accessible system. Joel, we are so thrilled to be with you. Can you take a moment and tell us about both Hartford Healthcare and yourself?
- [00:41]
B
Sure. Scott, thank you so much for inviting me this afternoon. It's really a pleasure to be with you and talk about our organization and the work that we're doing for our community. So Hartford Healthcare is the largest health system in in Connecticut with over 500 locations. We have a number of digital capabilities that I'm sure we're going to talk about today. And our focus really is about bringing access to all. Our mission is to improve the health and healing of all. And our vision is to be the most trusted for personalized, coordinated care. And so that really in many ways creates that focus of access, of health equity and also affordability terms of achieving health care for all. So we're excited about the mission and the vision that we have that we've been embarking on for our community and happy to talk about here today. Also, I'd like to make a plug that our organization is so proud that we've had straight A's and leapfrog for the last three cycles. It's just certainly something that we've been proud of because the journey that we have taken on to get to there has not been a short one. And it started out with fairly low scores, if you will, but gosh, it's a team effort. 45,000 employees, really focused on quality. And in fact, this last year we were able to achieve the AHA's quest for quality prize, which is given to only one health system in the country. So we're really proud of the work that's been done so far and looking forward to the future.
- [02:19]
A
Thank you. And can you take a second, Joel, on sort of some of the initiatives, some of the things that you've done at Hartford Health Care to sort of foster this concept of access for everybody, taking care of everybody, more convenient access. I mean, it's been remarkable what the system has done over the last decade to two decades under great leadership. Talk about some of the things, some of the things you look at, some things you follow, some things you're doing.
- [02:44]
B
Yeah, so, you know, like many health systems, especially after the great work that folks have done to get health systems on, you know, digital platforms, or rather the electronic health record, you know, I think it would be a mistake to say, hey, you know, we've digitized health and that's where we stop. And I know a lot of my colleagues haven't stopped there, and we certainly haven't, you know, with our focus on personalized, coordinated care, what that means for us is that, look, we have to know our patients. And to know our patients, you have to have data about them. At the very least, harness the data, but really use the data to really understand them, personalize their experience, even create the next best action, which is really the coordination part of our vision. And that means that we have to leverage that data using technologies like AI and advanced analytics to really coordinate that journey for our patients. And so the first thing that we started out with, Scott, was really, how do we harness that data? And it's really about bringing that data into a platform, commingling that data, standardizing that data. And we've been talking in healthcare a lot about, over the last two decades, a lot about interoperability and leveraging data, but now we've got the horsepower, really in the platforms to do that. So data was the first part of our journey, you know, cloud, in order for us to actually leverage the compute and, you know, and scale really the compute across a number of different initiatives. And that's a very important part of our, you know, backbone. But really, as we think about, you know, what is it that we need to offer our patients? It's access, it's coordination of care, it's personalization. The work that we've done, you know, for example, on, you know, our digital front door, which allows patients to do things from checking in, you know, at home to, you know, filling out all their paperwork, or actually, it's no longer paperwork, it's. It's online, doing the things that you would normally do outside of healthcare. We've, we've done that, you know, across the board to digitize the experience for our patients. And now we're getting into this place where, you know, how do you become truly consumer centric, where, you know, I would say things like you, your electronic health records, your patient portal, even some of the digital checking capabilities that we've got in place already. Those are table stakes. It's really about, you know, how do you match the experiences of consumers in other industries, right? I mean, think of Netflix or, you know, booking travel. All of that takes, you Know, a lot of information, some level of digital twinning or benchmarking, and then certainly some level of prediction and artificial intelligence to get you what you need and when you need it. And that's what we're starting to really work on now in our health system, is how do you leverage the data that we've now harnessed and use AI and digital capabilities to really enhance that experience for patients.
- [05:48]
A
Thank you. And take a moment. As you look at going into 2026, what are you most focused and excited about? Where are the new evolutions? Is it doubling down on what you're doing? What are you most focused on, excited about as we get into the next year?
- [06:04]
B
Yeah, you know, I'd say one of the things that is really exciting, particularly in this age of AI, is really what the agentic era is offering now. We've been working on agents, or what we actually initially called assistance, for the better part of the last two years, you know, using assistance. And I'll differentiate assistance and agents by just saying that assistants, you know, provide you with, you know, information or insights, answer questions, but an agent does that, plus takes an action, like maybe schedules an appointment for you or, you know, cancels one or orders met or something of that nature. And so, you know, we're really excited about how the agentic era can really become a companion for our patients and for our clinicians as well as our colleagues, you know, in the administrative side. So we believe that, you know, this is a way for us to provide a capability to our patients to help them find out more about the services that, you know, are there for their care, find out more about their. Their clinical issues, maybe find out more about wellness opportunities, really enable them to ask questions and get access to that information more rapidly. And. And in the moment, you know, oftentimes patients will wait days, if not weeks, to get an answer. And sometimes those are just about, you know, what do I do next? You know, or what is this? Remind me again what this is in terms of, you know, the symptoms or my medications. And so we're really excited about the agentic era and what that can offer our patients as well as our colleagues. And, you know, the other thing, too, that we're, you know, looking forward to in 26 is to try to understand how do we redesign the roles for our workforce. You know, there's a lot of concern about, you know, these AI, AI agents or AI just broadly taking people's jobs. And we have to really get in front of that in terms of how do you really reimagine or redesign someone's role or job and look for those skills or tasks that can be automated and then begin to work with them in elevating their work, leveraging that AI, but elevating their work to do more of something different or maybe something more of high value, if you will. So, you know, we're certainly looking at that for 26 as well because we do believe that our workforce and our colleagues are essential to the work in healthcare. And we want to make sure that, you know, we're looking out for them and how their future roles will change over time.
- [08:56]
A
When we look at sort of agentic AI and it's a term that for most of us is a newer term, quite frankly, how quickly and where do you see that having the biggest impact?
- [09:09]
B
Yeah, you know, it's, I think the biggest impact honestly is on the administrative side, number one. I think for at least for the workforce side, you know, oftentimes our work is a lot of hunting and pecking and then, you know, taking action on information that we have identified or discovered. And there are low level things that, you know, agents could and should do actually, so that, you know, maybe that takes off five, 20, 30 minutes, maybe an hour of someone's time hunting and pecking an email or, or information to just sort of take that next step. So I think, you know, safely an agent in the administrative side, you know, can certainly provide that kind of automation and capability and at some level, you know, continue to reason kind of the next best action for that particular task. I think for patients, we certainly believe that in the future these agents should be personalized for our patients, for each of our patients, because everyone has a unique, obviously set of phenotype or genotype that causes them to have a different kind of clinical or health experience. And we believe that in the future these agents will be the assistant for, for, for our patients who will help them navigate the health care journey. And so I think that's where we're really placing our bet and looking to the future towards having that kind of assistant or colleague for companion rather for, for our patients.
- [10:59]
A
Thank you. And Joel, you've had this remarkable career. Can you take people a little bit through the trajectory of, and when you started doing this role at Hartford and just a little background on how you got to where you are today.
- [11:14]
B
Yeah, you know, I've always been in the healthcare industry. Started out actually, believe it or not, in medical school and you know, in my third year of medical school, actually going into my PhD years, I, you know, got connected with a professor at bu who was my thesis professor, thesis advisor, and he just happened to be working, looking at an organization, one of the early EHRs back in the early 2000s. And you know, long story short, he's the one that kind of, you know, awakened this sort of creative part of my brain that, you know, really looked loved to solve problems and also love to use data to solve those problems. And so ever since, you know, I was working with him in the early 2000s on my thesis, I discovered that data, if we could unlock the data, the data could be a real answer for a lot of the, I think the clinical problems that we face today, and a lot of these, even clinical operational problems that we have that we face today. And so my journey really has been about chasing data, Scott. And in chasing the data I realized I had to also own infrastructure. And owning the infrastructure just sort of got me to take on a lot more of the technology. But along the way, I gotta say I'm so grateful to all of my mentors and my bosses and CIOs who had believed in my vision of really leveraging data to advance technology and clinical operations. And they continued to fuel that desire. And so I went from as sort of a medical student researcher to, you know, quickly an informatician at Mass General Brigham to, you know, chief applications Officer at Boston Medical Center. And then I was, I did a short stint at GE as a GM for really an innovation platform. And then my first CIO job was at Bay State Health, which is a little north of us here at Hartford. And then I went on to Hartford, got recruited to Hartford to be the Chief Digital Information Officer. And really the focus is kind of the dream. It's leverage the data to develop capabilities that really transform health care. And really the vision of consumerism is at the heart of that or consumer centric experience is at the heart of that. So I wake up every day living the dream. This is where I was hoping to land and I just love what I'm doing and I can't wait to continue to solve problems that we have in health care.
- [14:11]
A
No, it's really a remarkable thing. I'm going to ask you one more question and you have to let me know, Joel, if you're prepared for this question. So here's the question. You may be the first person that we've ever had on that has degrees from three different Boston based universities, three great universities, Boston College, Harvard University and Boston university. Give us 30 seconds. If you've got a favorite or a least favorite and you don't have to go there if you don't want to. Or you could tell us 30 seconds on pros and cons of each of or what you loved about bu, bc, Harvard Medical School. Just give us a moment on the three.
- [14:57]
B
You know, I love all three of them, but I'll tell you. So I met my wife at Boston College. My second child goes to B.C. now. She's a sophomore there. So I gotta say, Boston College is, is, is, is my, is my university, if you will. And unfortunately, our football team is not doing really, really well right now. We're one in eight. But, but hey, there's more than just football at bc. But yeah, I have to say Boston College because of those factors.
- [15:25]
A
And does that make you a Doug Flutie fan as well?
- [15:30]
B
Of course. I mean, he was well before my time, but you know, he's a legend, right? I mean that's, that's just an amazing highlight reel and without a doubt that's embedded in every BCER that goes through that school. They know Doug Flutie and that real just is always shown in every football game. And it's just a wonderful moment for us.
- [15:53]
A
Simply remarkable. Joel, what a pleasure to visit with you. Doing great work. Hartford Healthcare does amazing work. You do amazing work. Thank you for joining us today on the Beckers Healthcare podcast. What a great pleasure to visit with you. You.
- [16:04]
B
It was my pleasure, Scott. Thank you so much.