← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript21 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hi everyone, this is Lucas Voss with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Beckers Healthcare podcast series. It's great to have you. We're talking about interoperability at scale today, the path to smarter connected care. And I'm very excited to have Scott Saichhorn on today. He's the vice president and general manager of SmartCare business unit at Stryker Medical. Scott, thanks so much for taking some time for us and being here today. It's great to have you.
- [00:27]
B
Hey Lucas, glad to be here. This is exciting. I'm looking forward to chatting with you.
- [00:31]
A
Yeah, we have a lot of ground to cover today. I do want to start us off with introductions really quickly, Scott, if you want to go ahead and just share a little bit about yourself and your work in healthcare.
- [00:41]
B
Yeah, so I, I guess at a really high level in 2025 I led a business unit here at Stryker called Acute Care and it was really our bed stretcher portfolio and we've made some acquisitions over the last five years. It would took us really down deep into this digital pathway with VOCER and Care AI. And so like right now at a high level I, I lead in 2026 our Smart Smart Care business unit that sort of sits right at the intersection of our connected devices carry Ivo, Sarah and the broader connected portfolio or digital platforms here at Stryker. Good communication and ambient intelligence. And so my team's focus right now is really pretty simple. We help health systems turn really fragmented kind of capital equipment environments and point solutions into more connected, more intelligence driven ecosystem. Solves problems for them, helps improve safety, efficiency and staff experience, things like that.
- [01:38]
A
And I'm excited to have you on specifically because you have so much experience in making these turns. Right. And you've certainly had a front row seat to some of these major shifts in digital health over the last couple of years, certainly in 2025 as well and now 2026 as you just mentioned, as organizations integrate more advanced technologies, some of them you've touched on just now. How have you seen problem solving evolve at the system level, especially when we talk about safety and efficiency?
- [02:08]
B
Yeah, I think one of the most important shifts is that, you know, while the like the, I call them, the micro problems in healthcare really haven't changed a whole lot, those macro problems have really intensified, especially since COVID I think that was one of the bigger turning points in healthcare. And at the micro level hospitals have really always dealt with things like pressure injuries and falls and cognitive overload and all those never events that we hear about. And Stryker, frankly We make a lot of really good products that help solve for those and so do other great medtech companies as well. And what's changed is that leaders of healthcare organizations are now under this intense pressure to solve enterprise level problems. Right. So those problems that those point solutions simply can't address on their own. I hear things like workforce shortages, big issue post Covid variation in care, delivering quality outcomes and not pre Covid quality outcomes, but getting better than we were pre Covid cost pressures are a real issue right now. And then operational efficiency. And so at the same time, you know, hospitals have already made a massive investment in smart products and they really have proliferated in healthcare here over the last five to seven years. Things like smart beds and smart devices and smart pumps and EHRs and your strategic digital platforms, lab and workforce management. And I think the frustration that I hear more than anything is that they've made this huge investment in all this technology, the smart technology, but it's still sort of operating in silos and they want more out of it.
- [03:45]
A
Speaking of silos, I think that's really critical, especially when we talk about the clinical side of things and clinical teams especially what makes these technologies, some of them again you've touched on just now meaningful for clinical teams today and where are they starting to make the biggest difference, especially when we think about silos.
- [04:08]
B
Yeah, I mean we talk a lot about ambient intelligence and automation across care settings. And it's, we're just at the start right now. I mean the market is not mature right now. I think a lot of the med device companies are learning alongside customers, which makes an interesting partnership opportunity as we do this thing together. But from an AI perspective, I think ambient technology is most meaningful when it sort of disappears into the background and it, it gives time back to clinicians and when it becomes something else that they have to manage, more clicks, more buttons, more things to do, more things to keep their eye on, it fails. And it's, you know, it's med device companies that are specifically looking at these types of technologies. You've got to think about the workflow and the amount of steps that people have to do. So there's a lot of focus right now on ambient also as the definition of smarter hospitals. And a lot of the conversations that I do have with customers is about making their hospitals smarter. And ambient comes up quite a bit. And I think it's a little bit of an incomplete story when you bring ambient into like the single tip of the spear for smarter hospitals. Ambient I think is important, but it's clearly and definitely just one input to helping hospitals get smarter, the value starts to show up. Ambient signals and the data associated with that are combined in a meaningful way with workflows and other product data and communication and analytics across the system.
- [05:37]
A
You touched on the usability piece, which I think is so important to be able to adopt something, people have to actually use it and like to use it, which is really, really key for you personally too. And from your work, what are some of those key ingredients of an ecosystem that allows digital tools to work together in a way that actually reduces complexity? Right. Rather than adding to it, what are some of those ingredients that need to be there for this to all work together?
- [06:02]
B
I mean, there's a lot to it. I could tell you that most conversations that I have with folks at hospitals that are your chief digital transformation offers, those that are thinking about interoperability and they're thinking about workforce management and AI, they ideate a lot. Right. Because the sky is the limit here with the things that you can do. The technology is so good right now, but I think good middleware becomes a part of that. When you're servicing data, you're getting products to work to each other, you're getting platforms to interoperate and work with each other. So really good, solid middleware, I think about it as like infrastructure, the things that are critical to helping hospitals get smarter. Middleware is certainly a big part of that good communication and how people talk and communicate with each other as part of that infrastructure. The intelligence and the, the information that lives within products is really important. You know, when we think about our platform here at Stryker, the smart hospital platform that we're building, being event driven is really important. And that means when something happens in one system, whether it's an EHR or it's on a product, or it's in another strategic platform like a lab or your workforce planning platform, all those other systems can react with each other in real time. So an example of that might be if a bed rail goes down and it's not supposed to, your badge or your phone can get alerted. Pretty simple. That's a lot different than dashboards that really are prevalent right now in healthcare that tell you what happened after the fact. I think like really good, solid, real time analytics across all of your domains is a really big part of that infrastructure. So like when lab values show up, vitals come out of the ICU and device data all kind of come together instantaneously. You can sort of identify risk patterns in things like sepsis, you know, those, those Risks and those events that happen in healthcare. And you can do that without manual interpretation, delay, which is what real time interoperable systems allow you to do. And I also, I think that most hospital executives that I talk to, I think openness really matters. So hospitals, we know at Stryker, that hospital is never going to use Stryker as their only technology vendor. And it's rare will you find a hospital where they have one tech vendor. So we know that. Right? So the platform has to be ultra open. It's got to be developer friendly, it's got to be flexible, it's got to be extensible. And you know, I know that hospitals, smart hospitals aren't templated, right. They're curated, they're crafted and every organization has to be different. So I think that infrastructure that I walked through is probably the most important part with middleware being the really like central to that.
- [09:02]
A
You talked about the leadership piece here just a second ago. Acquisitions and partnerships have played a role across the industry as organizations look to expand their digital capabilities. And I'd love to know. This is really important and I love talking about this. How can leaders determine which innovations will meaningfully impact their organizations versus those that might just be hype?
- [09:25]
B
Yeah. And I think that really you can, you can think about this from a med tech leader perspective, but also hospital executives and hospital and healthcare leaders. And I think there's really one simple question that you can ask is one, does, does it reduce fragmentation in the system or does it add to it? Right. And I think we here at Stryker, we had to look in the mirror on this ourselves. And you know, Stryker, we had hundreds and hundreds of smart products that were part of our advanced digital healthcare portfolio. And each one of those products had its own platform, right. Its own deployment model. It's the technical debt for customers was heavy. And you know, that mirrors the exact problems that hospitals face. Right now you have thousands of products that have platforms and have connectivity and have data and it becomes super fragmented in the amount of technical debt customers carry is intense, especially on it. And so we've made this a really deliberate decision here to move towards a one striker, one platform. Getting into the technical stuff. One instance, multi tenant cloud deployed, right? One security model, one install, one connection to the ehr. It's really a big request from our customers, like, hey, we are great customers of yours. We've invested heavily. We need to work from a technical perspective, one striker. And so that's also why we're not really trying, we're not trying to own everything. Right. We're not trying to be one platform to, to rule it all. We're not betting on a lot of things. You know, people talk about large language models and there's some work that we're doing with some Stryker specific LLMs in partnership with a handful of companies. But you know, your big five are going to take that. Maybe they get, you know, they, they get, they become ambiguous over time and, and they just become commoditized. We're not trying to become an algorithm company. Instead what we're doing is we're building a platform here that can, that can run whatever models or algorithms customers choose because the, the limit, they're limitless right now. Right. And we run them through our endpoints on our platform, other products on the platform as well in a way that's easy to manage and actually delivers value for our customer. It's open, it's extensible, it's flexible, will work with anybody.
- [11:41]
A
The limitlessness piece is very interesting too because I think that that's so key for folks. And again, the flexibility part that you just mentioned is that what excites you most about the potential of this model and how do you see it influencing decision making too as we move into 2026 and certainly beyond?
- [11:57]
B
I mean it is a big part of what excites me one because of the flexibility and how things are changing. You know, one of the things that we, we hear a lot from customers is, is which an open, extensible, event driven platform allows them to do is kind of move away from retrospective data and information reporting into more real time orchestration of events that are happening. And you know, on, on the clinical side you can, you can watch risk and flow as it happens. And instead of waiting for, you know, that monthly report that says we had too many falls, like the platform detects those types of things and those patterns and in near real time and it automatically changes the way that work is routed. And an example of that I think is just really dynamically adjusting like rounding patterns and escalating delays or triggering virtual support through the carrier platform before a situation becomes a problem. Those are real low hanging fruit that's like very real and possible right now on with a lot of the technology that exists and at the enterprise level, I think leaders are finally getting a single view of how their connected assets and their workflows are performing across the system. You can do a lot of things with it, right? And again we get into flexibility and things like that, but understanding which sites or units are outperforming others and why, and you see Adoption and utilization of your digital capabilities in real time and you begin to build a sort of tie your capital investments and digital projects to real measurable improvements. And I think in that world, right, and we're, like I said, we're at the very beginnings of this. It's just going to continue to accelerate and get better and better over time. But a smart hospital platform is less a piece of technology and it's more of like an operational backbone of the organization. And it gives executives a lot of confidence. They need to make bolder decisions, right, to drive better care because they can see the impact and adjust course quickly. So I, I think there's, I'll, I'll say one more thing here. I think it also creates choice and optionality, which is really important. I think organizations can start with, and we have a lot of customers that do this right now. Let's start with one thing, right? One single use case, bed exit, chair exit, hand washing. And they can take that use case and they, they can expand over time and they can do that without re architecting everything and creating new connections into other products that they're bringing into the use cases. And so from an operational perspective, that type of flexibility is I think essential in the environment that we're in right now where priorities are changing quickly. And you know that it's every week something's changing and having some stable architecture that allows flexibility is super important.
- [14:46]
A
Speaking of which, the changing landscape, I do want to do a little bit of a future outlook for here. You two of. I know it's, it's a little hard. As you just mentioned, it changes every single day. There's something new, right? Looking ahead, you know, three to five years, what does success look like for hospitals that are embracing this more connected, intelligence driven approach right now, specifically around care delivery. And what are some of those indicator that will matter most for executives to see? Okay, this is actually making, we're actually making progress.
- [15:19]
B
I mean I, I think some of this is just my own opinion. A lot of it is informed by customers. But I, I think that in three to five years, successful hospitals, you know, now a lot of your bleeding edge customers will call themselves high tech, right? Which they are. But I think it sort of moves to this. And a hospital executive said to me this to me at one point, quietly intelligent, right? So that technology feels, feels less visible, but it's more present and helping care teams do the right thing at the right time without constant friction, which technology does create friction. Right now. It is a double edged sword in health care and I think success looks like hospitals that can adapt quickly without sort of ripping and replacing technology every few years. I think from an executive level, they're going to look at whether they've reduced variation in care and stabilize their workforce challenges, which is a real issue right now. Improved their, their outcomes, like driving more quality outcomes, and they've simplified their technology footprint. There's just too much tech in healthcare right now. It's got to get simpler. I think they're going to care about whether all the new use cases, whether they're ambient or communication or product use cases, if they can get deployed in just a few days and not months, which at times it takes a long time to bring these new use cases into healthcare because of the amount of change management has to happen. And I think whether innovation feels additive and not disruptive, and like I said earlier, it can feel disruptive right now. I think those are big parts of it. I also think that more importantly that they're going to know they've been successful when their teams and their hospitalists and their doctors and their nurses say that this actually makes my job easier. Right. The successful organizations are going to be the ones that can evolve without constant disruption, without friction. And I think ultimately success shows up when the clinicians have great experiences and the patients are getting good outcomes. Because if that technology consistently makes work easier and more coordinated, that's a strong signal that the strategy is working.
- [17:37]
A
It's the ultimate marker of success. What are the people saying? Are the people happy? Are the teams happy? Which is really, really crucial. Scott, it's so great to have you on. I want to turn the floor over to you. Anything else that you want to add that we might have not touched on, that's important and in our context today.
- [17:52]
B
Yeah, I think there's probably two or three things on my mind. And, you know, the deeper you get into conversations with the more progressive customers, the things that I've lear that if you're at the beginning of your journey of helping your hospital get smarter, it might be one single use case. It could be big system of care workflows that you're working on. Is that there. There is no single blueprint for a smarter hospital? Right. I think the most effective approaches that I've seen, they focus less on prescribing solutions for their caregivers and more on creating the conditions for that intelligence and that innovation to emerge. Right. That's a big part of why getting the infrastructure is so important. And I think that means investing in more open and flexible infrastructure that allows your data and all your devices and your teams to work together in a way that reflect the organization's reality. I think once you get that foundation in place, you can build really highly customized end to end workflows, whether it's for stroke care, critical care, or just like everyday operations in a room. And you do that not because someone for you, but because the system can adapt. And getting that right up front is really important. I would also say that technology is not. It is the easy part, right? Like the real determinant of success is governance. It's culture, it's how you choose to use the platform. It's change management. And I think the organizations that get the most out of their technology from the smart hospital platform are the ones that co design those use cases with clinicians and with operations. And not just it or not just the vendor. They treat the platform as a long term asset for them and they build really clear roadmaps, simple things at first that they can build improve efficacy on and they build it on top of that. And then they hold themselves accountable to the outcomes and not just the deployments. Really important.
- [19:59]
A
Scott, again, so great to have you on. Thanks for taking some time for us today. It's fantastic to have you.
- [20:04]
B
Yep, thank you.
- [20:06]
A
And we also want to thank our podcast sponsor, Stryker. You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare visiting our podcast page@beckershospitalreview.com.