← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Philips is a health tech leader focused on innovation that improves the health and well being of people. Our healthcare technology and informatics solutions help care teams diagnose, treat and manage more patients with greater precision, speed and confidence. Across the care journey with Philips, clinicians are empowered with streamlined insights in the moments that matter for every patient. Better care for more people Philips.
- [00:29]
B
This is Grace Lynn Keller with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast and we are recording live at the 10th annual Health IT Digital Health and RCM meeting. I'm currently joined by Joel Garden who serves as a CMIO at UW Health University of Wisconsin. So Joel, thanks for being here. Let's start off by having you share a bit about yourself and your work in healthcare.
- [00:46]
C
Well, thanks I've, I've really enjoyed the conference so far. My name is Joel Gordon. I'm the Chief Medical Information Officer at UW Health and that's the healthcare arm of University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.
- [00:59]
B
Wonderful. Well, thanks for being here. Let's start our conversation talking about AI. Is that such a hot topic right now? And nearly half of medical practices reported using AI in some capacity in the past year and it does remain a key topic for health IT leaders specifically. So from your perspective, what are the use cases that are making a difference right now and how are you leveraging them in your organization?
- [01:21]
C
The use of AI at UW Health is a constant conversation, as in probably most academic healthcare organizations. Obviously I can't go too far away from that conversation without starting with ambient listening. It's a revolution that we're all going through together. I'm particularly impressed with how we've been able to do it both in a nimble way, but with at an individual level. And what I mean by that is that the ability to use a dashboard that's real time reporting when someone is not optimized on it, perhaps their utilization rate is low, or perhaps their coding irregularities are occurring, or perhaps they don't have their problem list adequately manicured or they're consenting the patients isn't where we have for our expectations. And the ability to drop down and help that person that's struggling. And one of the best help that we can find is the person next door that's just nailing it, that that's working with the product so well that there could be that internal guru for the person that is struggling. And, and it's so plug and play that we sometimes can think that everyone's doing awesome. And it is because 80 to 85% of people are doing fantastic. But if we said 80 to 85% of your surgeons are great and the others are struggling. Would you leave surgeons to be struggling with the healthcare on the line? No. You need to be looking out for those 15, 20% that maybe it's intuitive, but because their workflows or their patient panel or their expertise that they have in their subspecialty is a little bit unique, you need to be able to find those people and help them along and optimize. So that's one of the things that we're doing with that. AI is being leveraged all over the place, frankly. And I think what, what our organization also is doing is really trying to figure out or implementing. I shouldn't say figure out, because we're figuring it out how you take the traditional owners and overseers and support teams of these traditional factors of healthcare, whether it be documentation or whether it's ordering or whether it's clinical decision support, and how do you inject AI into them? Using the tools, but also the AI mastery that is in specific skill sets. So we call it AI enablement, not AI initiatives, because we don't want the initiatives to, because over time the groups that do AI will be in charge of everything and they can't be. We are already designated who's in charge of what. But we, instead of bringing on AI as a project, we're bringing in AI as an enablement that injects in and supports the teams to understand and learn the concepts, set up the tools, but then kind of fade in the distance. And I think that's a super important part of what healthcare organizations need to understand.
- [04:05]
B
Absolutely. And as virtual care expands from AI enabled tools to remote monitoring to broader health platforms, introducing new technology does bring challenges. So do you have advice for leaders navigating everything from governance to patient engagement? And can you share an example of how your organization has balanced innovation with the operational constraints?
- [04:25]
C
Yeah, I've shared with several people that there's that old saying that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. That's particularly important because the whole world of AI, the whole point of it is to be fast. So we have a mindset in our organization or a mindset in the individuals of being fast. But what we do in the next six months or 12 months isn't as important. But what the six to 12 months that we do sets us up for the next three to five, 10 years. And so I think that's where things are super important for our organizations to understand. The partnerships those partnerships might be in the People like, for instance, I came to this conference with our CI ciso, our cso and we talked the whole way, madly, all the way down. We, I mean we care about each other and he's a fun guy, but we were talking about the critical elements of security and safety and compliance that that is upon us. But those relationships also might be intraorganizational. And I think one of the things I'm going to trumpet is with our ambient solution. It was a unique partnership between the University of Wisconsin and their data science and their implementation scientists and their rigor that comes with benchtop science brought into our operational teams on the health system side that interdigitated it and worked in a way that allowed us to mutually benefit. They got the needs of the research and the needs of the academia and we got the results and needs required of a healthcare organization. And I think that marrying of that inter organizational partnership was extremely important. And we celebrate that in a couple of different articles, the New England Journal of Medicine that came out here this summer. And the third partnerships are going to be extra organizational, those partnerships with your vendors. And what I'm really celebrating is the partnerships between organizations so we can keep standing on the shoulders of giants. And so Mayo, for instance, did a nurse ambient tool. We're, we're inter, we're discussing with Mayo Clinic about our nursing experience and what they wish they would have done and kind of altering and those sorts of things. That's one example. But also I think more so the sharing openly. So in that experience that I talked about with our providers, it's not only is it a published paper, but everything that we did, our governance, our structures, our things that we did with our patients and that sort of thing, those are open source, public domain sharing that's happening through a GitHub that's actually in the paper because you never know when you're standing on the shoulders of giants when you're going to be the next giant that someone wants to stand on. I think that's uniquely and very important part of how we get from here to where we're going.
- [07:11]
B
Absolutely. And shifting gears just slightly, how are you seeing recent legislation, both state and federal, affect healthcare organizations and healthcare it specifically. And have you adjusted strategy and response?
- [07:25]
C
That's a very, very good question. I mean there's so much to be said about policy and regulations because that's a fairly burning hole I think in the industry right now. So there's so much to say, but I'm going to keep it simple, is that we were trying to make internal governance first. And we're trying to affect legislation on a state and federal way the best that we can. But things as such, as the telehealth waiver being, you know, removed here recently, of course it's affecting us. It's, it's, it was a new way of life in the last five years that we're definitely having to adjust to that. Okay. But when you think of the regulations, almost as if it's a, you know, clean up your city sort of thing. You can't clean up the city if you don't start cleaning up your neighborhood, and you can't clean up your neighborhood if you don't clean up your own yard. Okay. And so we need to make sure that we're, all the organizations are understanding the very, very strict importance of.
- [08:19]
Security compliance ethics that are involved with AI. And you have to understand that in the context of your organization before you can really be applying that liberally on influencing state and federal regulations.
- [08:31]
B
Absolutely. And as we wrap up our conversation, I'd love to know your top piece of advice for healthcare leaders as they prepare for further advancements in technology and rising demands for care.
- [08:42]
C
Oh, boy. Top piece of advice. You know, there's so much advice that's out there and flowing around, I guess, remain curious.
- [08:51]
Just, it seems like I vacillate between shock and awe and excitement about the unleashed power, you know, and that's okay. I mean, it's okay to be shock and awe sometimes. Like, oh my gosh, what's going to come around the next corner and recognizing those emotional states, but at the, the, at the most, at the, you know, at the point of being a leader, you. You need to take the emotion out. And so when things are great, they're never as good as they seem. And when things are horrid, they're never as bad as they seem. And so kind of using, like, little statements like that to keep your emotional mind in check is going to be important as leaders. And so I, like I said, remaining curious is so important because if someone tells you what's going to happen the next 12 to 18 months with AI in healthcare, take it with a grain of salt.
- [09:39]
B
Absolutely. Well, Joel, thanks so much for taking the time to join me today on the Backers Healthcare podcast and share these thoughts and insights again. We are live at the 10th annual Health IT Digital Health and RCM meeting.
- [09:50]
C
Thank you.