← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Ryan Cameron, Chief Information and Innovation Officer at Children’s Nebraska
00:19:25
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm Chris Sosa, your host and I'm thrilled today to be joined by Ryan Cameron. He is Chief Information and Innovation Officer at Children's Nebraska in Omaha. Ryan, thanks for joining us today.
- [00:12]
B
Oh my goodness, thanks so much for having me. I am so excited about 2026 and the future of pediatric healthcare. It's going to be an incredible year. Lots to talk about.
- [00:25]
A
That is so excellent. We can't wait to have you talk about anything and everything that your heart desires on that front. Ryan, before we get running into that part of the podcast, let's just take this moment to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your organization.
- [00:38]
B
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So I have the privilege of serving Children's Nebraska in a pretty unique role. We have not only the CIO role, Chief Information Officer as you recognize it, but we also have added innovation to that. So, so we've started within the last five, six years to call it the CIIO role. And so what that includes is enterprise it, clinical engineering, the data center, help desk, the things that you recognize from healthcare and IT support, but also the formality of an innovation program, which in our case means a dedicated innovation center. So we have a, a space in place called the Mammal innovation center. It's 10,000 square feet, it's just over a year old and there's all sorts of programming and great things that come of that to connect with our community, to connect with our clinicians and our providers and everybody in the ops side to make sure we're continuously innovating as an organization. Children's Nebraska is the only private, freestanding children's hospital in the state. We've got about 230 beds today, but tomorrow we're adding another 40. So on the 7th, I'm not sure when this will air, but on January 7th we will open the doors to our brand new behavioral health and wellness center. So we're very, very excited to offer that to the community and big deal project for us and for our region. And Children's Nebraska proper also has about 50 specialties and primary care as well.
- [02:22]
A
Wow, you guys are incredibly busy and growing and that's a great sign organization. But yeah, the community. Yeah, go ahead, please. I didn't mean to cut you off.
- [02:32]
B
No, it's dizzying. I've been with the organization just over four years and I'm relatively new to healthcare. I like to say I have a bachelor's degree in healthcare, but I certainly have cut my teeth on the technology and the innovation side of the house. So I'm continuously learning and just to be a part of an organization that's very growth oriented and focused, really getting out there and meeting our patients where they're at and pushing kind of pediatric healthcare as a whole, it's just been super exciting. It is not what I expected when I first started working in healthcare and I'm very pleased to say that, I'm pleased to say that I have found pediatrics to be just a passionate, wonderful place to work in health where a lot of people are really pushing hard to make sure that we provide the very best care for kids.
- [03:29]
A
Ryan, you've already mentioned some of the things that Children of Nebraska has on its horizon. Let's take a look back just momentarily here. So what would you say is the most important initiative rather that you led last year, specifically, what did it take to launch it and what were the results today?
- [03:46]
B
Yeah, there's a couple of them, but if I only can pick one, I know I'm limited here on time. The one and only I would talk about is we started an initiative that we call hey Medicaid. And what hey Medicaid does, it's a agentic AI application and platform that patients can use to navigate the process of doing certification and recertification for Medicaid coverage. And it's the first of its kind that at least we're aware of and we're really, really enthusiastic, excited to bring this out. Medicaid's really critical and important to pediatric providers and pediatric hospitals. It does represent kind of a large portion of our population and they do need that as either primary or co insurance. And so helping really ease the complexity of that process is important for us when we can shift the conversation about access and make it about care that really is impactful for parents and for families and of course for the kids that we support.
- [04:59]
A
Yeah, certainly anything you can do to say to a patient's like, okay, here all these changes are being made, but this is how we're going to make it easier for you.
- [05:09]
B
Yeah. And you know, it's, it's funny, we, we benefit from this incredible technology on the consumer side of life. We've got smart devices and you know, I have this really tactile memory and it's, it's interesting because one of my favorite things is reminiscing about going to a record store and, you know, using your fingers and thumbing through it. In my generation it was CDs, but there are still records and tapes out there too. I guess I'm kind of dating myself a bit there, but I miss it. But the magic of today is whatever I want to listen to. I don't have to save my money to go get an album and hope that the whole album is awesome and not just the one song or the two songs that I was hoping to hear. I just speak into the air. I mean, how magical is that? That I just vocalize, hey, I would like to listen to this. And it happens. And so with, hey, Medicaid, that's really our starting vision. Point is how could you have your phone in front of you and just use your voice? It's got 17 different languages. That translates into real time, helps you through the entire process end to end. And we think it's going to be really great for young families today who are accustomed to this consumer magic that healthcare really hasn't delivered quite yet. But it's happening and it's exciting to be on the forefront of that.
- [06:36]
A
That makes total sense. And hopefully it won't be long at all before your patients are thinking, you know what? Children's Nebraska has our, you know, needs in mind and this is how they're fulfilling them. So that's why.
- [06:47]
B
Absolutely.
- [06:48]
A
All right, so now let's look ahead into at least several exciting things that you and Children's Nebraska have coming up. Specifically not go limit uturn number Ryan. So let's just ask, what are the big priorities and the headwinds that you're focused on for 2026?
- [07:05]
B
Wow, that's a great question. We want to do our best not only as an organization serving our region and our state, but to be highly collaborative with other children's hospitals and to really build an innovation ecosystem where all children can really benefit. Two key things that come front to mind is this notion of digital therapeutics and where that whole space of service is headed. It was very limited. Even four years ago, there really was a strata of things like simple wearables or smart stethoscopes, maybe some remote patient monitoring tech that was emerging. But now we're seeing just incredible innovations and development. For us, specifically in the Behavioral Health and Wellness center, we were fortunate enough to receive a significant grant from the James M. Cox foundation that is funding a lot of the work that we're doing with virtual reality and looking at that as an essential element in kind of our care and treatment plans. So if you think about trying to manage anxiety, really understanding interplay with social interactions, virtual reality can be an incredible and helpful tool for that. We've got compelling science and research that's Backing the effectiveness of that, we're definitely doubling down. What's really great about that is because the platform is digital and we live in this itunes esque environment where you can share resources very easily with other hospitals. We're not building content exclusively for ourselves. We are 100% collaborating with other pediatric institutions across the Children's Hospital association and really being thoughtful and mindful about what can we build that is going to be impactful for children all across the country with digital therapeutics in behavioral health.
- [09:13]
A
Man, Ryan, that's just fascinating to me, especially the virtual reality part of it. I'm sure you told me about this, but I think others have mentioned this to me as well how useful virtual reality can be to accustomed get children accustomed to that environment because hospitals. And now to hear that it's all right. Yeah, let's adapt this to therapy as well. Has the acceleration of that technology in terms of how it's being used with therapy, has that surprised you at all?
- [09:42]
B
Oh yeah, yeah. It's astounding. Earlier I was talking about this notion of, of being magical and I think that's a fair description of where we're at. What I would share is we are living in a future, and I mean an immediate future, not a five year horizon, I mean within months where everybody is a developer and you can utilize prompt based AI technology not just to give you text based answers from searching a webpage, but to generate rich media content. So when you work with highly skilled and qualified clinicians who understand the right therapies, understand how to help children who are in crisis, help them develop new skills, we can make as many simulations as we would like to make and you know, I'll even open the door to a possibility that I think is also coming very quickly and that all of that can be customized to the individual patient. So I think about when you take compliance training and it's kind of the canned content and everybody's just kind of sitting there hitting the buttons and laughing at the bad acting and the things with that all that's going away. Where you can interact with a VR device and have really important content that does more than compliance, but actually gets into competency, actually gets into skill development and the things that really help young people navigate a really difficult environment right now for behavioral health and wellness. It's interesting that things like social media and phone time negatively impact children. But we can also fight fire with fire and say let's lean into using things like rapid development with AI virtual reality to help children navigate a really difficult kind of environment out there now. And so it's a weird dynamic, but it's dizzying how fast things are going. You can develop apps and simulations almost instantly today.
- [11:52]
A
Well, weird, but certainly very encouraging that there are health systems such as yours. They're saying, you know, what doesn't have to be used in this way all the time. Right. Here's how it. That's a great way to look at it.
- [12:05]
B
Yeah, we're certainly hopeful. You know, we want to be mindful and careful. You know, we, we have lots of safegu. You know, there's a lot of press out there about people who quote, unquote, vibe code their way to success that can be very risky, can be very dangerous. So balanced with my enthusiasm for rapid development and really leaning into digital therapeutics, of course, you know, my advice and guidance would be to, as you think about investing in those technologies or endeavoring into that direction, have some great safeguards, be very mindful about security and how you kind of develop those things. But it is a very plausible reality. It's crazy that the cost of entry to be innovative right now is next to zero. And to invite all of your providers and your ops people and all these great skilled people that work in a hospital to be a part of that development process is a total game changer.
- [13:06]
A
Excellent. Thank you for laying all that out, Ryan. I mean, I'm sure our audience is going to love all that. It's very easy to understand the way you put it. Let's veer into this. I don't want to say it's a bummer of a question because it doesn't have to go into that territory, but I do want to ask, what do you think is the hardest thing you're going to do this year? And that could be related to an exciting project you have, but take it away.
- [13:29]
B
Yeah, we all healthcare providers have a difficult battle ahead. And that battle, it isn't a different one. It's just the scale and the scope and the complexity continues to be difficult. We are never going to be able to recruit our way out of staffing crisis. There's never going to be enough specialists. There's never going to be enough nurses. Healthcare is in really high demand. In Nebraska in particular, we are very focused on extending our service footprint into rural areas so that the quality of care that you have access to in the state and in our neighboring states doesn't waver. You know, the kiddos that we serve that are in our metro areas should get high quality and so should everybody that lives in ag and farming. Communities as well, they should be equal. And so that's tough. A lot of rural providers are closing. We're seeing a lot of pediatric wards get shut down. You know, the saying that is a little bit trite, but 100%, you know, spot on and important for us is no margin, no mission. And we have to do everything we can to be very mindful and good stewards of the dollars we have available to provide high quality care across a complex landscape with very few providers and hopefully land a perfect 10 at the end. So it's a high knowledge, high complexity place to work. But I think technology can be a good catalyst to help you get there, provided you're with your people and you're very people first and focused. Children's Nebraska has a program, it's our people first promise. And we invest in the folks that work in our organization. And sometimes that investment means let's find a way to upscale, let's find a way to understand automation and AI a little better. Let's find a way to understand what the day to day work life is for you and just really dig in and roll up our sleeves so that we can support the folks that are providing care. And so I'm hopeful about where we're going, but I am under no illusion that the landscape of providing care is very tough.
- [15:49]
A
No doubt. And you mentioned this a little bit. You talked about how some pediatric departments are closing across the country and that's certainly very difficult. There are many other health systems though, like yours, that are expanding in whatever they possibly can to still reach those patients. Right. So on that note, what do you see as Children's Nebraska's best opportunities for growth in the next year or so.
- [16:17]
B
It won't surprise you to hear me say think outside the box. You know, another way of saying that is, you know, I would say that most people, their horizon is way too low. You have to be leaning into what is work going to look like, what is life going to look like, what are, you know, social economics going to look like not only at the end of 2026, but, you know, in the next three to five years. And it'll be profoundly different for everybody just because this, this whole technology machine is moving at a profound rate. So, you know, what we're doing to be resilient and proactive is thinking about not just building more hospitals. Hospitals are really expensive in the metro. It made sense for us to set up a dedicated behavioral health and wellness center. We had tremendous support and philanthropy from Ken Stenson and the Pediatric Mental Health Institute there. So like, we're very fortunate that we have those opportunities. But the larger battle is how do we meet patients in their home? How do we get access to care that's virtual? How do we lean into telehealth, telemedicine? Those are the things that ultimately are going to help that pressure valve and really help us adapt. Consider for a moment, in Nebraska, in many cases a patient and family may have to travel three hours or more one way to get from some of our rural communities into a city or a town that actually has a children's Nebraska clinic or facility that's ready to help them. So at every opportunity where we can provide high quality care in the home using telehealth or telemedicine, that's really going to help us out a lot. From the provider perspective, it's a little quicker. They can see more patients. We want to be mindful that they have really good focused time with them and they're not spending all their time in the EHR doing multiple clicks and they're actually working on care. So it really is about leaning into technology, shifting our focus and our conversation from access and automating those things into a conversation that is 100% care focused.
- [18:40]
A
Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today and letting us know how chooseless Nebraska is working through this whole technology machine. As you put what you're doing with AI, everything. I mean, we can't wait to share this with our audience and we'll see you at our upcoming conference. And honestly I just look forward to the next time our paths cross.
- [18:58]
B
Yeah, thanks so much for having me and really looking forward to being at the Beckers event. I've started to kind of look at the lineup and a lot of the folks that will be speaking on different panels and the keynotes. It is going to be an incredible year. So I hope to see lots of friends and colleagues at the Beckers event. And Chris, hopefully you and I can connect this time.
- [19:19]
A
I couldn't put it that better by myself. Thanks Ryan.
- [19:22]
B
Thank you.