← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Sandeep Rustagi, Chief Data Analytics Officer at the University of Mississippi Medical Center
00:08:56
Loading summary
Transcript13 lines
- [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 Sandeep Rastaghi, who is the Chief Data Analytics Officer at University of Mississippi Medical Center. Sandeep, thanks for being here and let's have you start by sharing a little bit more about yourself and your work in healthcare.
- [00:50]
C
Thank you Grace. Really excited to be here. As you mentioned, I'm the Chief Data Analytics Officer at University of Mississippi Medical Center. I would say my role is more of a Chief Liaison Officer between data and technology and business leaders. So I really want to help the operational leaders navigate all the challenges of data and technology that we are running into today, especially with AI being everywhere. I lead the data strategy and the data governance teams and activities in our organization also help let our team grow into a more ready for us for tomorrow.
- [01:27]
B
Wonderful. Well, let's start our conversation talking about AI as this is a hot topic everywhere but specifically in healthcare and nearly half of medical practices reported using AI in some capacity in this last year and it remains a key topic for health IT leaders. 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?
- [01:49]
C
You rightly said AI is everywhere. In fact, I think it's a little bit of a too much AI going on in everything. In fact, the day is not far. We'll probably see some AI enabled washers and dryers. Wait, actually we just saw them. I just saw AI enabled washers and dryers at a Costco store recently when I was there. So that tells me there is a little bit too much of a hype of AI in every dimension of our life, especially in healthcare as well. I do see a lot of value through all of this hype as well. One of the areas that I see growing up to become a significant and a strong use case is ambient listening and an ambient technology. I think we are seeing a very positive use case of our clinical leaders finding great value in that and it's helping save time and helping them improve their efficiency. At the same time, there are multiple other technologies. Predictive analytics is one that's showing us where to go in terms of our patient clinical parameters. How do we do some analysis on where the patients will be going in terms of their length of stay reduction and some readmission rate reductions. So I think those are predictive analytics are great opportunities. At the same time, there are other areas as well, like operational flows of patients and some efficiency gains there as well. So multiple areas where I see AI adding and contributing a lot to the healthcare field primarily. But I do see there are certain selection criteria that have to be implemented to make sure we get the right technology for the right usage.
- [03:28]
B
And as virtual care expands from AI enabled tools and remote monitoring to broader health systems, introducing new technology brings challenges. So what advice do you have for leaders navigating everything from governance to patient engagement? And can you share an example of how your organization has balanced innovation with operational constraints?
- [03:47]
C
Thanks Grace, that's a great question. Like we talked about AI being everywhere these days, that's also the case for the products and the functionalities being offered to our operational leaders. So one of the responsibilities that we perform here in our organization is making sure that we are able to provide a governance framework to our operational leaders so that they can select the right product for improving their day to day lives. We at the same time want to make sure that we are being very cautious and diligent in making use of our resources and not having too many wasted trials. One of the things that being a state funded organization, we want to be very careful about is even if there is a delayed value, in some cases a delayed value is better than wasted dollars or wasted efforts. So I think that's something that we are very cognizant about. We also want to make sure that we are trying to improve the overall ecosystem of our organization. So we want to make sure that we are an EPIC shop. We want to make sure that we are trying to stay true to our main EMR as much as possible. So if there are competing products that are out there, but if Epic has something similar functionality, we will try to lean towards Epic. So the bar for other products that offer a similar functionality is generally higher so that they are not able to clutter our landscape. So that's one of the things that we want to make sure. We help our operational leaders select the right products, then we also help them go through the change management. We want to make sure that it's not something that we just buy a product and then let the team start using it. The entire process of selecting and then implementing a product with the right change Management approach is very critical. User adoption is very important for us. We have all seen not just through AI, but prior technology products as well. There have been a huge history, or a long history of all those great technical products that were bought but were not successful because the user adoption wasn't high. So I think that's what we are very careful about, making sure selecting the right product and implementing them in the right way so that we get the high user adoption and a high roi.
- [06:05]
B
And how are you seeing recent legislation, both state and federal, affect healthcare organizations and healthcare IT specifically. And have you adjusted strategies in response?
- [06:15]
C
Yes, we have. So as we all know, regulations are still catching up with what's going on in the field of AI. AI is moving just way too fast and state level and federal level regulations are still catching up in terms of where we want to be. Again, as a state funded organization, we want to make sure that we are flexible and nimble, but at at the same time we are very cautious. So we may or may not be at the cutting edge of early adoption, but we want to make sure that the products that we select follow the right compliance and the right guidelines in terms of any rules and regulations. We work very closely with our regulatory and compliance agencies inside and outside our organization and make sure all of our products that we select and the technologies we adopt follow the right criteria. For example, some of the products out there are more of a black box AI. We don't know what models go inside them. We want to make sure that the products that we select do have diverse representation of our population demographics. Also, we want to make sure ethics and equity are taken care of in the product selection that we have. So that's something. Digital access is one key area of focus for our demographic population. So we focus a lot on ensuring that the products and the technologies that we select and offer represent our entire demographics.
- [07:45]
B
And then as we wrap up our conversation, what is your top piece of advice for healthcare leaders as they prepare for further advancements in technology and rising demands for care?
- [07:54]
C
I think the top piece of advice for our operational leaders as well as rest of our technology team is AI is not plug and play. There is no solution or a product out there that will work in vacuum unless we have the entire foundation and the infrastructure that support supports it and provides the right foundation for it to deliver. We cannot take a sensor from Tesla and put it on a Chevy and just start expecting it to deliver the same value. So until the entire ecosystem is built and developed the right way, the solution, the benefits and the offerings will not be available. So I think that's the big picture of getting the right product and the right technology for the right reasons. It needs to fit in our organizational strategy and then deliver the value that we are looking for.
- [08:43]
B
Wonderful. Well, Sandeep, thanks so much for joining me today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast and sharing these insights again. We are recording live at the 10th annual Health IT Digital Health and RCM meeting.
- [08:52]
C
Okay, thank you, Grace. Appreciate that.