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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to CIO Leadership Live. I'm Lucas Marion. I'm a senior writer with Computer World magazine and I'm at the CIO 100 symposium and awards show here in Scottsdale, Arizona. Joining me today is Antonio marin. He's the CIO of USME, which stands for U.S. medical Equipment Corporation.
- [00:21]
B
U.S. medical Equipment, correct?
- [00:22]
A
Yes. It's a medical equipment provider that rents, sells and manages movable medical devices like infusion pumps, monitors, ventilators, incubators. All for hospitals, correct?
- [00:33]
B
That is correct, yes.
- [00:34]
A
Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me today.
- [00:36]
B
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:38]
A
Appreciate it. So let's start off at a high level. What is your overarching technology vision for US Med Equipment Corporation and how does it align with the company's mission in the healthcare space?
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B
Well, let me start first with the mission because it's the most important thing we have.
- [00:55]
A
Yeah.
- [00:56]
B
As a medical equipment rental company, our job is to deliver the right equipment, the right place at the right time.
- [01:04]
A
Right.
- [01:06]
B
When you look at the community that we serve and you look at our supply chain, the end result of the supply chain, the last part of the supply chain, is a patient in need. So we need to make sure that all our technology, all the processes, everything that we do has a patient in mind. They don't call us because it's a beautiful day. They call us because they need life saving equipment.
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A
Right. It's life or death in some cases. Sure.
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B
And we have many cases like that where as a person in IT and as an employee of the company, it fills my heart when we are able to deliver that life saving equipment. And you know that that hospital is going to be able to help the patient and have positive results. It is one of the most rewarding jobs I ever had in my life. Back to the technology question. We're in the middle of a major transformation. The company started with a homegrown system and phenomenal softw our culture embedded into the software. But as we have grown, it becomes more and more complicated to keep up with the times. So we have decided to move to software as a service platform. We had the first part of the project already complete and been very successful. And now we are finishing the second part. The beautiful thing on the stage that we are at right now is that we can look at our business processes, refine, but not only we're thinking about making better, but also how we can embed AI to make them faster, more accurate.
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A
Okay, I'm glad you brought it up because I'm going to Anyways, but go ahead.
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B
Well, the thing about AI, obviously you have to have sound data and you have sound processes.
- [03:02]
A
Yeah. Garbage in, garbage out.
- [03:04]
B
Garbage in, garbage out. In one of my previous companies we used AI at the very beginning of when AI was just kind of a buzzword, but not really there. And I learned a very important lesson about AI. You can feed the model, train it, and you may ask a question in that case specifically the question came back. The answer came back to our question and it was not the answer that we were expecting. So we went back to the old ways to analyze data. We realized one important thing, the answer was wr. The question was wrong.
- [03:45]
A
That is so critical. I talk more about that. But yeah, it's one of the problems with escalating costs of AI inputs and outputs. Cost you?
- [03:56]
B
Absolutely.
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A
If the employees aren't asking the right questions, they're asking follow up questions. If they aren't phrasing the prompts correctly, it can cost more money.
- [04:06]
B
Well, in that particular case we felt we have a pricing issue. So we focus all our questions about pricing when we fill the information to the model. The model came back, it was a customer service issue.
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A
Yeah.
- [04:19]
B
So something that I learned at that point in my career is that when you fit a model, you have to be open to evaluate the answers and really understand where the real data is coming from and the real sentiment on the data, the context of the information that you're working with.
- [04:38]
A
Especially in an industry so highly regulated like yours, I feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's always going to have to be a human in the loop.
- [04:48]
B
There's always have to be a human in the loop. That doesn't mean that we cannot speed the process for that human. Yeah, there's incredible things that we're doing today, and we did last year, where an AI doesn't have to be just gen AI.
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A
Right? Right.
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B
So there's so many versions of what you can do with AI, so many variances of AI. So we have done automation of processes where we have been able to automate the ordering process from a single click at a hospital nurse station to our branch operations where we get all the information that we need to deliver life saving equipment. And in one hospital we actually deliver a full bed with a mattress or surface as we call them, ready to go in less than 15 minutes.
- [05:37]
A
What did it used to take you?
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B
Well, our SLAs are two hours plus driving time, industry standards normally between 12 and 24 hours. Wow.
- [05:47]
A
So down to minutes.
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B
So in certain cases when we're in proximity, we can do extremely fast because there's no human interaction.
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A
That actually partially answers my next question, which was, you know, how is technology helping you support hospitals more efficiently, especially during times of high demand, like public health emergencies, for example.
- [06:11]
B
Well, one of the important things and the first part of the project and the reason why this year here at CIO100 is because we revamped the way we do all our inventory management, equipment management, field services. We did a lot of automation behind the scenes. And the key part is to having the right equipment, the right place, at the right time. Right, of course, knowing your inventory, knowing what parts you need to fix that inventory when needed, tracking of the life cycle, the inventory, all those things that happen around that equipment now is very automated, very well managed, full visibility across the organization. So back to your point about humans, it's not about humans to be doing paperwork.
- [06:59]
A
Right.
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B
It's about humans making critical decisions.
- [07:03]
A
Right. Walk us through some of the recent innovations your team's implemented to improve equipment tracking logistics.
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B
So one of, again, one of the first things is to know your inventory.
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A
Know your what?
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B
I'm sorry, Know your inventory.
- [07:18]
A
Okay. Yep.
- [07:20]
B
What equipment do you have? And in the medical rent, in the medical equipment rental business, it could be very seasonal. You have your times where you have respiratory issues, then you get neonatal seasons. It's incredible. So what it allows to do is look at our past rentals, look at our inventory, and then start helping the equipment management team plan their production for the next month, for the next week, for the next day. That is a huge change in how we do what we used to do things to what we can do now.
- [08:04]
A
Can you compare the two? How did you used to do it and how do you do it now?
- [08:07]
B
Well, it is incredibly, I mean, from the time of, for example, getting life saving equipment prepared for being patient ready in the old days could be like get a call, have the technician look for the piece of equipment, go for the pm, do all the work that needs to be done, do the paperwork, do the testing.
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A
Extremely manual.
- [08:31]
B
Yeah, very manual, very interaction now is we know where it's coming, we prepare it. If they need parts for that piece of equipment, the parts requisition is already requested. We know where those parts are in the country, we know we need to ship them somewhere else. So a lot of those things where you waste a lot of time, a lot of those, do I write it down on a piece of paper? Do I send an email to someone? Those days are gone.
- [08:59]
A
I'm going to assume this. And correct me if I'm wrong, I'm assuming Iot is involved in a lot of this.
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B
In. In a very rudimentary way. Yes. Okay. We don't have IOT as like, on every device. Like every device.
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A
Yeah.
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B
We do a lot of RFID tracking right now.
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A
Okay.
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B
Mainly because we want to make sure we don't interfere with any hospital equipment.
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A
Of course. I didn't even think of that. Yeah.
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B
And every hospital has their own systems. And the other thing that has been critical to on the IoT thing here is that the health industry has been under cyber attack for the last two years.
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A
Right.
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B
So the more, in many cases, the more technology you introduce sometimes could be more detrimental to the operations of a company or a hospital.
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A
You're more vulnerable.
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B
More vulnerable.
- [09:55]
A
I get it. So what role is AI playing in machine learning in your current technology infrastructure or your future plans?
- [10:12]
B
Well, there's different areas. For example, right now, we create a system that we call it gousme Connect. It's a combination of rpa, AI and machine learning that basically can read a request generated by an EMR system. So we're agnostic, or any EMR reads information and through machine learning, reads the pattern of the request that transfers that into an order that ends up in one of our delivery locations. And that's how we can deliver the equipment. That's one part of it. We are really working hard to continue on predictive analytics and teaching the models, because as a company, as a rental company, we have so much information about the true performance of medical equipment. So our goal within the next few months is be able to predict equipment failures based on historical data.
- [11:19]
A
Okay, so how long does that typically last before a breakdown or.
- [11:24]
B
Well, that's the thing about equipment. Right. Medical equipment is just a new computer. You may have an idea that they have to go through preventive maintenance once a year, for sure. Every time they come back from a hospital, they go through a review process. So we always make sure that equipment is patient ready. But equipment can fail.
- [11:44]
A
Right.
- [11:46]
B
If you can get all the equipment that we have rented in the last 23 years, which we know the data, and we have the data, and start feeding those models, then we can actually, I'd be more predictive and sometimes probably some manufacturers would.
- [12:03]
A
And more proactive, I'm guessing.
- [12:04]
B
Exactly. And again, at the end of the day, what we are trying to do is protect the patient.
- [12:12]
A
Yep. It's not like you're running out of stock on a shelf somewhere. So I hear it. Healthcare Financial services, maybe Transportation, Legal, Most highly regulated vertical industries there are. How. What are your biggest cybersecurity challenges in your particular role, and how are you addressing them?
- [12:35]
B
Well, there's obviously the protection of personal health care information. Phi. Data. Right. Personal identification data, PI. How we do that? Obviously, we use encryption. We use different systems to overlay protection on top of each other. But the number one, the number one tool to protect any company. Education. If all the software in the world will work in protecting data, we wouldn't have any cybersecurity issues. But when you read about the most important cases in cyber security attacks, it's always been a human interaction. It's efficient, missing. There's always social engineering, weak passwords. When you look at the cyber security chain, we as humans still the weakest link. So there's a lot of education, there's a lot of training, there's a lot of conversations. But there's also the approach that we have taken to that is make it more fun, make it more engaging. We have a specific email in the company where if any employee thinks there's any risk, they can send what they think is a risk to that particular email. It's all internal. And every quarter we raffle an iPad. Well, believe me, every quarter we have people checking on everything. So that's been. That's been a blessing.
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A
Are you exploring the use of other emerging technologies, Blockchain, edge computing, or other technologies IoT? As I mentioned earlier, in any pilot
- [14:44]
B
programs, we are, especially on the iot, we talk about security. So we're very, very careful on how we approach it. But one of the things that we want to do, at least first internally in the organization, is not only continue with the rfid, but add in ble, because we want to know exactly where the team is, where the not, that's not only the team, but also the equipment is. At all times, track it to the end level of detail, but also work with our hospital partners who are interested in the project and build very strong relationships with them.
- [15:23]
A
I mentioned blockchain only because it's a secure electronic ledger. It seems in a company whose purpose is renting equipment, logistics, it could be helpful in tracking that. Is it something you've explored or do you not trust it?
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B
We haven't explored it, to be honest with you.
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A
Okay, fair enough.
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B
No, we haven't.
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A
Okay, fair enough.
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B
But you're giving me ideas, so that's. That's a great next step. That's when we come over here.
- [15:50]
A
Right, There you go. Blockchain. Last question. I'll make it a fun One. Personal or professional? Do you have a favorite gadget or application you like to play with?
- [16:02]
B
Wow. Favorite gadget application. Obviously, I keep playing around with every application or that comes with AI. I have so much fun with it. I'm a computer science student and many, many, long, many, many years ago, long time ago, when I was a student, AI was just mathematical models. We never had the computing power. So I'm like a kid in a candy store right now. Which for my team makes it very dangerous. So a lot of the AI tools are coming out. None of them I'm particularly favorite. Yeah. In terms of gadgets, probably at home, I'm more adverse at gadgets because I would end up being the help desk for my family. I don't think I have enough during the work days.
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A
It's okay. Some people, they have their favorite, like, the personal favorite gadget, some for business, it's fine. I just. I like to ask the question, oh, perfect.
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B
No, what I did. In my family, everybody had their own phone and you had the Androids, the iPhones, and I used to get calls all the time. So I standardize everybody on their one model so I don't have to be answering questions all the time.
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A
Okay.
- [17:32]
B
I love my job, but I don't want to do it 24 7.
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A
There are more important things, you know, you have to prioritize. Antonio, thank you so much for taking the time out today to talk. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.
- [17:48]
B
Thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun, and it's been a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
- [17:52]
A
Thank you.