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Welcome to this Week in Health It where we discuss the news, information and emerging thought with leaders from across the healthcare industry. My name is Bill Russell, recovering Healthcare, c I o, and creator of this week in Health. It a set of podcasts and videos dedicated to training the next generation of health IT leaders.

Today we're gonna do a brief episode to review the feedback that we got from our listeners, discuss trends that I'm, uh, keeping an eye on for this year. We'll give you a look at our plans, uh, for hymns coming up just in just a few days. Actually, uh, two or three days on Sunday. I'll be flying out there and, uh, attending the chime fall forum or chime spring forum.

Um, on Monday, and then hys starts on Tuesday in full swing for us. So looking forward to that. This podcast is brought to you by Health lyrics, helping you build agile, efficient, and effective health. It Let's talk visit health lyrics.com to schedule your free consultation. All right, let's get right to it.

We completed our first year of shows, 56 episodes in all. We produced 438 videos on our YouTube channel. We introduced you to 43 influencers in the industry and attended Chime, hys, Becker's, JP Morgan, and the Scottsdale Institute. I personally learned a ton and your feedback from our survey and the the listener stats themselves would tell us that you value the work as well.

So here's some of the things we got from our survey of listeners at the end of the year. And, uh, you told us that you want more guests from outside the industry, which I, uh, I agree with. And I think it's interesting to bring those, uh, additional thoughts in, uh, you told us you want to hear more from practitioners, more from the people who are in the trenches actually doing the work.

Um, and also you said you want to hear more executive conversations, so you, you really want us to go in both directions. You want to hear from those, continue to hear from those. Uh, leaders who are setting the direction, and you want us, uh, to try to, to, to bring in, uh, more of that hands-on, uh, discussion that we have from time to time.

Uh, you also asked for more experts in emerging technologies and practices. So we had, uh, people talk about AI and, and other things. You want more of those conversations so that you can stay ahead of that. Um, the next thing is you, you talked about more deep dive or case study episodes. . And one of the things you encouraged us to do was shorten up the show.

So we had grown, I, I think our lar longest show was 60 some odd minutes. And you said, Hey, that's too long. I only have 30 minutes. So we're gonna try to be more disciplined, focus this thing down to 30 minutes. And to be honest with you, we did, uh, show last week with Ed Marks on his new book that was released.

And, uh, you know, 30 minutes is quick. It's, uh, it's gonna be, it's gonna be fun to try to stick to that 30 minute episode. Um, So anyway, and, and we may, we may change this up as we go forward. We'll see. So here's what we heard from you, more and more focused is the o overwhelming sentiment. Uh, with this in mind, our team has developed a new schedule of content designed, uh, to heed this call.

I think one of the things I found funny is, Um, you know, and, and one of the surveys it said, you know, we want to hear from you less and your guests more. And, and two of the surveys it said, we want to hear from you more and from your , we want to hear your opinion more, make your opinion known. Um, and, uh, you know, the, the three of us in the production team sort laughed at that.

Just, uh, they want to hear more of you and less of you. So how are you gonna do that? Well, Here's how we're gonna do that. Uh, first we're gonna continue doing this show this week in health it. Every Friday we'll be dedicated to the news and, uh, so, um, me and a guest, typically we'll get together and we're just gonna, we're gonna discuss the news, really focus in on that.

We'll probably do less of the, uh, q and a towards the end in that show. And we're just discussing the news. And in that news section we'll hear from. Uh, the guests and how they're thinking about different things. 'cause the news just naturally takes us into conversations of those things which are relevant for, uh, for health.

It. The second thing is we've, uh, launched a new show called, uh, uh, influence. And Influence is gonna be our one-on-one interviews with industry leaders. Uh, these are gonna be thir probably 30 to 40 minute, uh, interviews. We have a couple of these set up. We have, uh, Darren doin from Cedar-Sinai coming in.

Uh, we have, um, uh, BJ Moore from, uh, the newly, uh, minted, c i o, uh, from, uh, from Providence Health and Services, who came to them from Microsoft. He's coming on, uh, in the next two weeks and, uh, And obviously, you know, we're gonna continue to do the, this week show, we're gonna do the perspective show. This week will be every Friday.

Perspectives will be as I line up these, uh, these industry leaders. It will be probably dropped on a, a Tuesday. Uh, don't expect one every week, but if I can pull it off, I would love to do one every week. So, uh, the more people that are willing to come on the show and have conversations. . Uh, the, the more we'll do that.

So just in the next week, I mean, we have some great guests lined up. I'm really looking forward to it. Um, obviously talked about BJ Moore, talked about, um, talked about, uh, uh, Darren D work and also have, uh, John Hoka and I are gonna do what we did last year, which is we're going to, uh, we're going to talk about the hymns and, and what were the trends and what did we learn, um, what was interesting in all of that.

Um, I'm trying to think who else we're gonna talk to. We are going to have a conversation with, uh, Matt Hawkins, c e o of way star. Um, I'm gonna talk to him at him, so I'm looking forward to having him on the show as well. So, let's see. I. You know, so that's the idea. The i, the idea is to produce more content that will keep you and your staff regularly informed on the most significant health technology developments throughout the week.

Our hope is that allocating our time specifically, uh, will help us to cover the news in more detail while still being dedicated to tapping. Into the collective wisdom of the experts throughout the industry. So that's, that's the goal. We had also talked batted around an idea of putting out today in health it, which are gonna be five minute segments on Monday through Thursday.

Uh, to be honest with you, the the schedule is incredibly daunting as it is. Uh, I doubt that I can maintain it by myself. So I'm gonna, we're gonna be looking at different options, uh, on how to do this. So, uh, we may start by doing that. Putting out today in health it five minute segments, Monday through Thursday, do the, uh, influence, uh, one-on-one interviews and do this week in health.

It. But, uh, it's gonna require some changes on our end. You may start hearing some guest hosts on the show for the Friday, and I'm talking to some, uh, some people about, uh, doing that. I'm gonna try to keep the same perspective. I think one of the things that makes us valuable is you have former CIOs, you have, you have, uh, I'm a former c i o for a $7 billion health system.

So you have a different level of, uh, discussion, a different level of interview and different back and forth that you might have. So I'm looking for that same kind of . Person who, who can, uh, conduct those, those shows. And, uh, so you might hear some guest hosts. Uh, we're gonna be looking for some additional sponsors this year to increase our production staff.

It's really, for the most part, it's, it's me part-time. It's, uh, another person, a 10th of their time and it's very little of their time. And, uh, and then another person who's really, uh, full-time but is, uh, You know, there's just a lot of production that goes on, uh, for the show. So we're gonna try to get some more sponsors so we can increase that.

And in the, in the spirit of Agile and Scrum, which I'm a huge fan of, we're going to, uh, be looking, uh, to form an advisory board to evaluate our show show more often. We evaluated it at the end of the year, uh, which gave us some good feedback. We're gonna try to start doing that quarterly. We're gonna, uh, put a, uh, way for you to provide feedback on the, uh, on the website this week in health it.com.

So that you can just go out there and tell us, you know, Hey, we want to hear more of this, or we want to hear this guest. Uh, we, we were also gonna put a, a nomination, um, form out there so you can nominate guests that you would like to have on the show, and then we'll reach out to them. And, uh, bring 'em out here.

So, um, but in the spirit of Agile and Scrum, we're gonna get more feedback, more timely feedback, and we're gonna adjust as we go and make sure we're delivering content that's, uh, that's relevant for you. So here's our conference schedule for the year. We did JP Morgan. We're going to chime on, uh, Monday HIMSS on Tuesday through Thursday next week.

And, uh, uh, Becker's, we're gonna try to go to Becker's in April in Chicago, Scottsdale Institute in April. I'm going there because I'm, uh, moderating a discussion. Uh, Becker's again in, in the fall, the October timeframe, and in, uh, chime fall forum is in November this year. And, and that's tentatively our travel schedule for this year to try to, to, uh, be where the influencers are so we can have those conversations.

Um, so we hope you'll come back every Friday and, uh, Uh, we hope you'll share it with your friends. I mean, one of the things as we go out and get sponsors, they continue to ask how many, uh, people are listening to the show. And we have some great trends and you guys are listening. Uh, but the more people you share it with, uh, the, the better that that, uh, conversation goes.

The other thing I would say is, uh, the more feedback we get from you, the more we can refine the show and make it more along the lines of what you are looking for. Alright, so that's enough about the show. Um, I wanted to cover the trends that I'm keeping an eye on for this year, and this is through, a lot of this is through the show and just having conversations with the industry influencers over the year.

The second part of it is just I, I continue to do the consulting practice through health lyrics and, uh, these are some of the things I'm talking to my clients about and we're having conversations about. So, um, so let's get to it. So, number one, uh, Silicon Valley comes to healthcare infrastructure. So I'm specifically talking about infrastructure here.

And I think you're gonna see, uh, you're gonna see microservice applications going to become the, uh, mainstream, uh, you need to be doing updates on the fly. Uh, 10, 15, 20 a year, not, uh, updates that take, you know, hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and take, you know, 12 months in planning.

Microservices is the way that Silicon Valley does these updates to massive applications. Uh, and, and you're gonna see that come to, uh, healthcare infrastructure. So be looking for microservice applications. Uh, the second thing is I think DevOps is going to continue to accelerate, and you're gonna see that, um, I, I wouldn't say become mainstream because healthcare is so far behind in this area, but I, I think you're gonna see automated infrastructure and provisioning start to become the norm.

Uh, instead of, uh, you know, hands-on and those kind of things, people are gonna adopt cloud infrastructure. They're gonna be able to, uh, provision servers from anywhere in the world, just via the web. And that's gonna continue to accelerate. And then I think Agile and Scrum will become . Uh, that will become mainstream over the next, uh, 12 to 24 months.

So that's one trend we're keeping an eye on. The second is, uh, R P A will become, uh, the way that we experiment with AI and machine learning, I believe. So, R p A is having a significant impact on the industry. Uh, we've heard about it from Ascension. We've heard about it from, uh, New York Presbyterian. Uh, I, I know that other CIOs are taking a look at it.

Uh, it is, it is, uh, a huge, uh, . Benefit to any of your call center or any of your, uh, processes that have repetitive tasks that require people to log into a website, download information. R p a can automate that and in some cases drive millions of dollars out of your organization cost structure. So, uh, look, keep an eye on R p a.

Uh, I think fire's gonna hit its stride this year. Uh, I mean, this isn't a huge wave shattering prediction, but, uh, you know, fire was, uh, What the conceptually was phenomenal, uh, but it was really small data sets and I think this year you're going to, going to see it expand the data sets. You're gonna see it, uh, start to, uh, hit its stride and you're gonna see new applications come as a result of that.

So keep an eye on fire. Uh, it's no longer just one of those, Hey, we're keeping an eye on it. But it's one of those that you could start experimenting with some really neat applications. Uh, the fourth is more about the business. I think the, the battle for disintermediating, the health system from the consumer is going to accelerate this year.

So what does that mean for health? It, I think there's gonna be a renewed focus. I. Or continued focus or expanded focus on digital experience. Uh, digital experience, uh, specifically around the consumer. We, we continue to talk about the experience of the, of the clinician and that's gonna continue to be an important role for it.

But, uh, the digital experience for the consumer is going to be paramount. And because of that, I think what you're gonna see is . A continued split in terms of digital initiatives and IT initiatives. It is gonna be focused on the organization. Digital's gonna be focused on the consumer. You might see, uh, the organization split.

Those functions, have different leaders and, uh, different initiatives. It'll be interesting to see where that falls within the organization. Will it fall within it? Will it fall within strategy? But I think that that battle for disintermediating the, the health system from the consumer, Is really going to accelerate.

You're gonna have consumer programs, you're gonna have, uh, uh, the C V SS Aetna deal I think is, is one of the most . Uh, interesting, uh, things going out there. So it'll be, it'll be fascinating to see if people start going to these, uh, intermediaries who are going to become their health navigators, and that's something to keep an eye on.

Uh, the good news is that I believe this is another, another trend. I think the number of reaches is gonna go down. I think we've gotten better. Uh, that's the good news. The bad news is I think the size of the breaches are going to increase. , I think people have moved to the cloud. I think they've done it without really good, uh, security practices.

I think they've done it, uh, trusting that their cloud vendors know what they're doing. Uh, and so I, I'm, I'm a little concerned that this year we're going to see, uh, potentially very large breaches, uh, large by number of records that are breached. Um, I think this is gonna lead to more outsourcing of security practices within healthcare.

And, uh, I think that's gonna continue to be an opportunity. Uh, any number of people have told me I should get into security 'cause, uh, because every health system needs it. Uh, but I think that space is just flooded with players, so you're gonna have to vet them very carefully. Uh, the sixth trend is, uh, margins really were great in 2019, however, more money is gonna be diverted away from it to digital and innovation, so less money for it.

Um, you just have to get used to the fact that you're not the only game in town anymore, and that these initiatives are gonna start splitting the money. Um, I think the seventh trend is more clinicians are gonna continue to enter the IT world, uh, especially as their, uh, their compensation becomes pressured, their stress of their jobs are high and they look over the, the fence and see that there's a need for clinicians in the IT world.

And, uh, and you know, quite frankly, they can see their family more. So, uh, That's a little bit of a crass way to look at it. I think there's value in clinicians coming to it, and that's another thing that's gonna be dri driving it. But I, I, to be honest with you, I think there's a, there's a need and then there's also a desire to move in that direction.

The eighth trend is, uh, cloud solutions are gonna become table stakes. Um, if you're not in the cloud, from an infrastructure standpoint, from a, uh, data standpoint, . I, I, I, you probably missed that boat two to three years ago, and you need to get on that boat today. Uh, and, and, and quickly accelerate those, those things.

I think another trend is voice is going to go from a trend. Last year we talked about it at last year's sim show to really mainstream this year. . So everyone's, uh, you know, keeping an eye on it and, uh, you're seeing acquisitions, you're seeing players to, uh, really start to accelerate their, uh, their play in this.

And to be honest with you, I think the big plays this year are not necessarily, um, you know, Amazon and Google, although they are big plays and need to be kept an eye on, those are still gonna be people playing around and toying around with it. I, I think it's the, the nuances and the m modals, which is now three m uh, I think those are gonna continue to, to really push forward.

You're gonna see some consumer applications in the, uh, Google, uh, Siri, uh, Amazon Echo, uh, realm, which I think are gonna be interesting. And then I think you're gonna see the patient room become more voice activated. But that's where I think nuance and imm modal, uh, I'm sorry, nuance and three M are gonna play.

Uh, maybe, maybe Amazon. We'll have to keep an eye on that. So, The last trend is the drive to reduce costs, deliver better outcomes, and deliver health, uh, health. Uh, it is gonna drive more sensor-based home solutions. Uh, for risk-bearing organizations. The money's already there and they will lead the way in this, uh, with innovative sensor deployment and IoT solutions.

Uh, for others, they have to get their business models in, in a place where, uh, this isn't taking money away from their, uh, core revenue. But, uh, either way, I think we're gonna see a significant move in this space. And, uh, home solutions sensor-based solutions. Um, I think Apple's gonna have, uh, some interesting plays this year, but I, I, I didn't really put it as something I'm keeping an eye on first of all.

'cause you don't have to keep an eye on it. It's Apple. Anything they do is gonna be huge news. So these are exciting times in healthcare. There's great opportunities for IT professionals looking to stay current and explore new challenges. Uh, you just have to, uh, be ready for what's next. So, um, let's talk a little bit about HIMSS and then we'll close up the show.

So next week at himss. The plan is to do a, as many five minute interviews with, uh, influencers as we possibly can. Uh, I'd like to talk to as many CIOs at the CHIME event as possible. If you're a C I O and would like to be on the show, send me a note at Bill at this week in health it.com. Or if you just see me doing a, doing, uh, an interview or just walking around, know that I would love to have you on the show.

Just grab me, uh, see me at the conference and, uh, I have my iPhone with me. I have my mics with me. And what I do is I just ask you, uh, you know, two or three questions. For those five minutes. Uh, it gives you an opportunity to really showcase the great work that your teams are doing and to talk about, you know, what you're keeping an eye on.

Those are the 10 things I'm keeping an eye on. Maybe you're gonna have some other ideas, uh, of things that health IT professionals should be keeping an eye on. Um, we're gonna, a couple things we're gonna try to do at the show. We're gonna try to do, uh, something from the floor where we walk the sh walk the floor.

Uh, Collect short interviews from boosts that I'm interested in or I think that are relevant to our listeners. Uh, I don't know how that's gonna play out. I don't even know where I'm gonna, uh, show those. I might just put 'em on the YouTube channel. But, uh, I'm gonna be going to the booth anyway. I thought maybe I'd capture some of that stuff.

Uh, let me tell you some of the things that I'm gonna be, uh, attending while we're down there. So the opening keynote on Tuesday morning I think is gonna be great. Um, will, consumers, will consumer directed exchange. Disrupt the healthcare marketplace. You have a former guest of the show, anise Chopra, being on the, uh, uh, on, uh, that panel, Karen DeSalvo, uh, Mike Levitt and Sima Verma.

Uh, I don't, I can't think of a better panel for that discussion. That's gonna be phenomenal. I'm gonna be looking at, uh, uh, burnout, physician fulfillment. And the E H R, how real data might surprise you. Uh, these are just some of the things I'd like to try to attend. I'm not promising anything. There's so much going on that week.

Uh, interoperability, patient engagement is another, uh, uh, discussion of policy that's just gonna be sema Verma by herself. And I think because of the work that they're doing and because of the impact of c m s, that is always, uh, good to, uh, to keep an eye on. So a couple other sessions I would, I'm planning to attend, uh, uh, let's see, the what and where of HL seven and Fire Silicon Hospital, how, uh, how to collaborate with startups.

That's gonna be, uh, Darren Doin, who's gonna be our guest in a couple of weeks. Uh, always like to hear him on, uh, panels and in presentations. Uh, really a, a brilliant, uh, Healthcare, c i o and practitioner, uh, restore human connection with, uh, collaboration and technology uniting and standardizing healthcare provision, uh, across Dubai.

I'm, I'm more curious what's going on in other countries. I'm not gonna be able to attend enough of those, but I, I pulled that one out. Uh, proactive cybersecurity in the medical industry. I'm gonna try to, uh, pick up a couple of, uh, cybersecurity, uh, presentations. Um, let's see. Intelligent evolution of connected hospitals.

These are just some of the, uh, some of the things. If you haven't done this, I, and you're going to the event, what I would do is I'd recommend, uh, getting the application, going through the events, looking. You can search by, uh, speakers. You could search by, uh, topics and, uh, identify the, the ones that you like, put a star by them, and then it, what it does is creates your agenda.

I know this is pretty standard stuff now for . Um, for events, but for this event specifically, there's way too many things going on. I think the most valuable thing in this event for me is getting these people to the side. It's pulling people actually out of the conference and having . One-on-one conversations.

So part of my plan is to get, get near as many people that I want to have conversations with as I possibly can. And in those spaces where I don't have, uh, anything planned, I'm gonna try to take in some of the education. Um, but I strongly recommend having a, uh, having a plan. That's part of my plan for the, uh, for the show.

And, uh, look forward to, uh, a couple of great episodes coming up. I hope you'll, uh, come back. Uh, come back every Friday for more news information and emerging thought. This shows a production of this week in Health It. For more great content, you can check out our website at this week in health it.com or the YouTube channel at this week in health it.com/video.

Thanks for listening. That's all for now.