February 22, 2024: Amid ongoing growth and technological advancements, CEO of SureTest, Laura O'Toole, discusses the company's significant progress over the past year, including strategic partnerships and client successes with automation in healthcare testing. SureTest, known for its innovative EHR testing platform, has expanded its library and improved its services to save healthcare systems countless hours and resources. The solution, designed to streamline EHR and third-party application testing, is now aiding organizations like UNC and Novant in achieving new levels of efficiency and quality. Exciting developments include the adoption of testing automation during EHR implementation phases, enhancing the effectiveness of transitions to platforms such as Epic. Visit SureTest at ViVE, booth 1301, for a comprehensive demonstration and to engage with clients who have transformed their testing processes using SureTest's solutions.
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Today on This Week Health
I'm a firm believer that if you can start during the implementation and alongside of that initial testing phase, the beauty is by the time you get to the implementation, you're already going to be two upgrades behind. And with this solution you wouldn't be.
Today we have a conference campaign episode for you where we chat with our partners about the exciting initiatives they've going on in healthcare. ViVE24 is coming up in LA, and we want to give you the opportunity to learn about some of the great solutions. And today, we're going to talk to SureTest and O'Toole about their automation and their testing automation service.
That is really fantastic, and I'm looking forward to the conversation. Be sure to check them out at booth 1301. Now, on to the interview.
(Main) I am excited to be joined by Laura O'Toole with SureTest, and Laura, I'm looking forward to the conversation, but before we get going, I just have to thank you for once again being part of Captain's Campaign for Cures.
We're going to be doing pictures at ViVE, we couldn't do it without partners like SureTest. Coming alongside us and sponsoring the, these activities we really appreciate it.
Oh, Bill, we're so, so delighted to help and to help Alex's Lemonade stand. I feel really strongly about going to bat for the little ones, especially, and anything we can do to help you and all your organization does to, you know, to fight cancer, it's near and dear to my heart.
And then when you see little ones struggling we're so happy to be a part of it and can't wait to see Captain at our booth and we're still relishing in the photos and all the fun from last year. So we're excited. Yeah,
It was a lot of fun, and again, this is two years in a row that you guys have been a part of it, and it's it's exciting.
Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you at VIVE. We've seen each other a couple times since then, but I'm gonna ask you about progress since last year. So last year before VIVE, we got together and did a show and talked about SureTest and the the platform for automated testing and whatnot.
What has transpired over the last year in this space and specifically with SureTest?
Yeah, I mean, I think specific to SureTest, we've grown we've been really thrilled to be able to see the great growth that we saw this year with some very strategic partners. And probably more importantly, we've seen so many of our clients, like UNC and Novant, Novant Really on their trajectory to get to the next level of automation, because it's a process getting everybody on board, getting everyone to understand, wow, this can really make a difference for me.
I can save my staff thousands and thousands of hours and deliver more quality to my organization. So to see our initial clients from the last couple of years really grow and evolve has been just amazing. Fabulous to be with our clients and see that happen. And then just the growth that we've had.
I know we're excited. I think we're doing a couple of showcases and interviews and action with both Children's Health as well as with Yale. So, new clients for us and we're excited that they've had some great early wins and looking forward to you having an opportunity to talk to them. Have our clients at our booth in and out to talk to other clients and be able to get to the point now where our clients are starting to network amongst each other and, that was always my dream to create this global library that our clients could, in a lot of ways, share in, as well as have their own.
Visual libraries for their automation, and we're definitely on that journey. So the vision's starting to really come together, so I'm psyched.
Yeah, so when do they start the journey? So you have these organizations, and there's a bunch of them, really large ones right now, who are moving to a new EHR platform.
They're moving to Epic right now. Do they typically start at that point, or do they start a little bit after the implementation? When's the best time for them to consider starting? on a testing automation journey.
I think historically, most people are starting after they get through the implementation as they're moving into optimization phase.
But what we found now, with the library growing as much as it is, I'm a firm believer that if you can start during the implementation and alongside of that initial testing phase, the beauty is by the time you get to the implementation, you're already going to be two upgrades behind. And with this solution you wouldn't be.
So we're starting to talk to some of those clients that are either shifting from Cerner to Epic or now making the big move to Epic off, other, smaller systems. And I think there's a real opportunity for those clients. But historically most of our clients have, been stable for a little bit.
They're beginning to move to their optimization or their renew phase. For Epic, and they found that the amount of hours that they're spending having to continually regression test the system with all the upgrades and su it's a time suck. So I think you can do it both ways. I'm encouraged, we're starting to talk to some clients now that wanna do it alongside the implementation.
Well, if they've been implemented for a while does the testing get easier or is it just time consuming? It's just tedious and has to be done. And you could actually take that off of somebody's plate.
Completely take it off the plate. But it's not only that, it's all the new integration points, right?
And especially as we see our clients, which I think is great, go to application rationalization because they have to, because of the cost, integration becomes even more important. So it's not just the EHR, it's all those third party wraparound systems that have a relationship with the EHR. become so important to get that automatization in a full circle journey.
I'm not going to say this right, but the testing that is done, are you going outside the testing realm into more of the production realm? Is that the right way to say it? Like, if it's an automation platform, shouldn't I be able to automate things that are in production that maybe my frontline staff's doing?
Not testing, but other things. Yeah,
and certainly for some of our Cerner clients, historically, they've been getting more benefit from our solution from a pure RPA perspective and production than historically a lot of our Epic clients have. It was always very important to me to play in the sandbox as a great partner with Epic.
And typically for our EPIC clients, we were doing all the automation in the TST environment because you want to test in the best path to prod. But now EPIC has actually changed our agreement, and we're starting to have our clients come to us now because We have the bandwidth and the capability in our partnership in terms of our relationship with EPIC and our contractual relationship with EPIC to actually do RPA now in production.
I think that EPIC is feeling from their clients, the amount of pressure that all our clients are on and in experiencing in order to be able to use automation in any way that they can because of all the. Staffing challenges that we've seen, and there's so many use cases if you think about what we can do in a production environment for some of those road automation opportunities, credentialing, physicians, sign ons checking the security, making sure the sign on and the platform that the user is going to be on is exactly what you want.
It's there's many use cases. So we're starting to see an arm of our business open up from an RPA perspective across the board. Not so much any longer with just our Cerner clients, but now also our Epic clients as well.
So ViVE is coming up. I refer to them as carnivals because there's so much going on.
How, where do people find you? And what are some of the things you're going to be doing while you're there?
Yeah, so we are on the floor at ViVE. We'll be in booth 1301, just making sure I have that right. We're going to have a full demo of our solution available, and what I'm most excited about is multiple clients have agreed to come spend time with us and be at our booth.
Should any, prospect or anybody that's interested in what we do and how we leverage our global library to really jumpstart. A client's automation journey will be there in our booth and, happy to talk to folks one on one. So we're excited about that. Obviously, we're very excited about our event this year.
I'm hoping that there's some level of convenience because I think you're having your event, the same place we're having our event. So we're hoping that we can be able to. Give the opportunity for some of your folks to have some different types of tastings and food after they leave your event.
So we're excited about that. And of course, just spending time with our clients and our people and having the opportunity to connect with our colleagues. I'm just, I always get excited about it. It is a carnival. It's exhausting, but it's a different kind of energy, I think, being with clients and being at home behind your computer.
Yes. No, definitely. Well, at our 229 Project Meetup. I think we're only having pretzels, peanuts, water, and probably Good Plenty's because I love Good Plenty's, so I'm sure they'll want to come down to Your event after that and get some real food and whatnot.
Well, I hope they do, because, you know, I think you've met Michael.
We have this great relationship and Marco killed me cause I never pronounced it correctly, but sommelier. Is that how you say it? But we are doing some really cool wines, but I don't like bourbon. I'm not a bourbon person, but apparently we're doing some. Really nice specialty bourbons and some great food and we're doing a lot of mocktails for those folks that, don't want to drink the alcohol.
So, a little bit of everything for everybody. So, that's what I'm most excited about.
Well, I will say one of the best meals I've had in the past year was with the SureTest team up at Burns Steakhouse in Tampa. That was that was a special night. I appreciated the opportunity to sit down with your team and hear what, what was going on with and actually one of your clients was there.
We were talking to them about what they were doing. So that was pretty special. You guys tend to throw great parties.
Well, can't do them all that often, but when we do them, we like to do them right. How's
that? Exactly. Well, 1301, is that correct? 1301. 1301. Check out social media.
Cause we'll bring Captain there for about an hour at some point during the conference. We'll post that on social media so everybody will know when to meet us over there, get your picture taken. Every smile in the picture is one dollar towards ending childhood and pediatric cancer and I, again, I just want to thank you for being a part of that and look forward to seeing you.
It's going
to be great. Can't wait to see you as always, my friend. Thank you, Bill.
Thanks for listening to this conference campaign. If you found value, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss. And in some cases, start a mentoring relationship. Big thanks to our partner, SureTests. Be sure to check them out at booth 1301 at Vive.
You can learn more about them by visiting thisweekhealth. com slash partners. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.