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Sarah Richardson: Hi, I'm Sarah Richardson, former CIO and President of the 229 Executive Development Community. Welcome to Flourish, where we delve into captivating career origin stories and spark conversations that inspire, inform, and foster community.

Join us as we explore the journeys that have shaped successful professionals and uncover the insights that can help you thrive on your career path. Thanks for joining us. thank you for joining us on Flourish.

Sherri's Background and Expertise

Sarah Richardson: Sherri Douville is the CEO of Medigram, a healthcare technology company focused on delivering innovative communication solutions for the medical industry. With a background that spans leadership in digital health, AI integration, and clinical literacy, Sherri is known for her expertise in guiding healthcare organizations through digital transformations.

She's also a thought leader in inclusion, healthcare policy, and leadership development, frequently sharing insights on building strong networks and achieving both professional success and personal fulfillment. Her work aims to foster innovation while driving inclusive, patient centered healthcare.

Sherri welcome to the show.

Sherri Douville: I'm so honored to be here, Sarah. That was such a kind introduction. Thank you.

Sarah Richardson: You're welcome. I'm thrilled to have you here. You're one of those people I follow constantly and I'm like, do you think I would, you want to be on the show? And you're like, I'd love to be on the show.

And then we chatted for a bit. And so here we are. So I love that we get to share your story with our audience.

Sherri Douville: I'm excited. And we're supposed to be friends, Sarah, because we have 917 contacts in common and everyone I know talks about you all the time. So I feel like I know you.

Sarah Richardson: I feel like I know you. And it's funny, like everywhere I go, your name is there. And that's how we ended up here today. So sometimes it's just serendipitous that things work out the way that they do. But I want to jump in because you have such an impressive, not only background, but everything you're working on today, which is why if anyone is following you on social, they realize how much you are contributing to the landscape of what is happening in healthcare and technology today.

And that's not just across like patient and consumer and provider. You're digging into things with the clinicians across the continuum with partners and vendors. And that's a really unique space to be in. So when you think about. The things that you have written about developing leadership readiness for AI in healthcare.

What are the skills that leaders need to navigate digital transformation effectively?

Sherri Douville: So when you think about navigating digital transformation in healthcare technology, it's really having the ability to put the best like basketball teams together that have both clinicians and technical experts and complementary expertise across things like regulatory and, business and finance and all, of that.

Focusing on teamwork is really what makes the dream work is what I like to say.

Sarah Richardson: When organizations are trying to prepare their leadership teams, even to anticipate and respond to the implications of AI in healthcare, ethical or otherwise, what are some of the things that you guide them in?

Sherri Douville: So the guidance that I like to use is not about Sherri's opinion.

The Importance of Trust in Healthcare Technology

Sherri Douville: And so the thing that, Really inspires me in the work that I do is that I got to spend a huge chunk of my career at Johnson working in a dozen disease states, launching multiple products, working with multiple types of physician specialty societies and physician leaders.

And the thing about Johnson is that we did sell products, but what we really sold was trust. And so when I got recruited into healthcare IT by physician leaders who wanted help with this category of technology, I quickly learned that there is a chasm, no one's fault, but just because differences, historical differences differences in training, that there is a huge chasm of trust in technology, not necessarily in specific people, but across people, process, and technology.

And so what I've been working on and doing is marrying what I learned and my background from Johnson and bringing that into healthcare technology, because I believe strongly that's the only way. To earn and build on trust with clinicians and align them with what needs to happen which, we're never going to get to where we need to unless we, we can drive that teamwork, not just across IT organizations, but also, clinicians.

Sarah Richardson: And so to your point, and in the expertise you've had and experiences, How do clinical literacy and the technical expertise intersect to lead successful technology initiatives, whether that's something as new to a degree as bringing AI in the forefront or simply creating the right change initiatives that drive forward the right opportunities in a healthcare system?

So the house. That you would have, that, that you would need to then deliver AI from there. And that having those kinds of foundations is really necessary in order to really drive drive success. And I triply think so as well because the standard did get the annual award out of all industries.

So it's, the, thinking was that healthcare needed it most urgently first. But that is certainly something that applies to all the mission critical industries. And I do have a short story that will help connect the dots in that I had a dinner with some CEOs working on some policy stuff with AI.

And one of the CEOs was talking about how his son got his mechanical engineering degree at Santa Clara University, where I went to school, and he has a ring. And the ring symbolizes a code of ethics that they pledge, basically, as mechanical engineers. And what we were saying in the meeting is that, how do we get software and AI engineers to basically pledge a code of ethics, code of conduct, that That we can trust the work, right?

Like we do in other engineering disciplines. And that's really what we work to foster in IEEE and also bring to healthcare technology.

Sarah Richardson: That's an amazing story because to your point that the passion you have around faster solutions and better capabilities are the need for technical standards.

And there's a ton of confusion out there. So if you layer the governance portion, which I agree is It's important across all continuums in healthcare. So you take governance and then you apply the right technical standards to them. How do organizations vet the right ones? How do they know that they can trust the different perspectives and which ones to bring into their organizations?

Sherri Douville: That's a, great question. So that's why I'm a card carrying member and love the work we do at IEEE because we follow ANSI accreditation, which is what also ISO follows and what it, what dictates that you follow this strict parliamentary procedure for all your meetings.

So Robert's rules, and it also dictates that we have strict balloting, and that we have to have a scope and scale. So we have 317 members across multiple countries. And because of the credibility of the process, it's something that governments and organizations can trust and know that it's something valid that, they should consider implementing. And it's also I've had great conversations with physician leaders who are what you can consider physician super leaders. So they determine like medical board certification. And so it turns out that developing, And validating medical board certifications follow a very similar type of accreditation process as what we do in IEEE.

And so I just think if not every technology category is going to have that level of rigor. One of my friends who you met, Steve Wilson is the chair of the OWASP LLM top 10. And so the nature of that type of technology and community is not, it's going to be very different demographic from IEEE.

But there again, even though they don't have all the. But I would consider pomp and circumstance of IEEE. They've got scope and scale, the hundreds of technical experts, and then they go through a rigorous process of voting. And so just depending on the type of technology that's out there.

Who's behind the standard, how how many hundreds of people, what kind of diversity in terms of geography. And then it's just something if NIST or governments will trust it, then certainly top CIOs can and will trust it as well.

Sarah Richardson: Which is an excellent point because you figure from what you've shared, you have, let's assume you have the governance in place, you have the right leadership in place.

You've got clinical leadership and you've got executive leadership in place, and you have the standards to support the things that you know that need to happen organizationally. What then do you see as significant barriers to the adoption of the newer technologies, AI being obviously one of them?

Challenges in AI and Healthcare

Sarah Richardson: How can they overcome that if everything else quote unquote, is right and followed by the book in terms of how to make it work? In an organization.

Sherri Douville: I'm grateful to all the mentors that we both know that we work closely with in addition to Mitch David Finn and Chuck Podesta, I was actually just chatting with them and we were chatting about this exact subject and the, way to drive adoption is through clarity.

And so that the, challenge we have in healthcare is we have all these different camps. And if you're a CIO or CIO. CEO of an academic medical center, you're living in the most extreme manifestation. And that is that you've got this research, teaching, and clinical operations. separate mandates which can and should have some sort of synergy and overlap, but frequently, they're highly divergent in terms of priorities and goals, which is super challenging.

So if you just take that example of how does that how does an executive team think about consuming and implementing AI? And that's all regulated differently for example, if you're partnering with life sciences they're going to have this strongest, strictest regulation. But if you're just doing research as an academic center you a lot of the researchers are, not going to want to deal with regulation.

So you've got all these different sort of politics and constraints. And so I that the short answer to your question is it's all about clearly understanding the priorities. Are you a research institution where that's your bread and butter? That's going to be one type of strategy, one set of partners.

But we see the early adopters of something like our standard is like really strong operators where their priority in bread and butter is operational excellence. which, when that is actually supreme over or instead of research dollars. And so it's just really understanding what's the goal of the institution, what kind of institution is it, what priorities do you have, because there's all these different camps out there doing ethics, doing, standards, and they're, all, Doing important work, and so none of it's to be denigrated, but what our work is about, so we have the Trustworthy Technology and Innovation Consortium, which is led by Medigram, but the purpose of it is that we've never had IEEE's, just engineers, and so engineers alone are not going to implement the standard.

It need to have CIOs, together with engineers and physician leaders together, which is what we have at TTIC. And our, like our, ideal profile right now is who is that CIO that needs to provide adult oversight to the whole tech stack? which you've been that person, right? Yes, including ai and they have to deliver on excellent operational excellence.

That's who we're focused on right now. So the answer to your question again is define what success means in your context with your board and your executive team, and then determine priorities from there and then find the resources. 'cause the mistake we make as an industry and what we're trying not to do we're not trying to say we're everything for everyone.

I know there are certain people that worked on this standard that want to say that, but I just think it's not realistic, right? That if you're just innovation and research and you don't have accountability for operations or much accountability for operations, we're actually, I don't think for, them, right?

And that that, some people might disagree with me but, it's important to be very specific as to what the priority is, and then what, the tools are. So we, instead of, All of us that are working on different standards or groups, trying to elbow our way to the top, we need to be very clear as to who do we help and how are we, how do we mutually define success.

And it's okay that there's these different definitions of success. We're not going to be the same, the different health systems and the different consortiums and things. That's, my rap, Sarah.

Sarah Richardson: You bring up a point though, that is one of the hardest things for organizations to really get their arms around, whether governance is working or otherwise is.

Keeping it simple, having the clarity to know what to pursue, but the discipline to know what to say no to, and not saying no in a way that's it's a bad idea. It could be a hundred great ideas, which one is going to move the needle most appropriately for us and create the adoption that we need so that any standard or technology we bring into our facilities helps solve real problems.

You can have circular conversations for years about some of those philosophies and some of those perspectives. We've all been there. And you're the CEO of Medigram. You say yes and no every day, and so when you think about top challenges you've faced in driving innovation and healthcare technology, how have you been most successful in addressing them?

Sherri Douville: So top challenges. which we're tackling head on and why we stood up the consortium. And the consortium isn't about Medigram and it actually doesn't have a commercial interest. But the problem that we saw was that you had all these different constituents, meaning CIOs, CISOs, engineers, physician leaders, all different types of physicians.

You've got physician data scientists and then you've got Like I said, the Medical Society board leaders, these are very different types of physicians with very different interests and priorities. And so how do you, again, going back to my background, Johnson, where we had, we were always one or two in the market and had very clear go to market methodologies they, they weren't cookbooks or anything like that.

And we had to learn and adapt and all of that. But when you think about what really works in terms of commercialization of healthcare technology is infinitely more complex than pharmaceuticals or medical devices, which is what, where I came from. And so the gift I brought from, medical devices and pharmaceuticals is the rigor and the trust.

That physicians had in the information and what was being presented to them because in medical devices and pharma, you're not just regulated for authorization of use, you're also regulated for marketing authorization and so it's very strict. code of conduct around what you can say, and you can't claim things that don't have evidence.

And so bringing that rigor to healthcare technology is something I've been super passionate about. But what's challenging about healthcare technology that you don't have in classic medical devices, this is changing. But in the past, is that the complexity of healthcare technology, just from a technical and a regulatory standpoint is infinitely more complex than the regulatory.

We had very strict regulatory requirements in med device and pharma, but it wasn't anything like the complexity that we have here. Like when I'm looking at medigrams, regulatory, Strategy, I'm looking at 89 frameworks and how do I harmonize 89 frameworks? That was never something that we had to do at Johnson, like with the pharma or something.

I know you can relate because you've been there.

Sarah Richardson: And when you say 89, I'm like, okay, so there's 89 different frameworks, but if you were to take something like that number or just that level of complexity, and there are so many emerging technologies and some of them move really fast, which is not necessarily akin in healthcare because we tend not to move as quickly as other industries.

And yet, Things like blockchain a few years ago was discussed non stop, and now AI has clearly taken the foothold in this space. As you think about the future of healthcare delivery, particularly in communication and interoperability and some of these consumerism aspects, how do you differentiate what to follow versus what to implement and really latch onto in terms of what the public needs to hear about?

Sherri Douville: So I focus on healthcare delivery organizations and life sciences organizations. I don't, in my work, focus directly on consumers, although I do help people and organizations strategize. on how to approach consumerism. And so that what we, I, it's a concentric circle in terms of what I focus on and then what we might provide strategic guidance around.

And so I, we did do some articles for chief data officers as well as physician leaders recently around the kinds of things that need to happen in the ecosystem to advance consumerism and or to Reform or, upgrade like something like HIPAA. Those aren't things that we do at TTIC, but we recognize that they're necessary.

Like one of the biggest challenges, like if you're Mr. CEO or CIO and the board is give me consumerism. The board doesn't even know what they're asking. They don't even know what it is. And so we provided these resources to them to help the board understand what what are the options and what are the challenges and then enforce them to prioritize.

So that our biggest contribution is how do we force people to define and prioritize. Even even outside of our core. But in the core that I focus on is, I'm super passionate about speeding up clinical operations so that we can deliver faster, better care, save lives, and also help physicians be a lot less frustrated.

Because right now they're just they're waiting a lot, because when you think about most diagnoses that need the most management, that is not one doctor to, that's the end all be all, no all. That's not even one, one snapshot in the EHR. That's should be a team of physicians. And then the doctor is like waiting.

for that test result, waiting for that interpretation. And it's agonizing. It's also a lot of liability for them. And so my passion manifested in what we focus on in Medigram also dictates what I focus on just in general. If you're not, if you're not transforming an ICD 11, I don't, I honestly don't want to work on it, but people, other people will force me to work on things and I'll, concede with a blog to give some strategic Direction but that's how we compromise.

I'm like, okay, I'll give you a blog, but I'm not, working on that.

Sarah Richardson: That's fair. It's literally, it sets a boundary of expectation that allows you to still flourish in certain spaces and then realize that time can be spent by others if that's where they want to put that energy. But I love the fact that you're back to what do you say yes and no to.

You shared with me though, slow motion, how. And that's AI driven insurance denials as a timely topic, and to your point, if all this care coordination gets stuck in a mix with denials, how are you seeing something like that help to further the cause of bringing things forward in a more timely manner?

And so now health systems have to have their own AI. So it's, we're in an AI arms race. And, when you think about the human impact, it's the AI arms race, AI against AI, but it's hard not to think about how because. This machine or algorithm is making decision that we may not agree with as humans and we have to decide whether or not we think that's okay.

And so that as the organization Trustworthy Technology and Innovation Consortium that deeply understands AI, we have not just a lot of healthcare technology people, but we also have all the standards developers across the AI ecosystem and , top AI people from Databricks and from, Examine and, such, so we are the people that understand AI the best, including in healthcare, and so we just one of the leaders of the group.

Who Chuck Podesta was like, hey we should bring up, bring this up because no one else really can bring it up the way that we can. And it is, and it just falls all within, if you're following and adopting standards, we wouldn't have this sort of issue with with, indiscernible AI driven denial.

Sarah Richardson: The fact that you said AI arms race is an apt description of the fact that we think about security perspectives all the time. And for every Use of technology for good. There's an equal or greater amount that someone is using for nefarious activities. And really be able to find that balance and understand how do you trust the models that you're using.

And to your point, the organization you've created helps to define and understand where that line can be drawn.

Sherri Douville: Yeah, exactly. And what's the oversight, right? So we've had different Not just the AI driven denials, but there's also denial of legitimate Medicaid recipients are being denied their legitimate benefits.

And so you have to ask yourself, A, they weren't using like the NIST AI risk management framework was one of the things that the regulators have found. And then the second thing is like what it was the management and governance. That was overseeing that particular program. And those are the things that executives, that a lot of them are intimidated by AI, but we're here to say it's actually not about the technology.

It's 100 percent about leadership and, to some degree operations. And so leaders really need to take ownership, not say, Oh, I don't know, because I'm AI. No, you need to use your leadership to provide leadership Yes, you leverage AI experts, but you don't just go, oh, I don't know, right? Which is, does happen more than it should.

Sarah Richardson: And to your point, it's not about the technology in these scenarios, it's about the leadership.

Balancing Personal Well-being and Career Success

Sarah Richardson: And you wrote a letter to your younger self. You talk about pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. How do you believe young professionals in healthcare technology today can balance their personal well being with career success, knowing that we no longer live in an area where you shut your laptop off at 5pm?

Sherri Douville: Two things I always to advise is that find out what you're really good at and that you can give away almost constantly for free to make friends and leverage that as much as you can. We all have different gifts. And then the one thing that I like to give, which I do almost every weekend, I have some friend that has some sort of strategic crisis some sort of.

Board crisis or some sort of functional VP level thing and I design them a strategy. It usually takes me maybe five to ten minutes. It's just something that I enjoy doing. I have no trouble doing. I can do it quickly and that's how I make friends and how I keep friends. We're all going to have different things that we provide but that way if you always make friends and help friends then you always have friends that can give you advice and help you.

That's the message.

Sarah Richardson: It's a great message because in the end, all of it is about relationships. You've emphasized the importance of building a strong network. How has yours helped you in your leadership journey?

And how do you recommend others foster meaningful professional relationships?

Sherri Douville: My, network has helped me because we've co defined what it means. to define and drive success. That's the challenging thing about how hard this work is that we haven't had historical patterns of success.

For example, we have some physician leaders that are working on a venture capital book, because obviously venture capital and startups have not figured out what it means to bring success and to drive success in healthcare technology. And so what my, network has done is a good story to tell is that, one of our mutual friends is a very prominent leader in IEEE.

And before the opportunity came up to join IEEE several years ago, I had read and kept seeing these stories about Lisa Su who's the CEO of AMD. And Lisa Su, every time they introduce her on stage, they say, Lisa Su. with 40 IEEE technical papers. They always say that, and it's just, and I thought, because I had just gotten like my first opportunity to publish in Springer and then Taylor and Francis, and then when the IEEE opportunity came up I shopped it to some of my mentors who are some of the top people in AI and technology.

And they said, yeah, you should do that. And it's if I hadn't seen that example of Lisa, I don't know her, but if I hadn't seen the impact of that on, her, profile as a leader, I wouldn't have known that it was the right thing for me to do. But the opportunity came up through a mutual friend who's a mentor, right?

And so what I'm, trying to articulate is that our networks provide insights and opportunities. And in my case, and for all non traditional talent, whether you're clinical or whether you're technical, those are all underrepresented in leadership, by the way, historically.

So it's not just being female or being a person of color, it's being anything that's not the CFO, basically. And so if you're anything that's not the CFO, What is, how do you define your path? Because especially if you are also multiple things that are not the norm, you're not going to be the same.

Like I always remind some of my male mentors I bring up Evan Spiegel, who's founded Snapchat and lived in his parents mansion while he was developing Snapchat. I'm like, that thing that worked for Evan is that's not going to work for me. So it's just, Codefining and negotiating with your network.

What does success actually mean? And then how, do we build that together? And so I have a network working on building trustworthy technology for healthcare. And we're all co defining and co building what that means. And so that, and I recommend that as a possible path for whether you're technical or clinical or female or whatever.

Sarah Richardson: If you were to go back, I'm just going to throw 20 years out there. And you think about the advice that you'd give to someone starting their career in healthcare technology, especially the early challenges that You faced or we faced in those days. What would you say to that person today?

Sherri Douville: Yeah, so 20 years ago what I would say is truly follow your passion and find as many mentors as you can and try to help them be successful and, find your own path.

That's what I would tell the person that there isn't with the the way things change, there isn't cookie cutter paths that people can take.

Sarah Richardson: Agree. And you also focus on inclusion and diversity. You mentioned that it comes in all different forms. And you've written articles specifically on driving inclusion, outlining practical steps for promoting diversity.

How can leaders foster inclusion today without overwhelming their teams or losing?

Sherri Douville: Yeah. Thank you. It's one of my passion areas cause I hate slogans

and I hate empty words as well. And, so that we have to lead by example. And one of the things I'm grateful for is I was raised by people both grandparents as well as parents who are incredibly principled people both principled as well as humble. But one of the things they always emphasize was just the concept of duty duty to, the work that you do, duty to the country.

And, that when you think about a sense of duty, And what that actually means, it means fostering an environment of fairness, it means building talent, and it doesn't mean the opposite of all those things, which a lot of people focus on. And so what leaders can and should do is that they can and should set their own OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).

And meet those and challenge people around them to do the same thing. And in particular, I take a ton of talent risk, and I'm honored to work with some of the most talented people in the world right on this standard on seven books. On obviously this company on obviously this company and the consortium.

And I never would have been able to do any of that unless I did also take massive talent risk. But I've been rewarded every time. Sure. I have some bruises and bumps. But, most of the time it's, I've been massively rewarded for that risk. And that's the one thing that I would emphasize and encourage every Effective leader I've ever seen would say the same thing.

And so if you are rising talent and you really want to call yourself a leader, you have to learn how to eat and take talent risk and, make, and learn to enjoy it.

Sarah Richardson: Talent risk in and of itself, just being an area where you see something in someone that they may not see in themselves. And that goes back to having those mentors who can help you make those tougher decisions.

And you believe this person can do this, especially if I believe that they can. And there's a level of accountability that goes both ways in that conversation. But how are organizations misstepping so much in these areas when they're trying to drive inclusion or create the right spaces? And you said you don't like the slogans.

How can these missteps be avoided in organizations that really are leaning in and yet maybe not getting it quite right?

Sherri Douville: I really have to defer to, I have gratitude, not just for mentors, but I'm also surrounded by a team of incredible coaches, right? And two of them are Anthony Lee, who runs a company called Heroic Voice Academy, which is communications training.

And then the other one is one of the preeminent organizational psychologists of our time who you would really enjoy. Her name's Karen Job Madsen. So depending on the talent level, and what you need them to do, whether they have to increase their communication capability, or whether they need to increase their, political EQ around a team design and team formation and leadership that identifying those coaches that can really move the needle on select talent would ROI for those organizations where their heart's in the right place, but they're not seeing results.

Sarah Richardson: And if they want to put that culture in place, that inclusive perspective, and have it translate into the longer term success, both culturally and financially, what are some of the building blocks that are most important?

Sherri Douville: So the building blocks, that they have to do with having a talent strategy. So one of the things I worked on with a friend over the weekend was a succession plan for one of their SVP key executives. Because that's where you see, if you don't have a succession plan, then there's no hope for the rising talent.

And then there's no action plan or operation around building that talent for that step. And so succession planning, having great advisors slash board members, and then being very intentional in hiring someone like Karen to build a culture and then having goals for people, like different people I've like different physician executives I'm working with.

Okay, I want them to give X number of talks different OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for them. I want them to publish X number of books. Or I want them to chair a working group, right? Having very tangible, specific goals, development goals for people where you can say that they're a different leader than when you started with them and what are the tools you're going to use to help them get there?

Working with some of these other coaches and making sure that you have good governance and good succession planning. Those are the building blocks for, the vision that you're, clearly pointing out.

Succession Planning and Leadership

Sarah Richardson: And yet succession planning is scary for some executives.

Maybe their ego gets in the way, maybe their imposter syndrome is getting in the way, but realizing that part of your responsibility as an executive is to know who is going to replace you. And then when that does happen in a way that you plan for, it is truly the most rewarding part about being a leader is to see the people that you have mentored and grown over their career, take the roles that you have helped them to define.

Or they take your role when you take the next opportunity. And as you think about that philosophy as well, how do you hold yourself accountable in this area?

Sherri Douville: It's just starting with having the intention where leaders go wrong, there really isn't an option to stay static, right?

And so you get excited about succession planning when you think about. what your path is, right? And so I'm not planning any immediate exit from, Medigram, but at the right time, I'm interested in having someone else put their, mark on the company. And then what, would it mean for what what, is my ambition and what am I meant to do, right?

I'm meant to transform healthcare with technology and what are the highest strategic levers that I can use. to make that happen, right? There's different, options relative to that, right? And then, just getting excited about manifesting my ambition backfilling that with what is the, what are the skills and competencies that the person and or the board need to have to continue the mission.

That when you think about being ambitious, That being ambitious then necessitates that you think about succession planning. And so why my advice is I just encourage people to be ambitious. Like the world needs ambition, right? But there are so many challenges in, in, in our space that we can't afford for people not to be ambitious because then nothing will get done.

Sarah Richardson: And is it nice when you have, I call it the directed ambition where you're actually helping someone guide them into the right opportunity? I had one of my favorite bosses of all time said, you are more than capable of doing my job. And I was young enough to be like, Oh, that is so great. He's but I'm never leaving this job, like not for 20 years.

And I was like, what? He literally said, next year, we will plan for you to find a job somewhere else because I'm your blocker and I'm not leaving. And at the time I was like, honored and terrified because I wasn't happy where I was. I'm like, you're going to make me leave? And he's you have to leave to grow.

There's no place for you to go here. It was amazing. It was actually the best thing that anyone could have done for me in my career. And I loved it because I did go to the next opportunity with a thoughtful approach. And even though it was scary at the time in the new environment, I could also call him almost every day for the first few weeks to get a sense of this just happened and this just happened.

And this just happened because I got pushed out of the nest and clearly flew. And to your point, you may not be going anywhere. So the people either that are reporting to you or reporting around you, realizing that you're going to make them write a book or do an article or get on stage or go do this other thing because they can.

And most of us just need someone to believe that we can.

Sherri Douville: I love that. That's true. You know me well already. I do push people. I'm that's like my nickname is pusher. I push them. You've

Sarah Richardson: already pushed me into these meetings and different perspectives and I'm researching frameworks that I never even thought I needed to know about and here I am like, oh Sherry said this in a meeting or I heard her talk about this thing and invited me to that webinar recently and I was like the whole time thinking, I don't know enough about this topic.

Awesome. Because the level of discomfort enough to feel like you want to grow into it. And as soon as it's comfortable, then you're probably not stretching hard enough. You're not going for a big enough goal.

Sherri Douville: I appreciate that. I'm so honored by that. And I'm glad that you took the opportunity to be there, because we need people like you leading this.

We're at a huge inflection point where we have tremendous opportunity to do incredible good, but just enormous risk. And so that's why it's like every confident leader. I'm like, come on,

Sarah Richardson: let's do it. Or what's the worst that's going to happen? We're going to try it or figure it out. And in many cases, our peers and people we know are working in scenarios where you have to trust the environment.

You have to know that it's right because people's lives are at stake. And then other spaces where philosophically, we may be talking about venture capital into different startups, and that is not life threatening, but it could be career ending, or it could be hiccup for somebody if it's not understood.

And so that same level of care and caution that you take into providing patient care, you take into consideration. Putting the frameworks and the perspectives into other aspects of it because it all does converge at some point.

Sherri Douville: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

Sarah Richardson: When you look ahead, like what excites you the most right now?

The Future of AI in Healthcare

Sarah Richardson: You think about the intersection of leadership, technology, healthcare. What are you excited about? And what advice do you have for those future leaders?

Sherri Douville: I'm just excited about the tremendous potential and opportunity that we do have to provide relief to the workforce to, I truly believe that technology, together with leadership and people and process can deliver on that quadruple aim of better patient care.

better financial outcomes, better experience, better clinician experience. And so I'm just excited to push that ball forward as quickly as possible. And I'm actually grateful for the challenges of, AI. What's interesting, I've been working in mobility for a long time, which is very important and very challenging because, Physicians can't get the information they need, but it's hard to get people to want to learn about mobility, even though it's the biggest attack surface.

That's how I made a lot of CISO friends is because they care about it a lot because it's their risk, right? That attack surface, but no one else in the organization really cared about it. What's exciting about AI, and what's interesting for you to know in your is that it's actually application security specialists who adapt the quickest to AI security.

Because AI security is totally different from other types of digital security. It's some similar principles and goals, but the details are different. But the people that upgrade the fastest are application security. And so what's interesting, we had always planned this data and AI driven component of our platform, which is about optimizing care pathways and making them mobile so that we can drive faster ICD 11 improvements, operational and financial improvements.

But the thing about And the other thing that's really important about just AI security is that don't be people, they want to stick their head in the sand and it's, actually, it's not the time to stick the head in the sand. It's the time to take all that great leadership experience you have, especially if you have application security in your portfolio.

And, understand that you are anointed to be a leader of, healthcare AI. And so that I'm excited about the leadership bench that we do have that, really does have the skills and competencies to do the right thing for AI in healthcare for patients and for clinicians. And I really do believe that we can, and we will do that.

We have a good core, sort of network of CXOs, CIOs, CISOs. together with engineers and physician leaders. And I really believe that they will deliver that. And that's what I'm most excited about. And so my advice is just, don't be afraid everybody needs to start using it in a way that's risk literate make sure that you understand how the privacy and data controls work and depending on what you're using it for, build a policy for how you're using it.

But this is the next computing wave, akin to the internet, right? And so it's not the time to put our head in the sand and, it's not the time to be overwhelmed because it is quite different. And then there, there are a lot of new details. It's the time to lean in and, really think about wrangling challenges so that we can derive the substantial benefits.

Sarah Richardson: Let's be honest, if that was easy, you wouldn't be working on it. It's one of those things where you're like, hey, maybe I should ask Sherri if this is one of the things I should be doing. And you'd be like, nah, it's too easy. Dang it. And to your point, it's moving fast. People need to keep up and surround themselves with the ability to feel like, I can keep up, I'm going to make some missteps, and that's okay, because it might be changing every day in some cases.

But to your point, you don't wait for it to be something that's standard, because we're not in a phase of it being standard in the form it even was last week. Yet it's still very applicable in the scenarios by which it is being applied.

Sherri Douville: Absolutely. I totally believe that people that use AI will replace people that don't use AI.

I don't think AI will replace people. I don't think it's possible.

Sarah Richardson: I was at a conference two weeks ago and they said if you have not in five years automated 80 percent of the workflows that can be, you will be out of business. Because you need people to do other work that's going to be stacking up in your organization with the way things are happening in healthcare today.

And you need to be thinking about the automation and the AI impact of your workflows, especially those that are administrative, because those are the easiest ones to go for first and you get comfortable using the technologies. And I thought 80 percent was a big number and then I realized Yes, and then the human in the loop creates so much more opportunity for all the things that need to happen.

You can close a bunch of open RECs versus actually eliminating the human. Most organizations are sitting at 250 to 300 open RECs for things that are administrative today. And if you're thoughtful about it, that's what starts to go away. Open RECs.

Sherri Douville: That needs to happen, and it'll be interesting to see who It seems like there's a lot of shiny object stuff happening, honestly, right now, so I'd be interested to see who pioneers.

Closing the open racks. That's a good, that's a good goal.

Sarah Richardson: And then upskill and reskill those tasks that you were able to give to the computer. All right. I want to switch to speed round. This is the stuff that in theory is easier to answer or more fun to answer than the bigger questions. So what's your favorite way to unwind after a busy day as a CEO?

Sherri Douville: So my big hobby is I love to cook. And so I spend a fair amount of time on the weekend, especially a couple times a week cooking. And I love to eat as well. So it goes with that.

Sarah Richardson: Excellent. What's your favorite thing to cook? If you're making dinner tonight, maybe you are. What's on the menu?

Sherri Douville: So one of my favorite things this time of year is beef bourguignon, which I made over the weekend.

And tonight I'm going to make turkey chili.

Sarah Richardson: You're way more ambitious in the kitchen than I am. I do all of the wine pairing with meals at our house, so there you go. It's very essential, especially based on the fact that I live in wine country. If you could, though, master instantly any new skill, what would it be?

Sherri Douville: Any new skill? I have a deep respect for and I work a lot on operational excellence. And so if I could snap my finger and be instantly better in one way, that, that is the way that I would Because I've always loved and enjoyed strategy and vision but I always work on operations.

Sarah Richardson: You. You have this great strategy and vision, but getting people to actually implement and do it is sometimes that, wouldn't that be just amazing?

Sherri Douville: If I could just snap my figure.

Sarah Richardson: Cause the hardest part, you're like, yeah, that's easy for me. And what should be easy part is hard for most people.

And so you're like, if you could just bring them together, you'd be set.

Sherri Douville: I collect and worship them. The current strategy to collect and worship the operators.

Sarah Richardson: I love it. So one book or podcast you're going to recommend to any healthcare leader, what is it?

Sherri Douville: So I have to do it. There's so many great podcasts, obviously yours and so many great books, but I have to, hats off to two of my colleagues in the consortium, Dr.

Prabhgupta, who's VP at Premier, VP of Clinical Excellence, and Stephanie Fields teaming up to launch Making AI Work for You. So we had our first episode with Dr. Robert Pearl, who's former CEO of Permanente, and faculty of Stanford Medicine and Business. But Making AI Work for You is about taking the stars of academia, medicine, and venture capital and getting them on the same page.

And so I have to recommend that, even though there's so many great things to

Sarah Richardson: I'm grateful that you recommend those things because people even hearing about them may not be as comfortable and that gets them out of the box of, hey, you need to go after the things that are a little bit harder or less familiar because that allows you to stretch and grow and either reading those books or listening to podcasts with those themes, it's a safe way to start to get your toe in that water and really start to go for it.

Sherri Douville: I love that. Yeah, that's a great point.

Sarah Richardson: Sherri it has been an absolute honor to have you on the show today. I'm hopeful that all of our listeners have taken in tidbits of things that they need to go learn and understand better and realize that there are the books that you have written and helped to bring forward.

There are the contributions you make in your articles. There are so many spaces to find the wisdom and the knowledge and the vision that you bring forward into this industry. So thank you for that. And I look forward to our continued collaboration and friendship.

Sherri Douville: It's my honor and pleasure. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Sarah Richardson: Thanks for tuning in to Flourish. That's all for now.

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