This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

Interview In Action: How Data Can Unlock Innovation Doors with Glenn Wirick

Visit ThisWeekHealth. com slash Clearsense today ThisWeekHealth. com and learn how Clearsense can transform your organization.

Drex DeFord: Welcome to This Week Health. I'm Sarah Richardson, a former CIO and President of this Week Health's 2 2 9 Community development where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Our interviews in action are a series of interviews catching up with healthcare leaders throughout the industry.

Now onto our interview

Sarah Richardson: (Interview 1) Welcome to this Week Health. I'm Sarah Richardson, and today I'm joined by Glenn Wirick, Chief Commercial Officer at Clearsense.

From legacy data migration to real-time data analytics. Clearsense is reshaping how healthcare organizations harness information, and Glenn is at the center of that innovation. Welcome to the show, Glenn,

Glenn Wirick: great to be here. I really appreciate this chance, Sarah.

Sarah Richardson: I usually chat to Jason and so I'm stoked to be able to like continue the conversation with the rest of the executive team at Clearsense.

And I have to start by asking you to tell us about the big picture. And so for those that are less familiar, can you share how Clearsense came to be and how its mission has evolved in today's environment, especially where data saturation is a little bit of everybody's problem right now.

So the origins of Clearsense we started as what we call a data enablement platform. So that's really core to our mission. We're here to help enable the use of data elevate the value, accelerate the value. That's what we're on track to do. And we're focused exclusively, of course in healthcare, primarily with health systems.

How that then shows up over time. Is that we see that health systems typically have over bloated portfolios of applications, health systems. I will say kind of tongue in cheek, I heard a CIO say this, that health systems are really good at buying and acquiring applications. Probably less good at decommissioning when they're no longer necessary.

There's also millions and millions of dollars being spent that don't need to be spent. And so we're very focused on helping health systems be more profitable, cut their costs. But the final piece of it, Sarah, is that data living and disparate systems also tends to not be that useful. So we've got some very interesting methods of pulling that together so that you have unified views of that data.

And I would love to talk about at some point. the value from data that you can get once you pull that together the right way?

Sarah Richardson: Well, let's be honest. I mean, there's a data platform everywhere and there's all kinds of different ways that you can solve for the problems, but your approach is different and your analytics are completely different in terms of how you approach that perspective as well.

Glenn Wirick: Yeah, well one, let's see, let's start with App Rat. Alright, so the app rationalization is the exercise. Of going through and understanding the portfolio of applications that you have when they might be end of life, the contracts associated with them, and very importantly, are they duplicative to other applications?

and are they, redundant, are they usable anymore? A lot of health systems we run into have done some level of that analysis. Some more robust, some less. But There tend to be challenges from that point forward on executing, even though we've done the app rat, let's just say. And let's say that analysis shows us that we could reduce our spend by $20 million if we decommissioned and therefore archive data the right way.

And then what we're also seeing, what really magnifies this is any health system that is active in mergers and acquisitions. Because obviously as you're pulling stuff in, you're getting that many more apps that are potentially duplicative.

Sarah Richardson: I feel like this is a strength for you, is legacy data management component and the archival of that information.

Glenn Wirick: Yeah, that's great. And what I'll do is I'll kind of compare to the modern ways that Clearsense treats this to kind of what were some more historical ways that archiving was treated the further you go back in time. First of all, archiving historically was treated as well.

I've got data retention rules, compliance and legal rules. So I need to keep this data. So I'm gonna decommission some systems and I'm gonna basically put it on a thumb drive in the cloud or in my server room. And now I'm meeting my compliance needs, but my data's sitting there unused. That's challenge one.

It's more of a services one, one-time engagement, and the data gets set in some kind of a data store, or there might be some kind of query access, et cetera. But then some months later, another tactical project will come. We're gonna do another data store. And I put nine apps in this and what happens with that data to the point I think you were alluding to, Sarah, is the data still remains disparate.

And so one of the unique things that we are very focused on, all of our solutions do this, we take all of the data, we combine it to what's known as EMPI, that's a employee master patient index. So that there is a single longitudinal record for each patient, no matter how many different systems the data originated from in the way that we combine that now, Bob Smith, the patient, whether a provider is looking in the EHR and pulling that legacy data in combination with the live data, they can see Bob Smith as a single patient, even if his data previously lived in nine systems, right?

To future innovations, AI modeling, et cetera. So I'll kind of tease that out maybe we talk about that a little more, but this unique approach to data really enables a whole bunch of future possibilities.

Sarah Richardson: Well, and it's gotta have that clinical impact as well. And you mentioned like having a single source of truth as an example for better delivery and decision making at the point of care.

What are some of the things you've actually seen or worked with clients that have been like, hey, now this nurse can do this, or this doctor or this research team is able to create these capabilities within the organization?

Glenn Wirick: Well, one of the feedbacks that we get it's pretty basic, but it really impacts the provider's ability to be effective as well as the patient outcome and experience.

But especially for patients that have chronic ongoing conditions, it is really meaningful and powerful to have that entire health history provided to the doc in advance before they go into that one-on-one with their patient. Likewise the provider themselves can open the EHR during the patient discussion and also pull that history and so without having that longitudinal history, it's a game changer, like I said, for the kinds of patients that have more of those long-term chronic issues.

How do you help health systems build governance frameworks that are sustainable and scalable? And the piece all sort of feed out there as well is, my previous organization was all about setting up the environment. And then thought it would just self sustain and didn't wanna fund it anymore. And so the fight to keep it alive after we created it.

How do you help organizations do all of the components it actually takes to get to a governance model with data that works?

However, to your point, upstream of getting it into our technology, there is all of the stuff that is the governance and how do I get it from a spreadsheet list to actually putting it into a solution like ours. And I said that a lot of times entities will do some form of application rationalization. But even if they've done a really robust job of that, it often gets left.

There's this gap. Very often, if somebody's gonna do robust App Rat, they're hiring a consulting firm. The consulting firm comes in, they do robust app rat, here's your list, here's your priorities, here's the cost takeout available to you, generally in the many tens of millions. But then that consulting engagement is generally done.

And so these acceleration services are brought to the health system to help them manage the governance. The execution if the app rat hasn't been done, we can also step in and facilitate an app rat exercise such that we build this pipeline of applications that feed the machine on an ongoing basis. And these two things together really accelerate how rapidly you can get the data into the store such that you're getting the value from the data, but also so that you can decommission many more apps much more quickly.

Nordic is excellent at the acceleration services part of what we're talking about. And we're already engaged with Nordic on a couple of really interesting opportunities where we're dramatically accelerating large health systems ability to do everything that we just talked about in a much quicker timeframe.

Sarah Richardson: So your preference is that the rationalization is actually in concert with the services you bring forward because they can be done at the same time.

Glenn Wirick: Absolutely. So, again if a health system is paid for an app rat exercise and it's robust and relatively current. We can step in with our acceleration services right off the back of that and continue forward.

While we're then building the governance processes, et cetera, so that we're really ready for primetime can move really quickly.

Sarah Richardson: It's still truly though one of the most exciting spaces when you are in health systems or organizations to be able to like, maximize and optimize the applications and pull the information and present it in a way that is usable for people and save money doing it

and make money with the insights that you're gathering from it. That behind the scenes architecture and planning and like sausage making are the pieces, that I miss from being on the front lines occasionally, but there is a ton of buzz around AI and I'm curious how Clearsense incorporates AI or machine learning into your platforms.

How do you help clients separate what is hype from what is practical application and not letting noise drive the right use cases?

But when you treat archiving strategically, you can really fund and drive other innovation. And so that's one of the most exciting aspects that we talk about with our clients as we accelerate that cost takeout. Number one, we have health systems. We're taking tens of millions of dollars out of opex each year.

That data now lends itself and we've got some significant customers doing this. I'm allowed to actually drop this particular name, which is UPMC where they are doing this and they are using that rich data store. That covers more than 6 million patients to drive AI modeling. So when they're looking at bringing a new AI solution in, instead of running it over prototype data, becuase a little secret about AI, it runs really good on the test data that the AI engine was built over.

But when you put it against real world data, that's when you find out if the AI is really delivering what it's intended to deliver. When you can run it over this very rich data set, now you can truly validate the AI and tweak it as necessary before rolling it out. You then can use that data set for large language models and learning.

Sarah Richardson: You also get to create that almost laboratory environment then when saying, I want this chunk of data to be its own LLM or this own perspective.

So you can either de-identify it or use just different aspects of removing bias and looking to see what types of props and what types of activities work. And that's where so much confusion and sometimes concern comes in is what happens to my data. When you have a solution like yours, you are always in control of what gets fed into the systems that are gonna create the outcomes or the insights that are necessary.

Glenn Wirick: Exactly, and we're just scratching the surface on those two examples. Another big example for academic medical research type of institutions, that data can be used for cohort analysis. So you were talking about an analytics and we can use some very advanced predictive analytics to then identify cohorts that match certain research.

That customer now can pull the data and know if they qualify for that cohort within 10 minutes to 30 minutes. So I frankly was in the meeting where that was stated and it sounded unbelievable we dug into it, but that is the state. So this is really what's possible when you have the data in the kind of state that supports all of these exciting innovations that we're talking about.

Glenn Wirick: Yeah, that's a great question and especially with some of what's going on with the uncertainty from recent fed rulings, whether it's, Medicaid cuts, which have obviously major impact for hospital systems, tariffs, et cetera. We're seeing this shift, that more and more people, of course, are focused on how do we maintain profitability, how do we work on our margins?

Right? And so a thing that we've really doubled down on and we're getting very positive feedback for, we've updated pricing models over the last year. To really ensure that the value that a health system gets is tied to what they spend with Clearsense. And so what that has done for us is our value prop and cost model makes a ton of sense for some of the smallest systems out there, as well as the largest ones with spend being proportional to the value they're going to realize.

Sarah Richardson: Well, and there is economic uncertainty everywhere, and let's be honest, we've been in healthcare long enough to realize that it's a different source of that occurring.

I mean, it's, right now it's Medicaid and different models, but it's always been something that we're hyper aware of in healthcare.

Glenn Wirick: Hospital systems run on thin margins. That's just how it is.

Sarah Richardson: 3% average, which is kind of terrifying, but all of those factors being true and crystal balling 12, 18 months.

And I always laugh when someone says, oh, it's in our three to five year plan. I'm like, that's really hard to do now. And I sometimes think it's a waste of time if you're not doing that. Six month rolling plan, let's just say 12 to 18 months. What's on your radar? Partnerships, product evolution, emerging needs?

What are you seeing as spaces where you want CIOs and hospitals to lean in.

Glenn Wirick: That's a great question. So, number one we, by the way, anecdotally, we just had that conversation with our board in a recent meeting that it makes the most sense to really plan 6, 9 18 months out because things shift so rapidly in our space.

So that's something that we see continuing to escalate and frankly, M and A is a major trigger point for people reaching out to Clearsense. I'll shamelessly drop that if you go to the Clearsense website, we've just recently released an M and A white paper, which is getting a lot of traction.

So when we talk about analytics and AI, you're not constrained in only using what Clearsense brings. Rather we consider ourselves an enabling middleware where we can bring some of those capabilities, but you can bring them yourself as well.

Sarah Richardson: I haven't heard middleware in about five years or more, so glad maybe it's making a research in the, in the universe. I'm like, there's a throwback term for sure, although this is more of an opinion question and that's about M and A because I've worked in orgs that have done heavy M and A and my 2 cents is always integrate as soon as you possibly can.

Now, there's different reasons why you may or may not, but the longer you wait in that space, the harder it actually becomes, especially the change factor, the human change adoption component of the equation. What is your preference?

The sooner the better sometimes we run into where, you know, you're gonna have these extra apps, but it's like an afterthought way after the M and A. It's a lot harder to wrangle that in. And if you make it part of the M and A thesis. It tends to be driven top down. It happens more rapidly, more urgently, and then you're able to drive kind of a maximum cost savings from this kind of an effort to then move more into a focus on innovation.

Sarah Richardson: Yep, I couldn't agree more. It's always a philosophical draw in those moments. Yet the longer you wait, obviously, like the harder that it's gonna be.

All right. Are you ready for speed round?

Glenn Wirick: Um, Yeah, let's go.

Sarah Richardson: I love speed round questions. All right. Here we go. Emerging tech trend in healthcare that excites you the most?

Right now?

Sarah Richardson: But don't you love that you've created an environment where they can go play with quick wins?

And it doesn't take, I mean, I had like almost like PTSD when you said, oh, that request that takes like half the team, nine months to scrub the data kind of a thing. So the fact that like those real time pet projects are pretty special right now.

Glenn Wirick: Yep.

Sarah Richardson: If you were able to change one thing in healthcare right now, solve it, what would it be?

Glenn Wirick: I would love to see, this is biased by the space I specifically work in, but I would love to see application portfolio management become a more strategic initiative within all healthcare organizations because we continually see there's a lot of money and opportunity left on the table, and our clients that treat it more strategically end up with far more value from their applications and data.

How do we try to fit it in?

Glenn Wirick: Absolutely.

Sarah Richardson: So what's your favorite productivity hack or leadership habit?

Glenn Wirick: I've got several things. First of all, this is gonna I mean it sounds redundant and it's been said so many times, but transparency and constant communication makes everything run better.

Jason Rose, our CEO talks often, everyone at the company is in customer support. and I love that that is our culture. It's one of the reasons we have such satisfied customers. But the hack is this, you can never communicate enough, no matter how much you think you're communicating. And so I run client success and one of the things we're doing as a number of our customers know.

Sarah Richardson: And I'm gonna throw this one in there as well.

I appreciate remote capabilities. I also do not believe that those deep relationships with your clients. can be formed without seeing them in person and so that everybody's in customer service. There's also the element of, and we actually go and see our clients and go to their hospitals and round with them and spend time with them and know what the heck is happening in their environments.

Glenn Wirick: That's a huge thing. We talk about it a lot. Couldn't agree more. I'm kind of old school, so I'm more of a face-to-face person than a remote on a Zoom meeting person. But that's a thing that we do a lot. I was just at one of our customers last week where we're going out to see our customers on regular basis, and frankly, that's been a discussion that we've had too, where we're

elevating that and making sure that we're getting to the customer as often as necessary face-to-face. Although you can handle things on zoom, magical things happen when you're all in the same room together.

Sarah Richardson: Well, because let's be honest, it's really hard to describe something you've never seen.

also probably 'cause I'm old school. Whiteboards. Whiteboards are very powerful. I love

Sarah Richardson: whiteboards. I know and sticky notes in all the different elements. I think we're about the same school of experience in the industry. However, if you weren't doing this, what would be the dream job?

Money not being the article. Like it doesn't matter how much you make, 'cause pizza delivery could be a thing.

Glenn Wirick: So I really, and I have done some of this, but I really love consulting. Because in a consultative role, you can bring these practices and I love being able to work with folks on their hardest challenges and bringing solutions to bear.

So whether I work for a solution provider as I do right now, which gives me a lot of gratitude and pleasure, I really, if I wasn't doing this right now, I would probably just be working to be a consultant out there helping health systems improve in these areas.

Sarah Richardson: Well, Clearsense is super lucky to have you on the team, and I'm so grateful that you and Jason have a history that allows you to keep amplifying everywhere that you go.

Glenn Wirick: Yeah, well one of the things that's right in front of us and we're really looking forward to is there are 2, 229 events happening in Napa. I think they are one starts on June 19th and one starts on June 22nd.

One of my colleagues will be at one of them. I will be at the other, and we love going to these they're an awesome forum. To really hear the needs and understand the challenges of these amazing health leaders. It's just an honor to be in the room and then we get to share our anecdotes and case studies of what we see our clients doing to be successful.

So can't wait to be up there and it's not just because of the wine tasting.

Sarah Richardson: Well, hey, it's the only summit that I get to drive to 'cause that is literally my backyard. So I will see you there soon.

Glenn Wirick: Fantastic.

Thanks for listening to this interview and action episode. If you found value in this, please share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases, start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating.