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January 17, 2024: Kate Gamble sits down with Sarah Richardson to unravel the complexities of data literacy and its transformative power in healthcare. What does it take to cultivate a data-driven culture where every team member can confidently engage with and trust the information they use? How do organizations overcome resistance to change, integrate data into clinical workflows, and balance access with security?

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Transcript

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

 Today in Health IT, we're discussing how to make everyone great at data. My name is Kate Gamble. I'm Managing Editor for This Week Health, where we host a set of channels and events dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time. I've been interviewing CXOs for more than a decade, and I'm thrilled to bring that experience into this community.

Today's episode is brought to you by Chrome OS. Imagine seamlessly in the background, keeping your data secure, your teams connected, and your patients at the center of care. Visit ThisWeekHealth backslash Google Chrome OS to learn more. Today we're talking about how to make everyone great at data, and I'm joined by Sarah Richardson, President of the ThisWeekHealth 229 Executive Development Community.

Sarah, thank you for being here and happy Friday.

Happy Friday to you, Kate.

Maybe this doesn't sound like the most fun topic, but really, what's more fun than data, right? Data's always fun to talk about. Exactly. And it's important. I'm a big fan of Harvard Business Review, so I was glad to see this article come up.

And it's about how to make everyone great at data. The article emphasizes the importance of cultivating data literacy across all organization levels to enhance decision making and drive business success. So some of the keys to that include democratizing access, providing employees with access to relevant data, which can empower them to make informed decisions and foster a data driven culture.

Implementing training initiatives that empower employees to interpret and utilize data in their roles, promoting a data driven mindset, And leveraging user friendly tools like data analysis to enable users to engage with data confidently. And of course, it all starts with clear data governance policies to ensure accuracy, security, compliance, and build trust in data utilization.

So there's a lot we've just covered there, just bit, but let's bring it back a bit to data literacy why it's so important to foster this. Thank you

I am so grateful we're covering this topic, mostly because I saw it done relatively, I'm going to say perfectly, which you're going to hear me think is a biased perspective, because Beth Cooper and Heidi Walsh at Activity Health, their blueprint, their playbook for the democratization of data,

The mindset. User friendly tools, governance. It took a couple of years for that to become part of the fabric of the organization.

And what I'll plug in terms of data literacy, Kate, is data is forever. Your data governance team, your data policy team, the way that you're thinking, How it goes in and out of the organization, what gets put where, how the lineage and the quality design That is all day every day. Anytime you bring on a new system, and we talk about cybersecurity and the ability to understand who is accessing the data and when.

That go into place for this and so the data literacy component of can everybody have a conversation about how data is utilized in the

because everybody is

some

and how they're accessing it and what they're loading into the additional spreadsheets and the decision making that goes in.

You have to trust the source. at the point of entry in the organization. So by the time it gets into your warehouse and into your reporting capabilities, it is rock solid and people aren't

where this information is coming from. That all goes into those conversations about mindset and user friendly

can actually access and understand how to make

on their own as well. This is huge though. You've got, it can enhance your patient care. It's going to optimize your operations. It ensures compliance and it does drive

because you're able to adapt what's happening

time. You're safeguarding information. You've got better data driven solution.

It's coming out of this

and people feel capable because the informed

is at their

So I will pontificate about data literacy and data capabilities all day long, only because it literally, just like cyber, is everybody's

You've convinced me.

If we were forming a debate team, I would be, I would Can you tell I've had this conversation for years in organizations? But it is really important. And I love the passion because data literacy is so extremely important. And you've just outlined a lot of reasons why. And one of the things I also really liked about this perspective was the idea that no one's trying to create bad data.

even if that's what ends up happening. And so for leaders, there's a responsibility to educate them and also create that culture of data quality and some of the ways they can do that. It's implementing a data literacy programs or strategies for developing effective training that enhances data skills across various roles.

Balancing data access with security. Always top of mind, ensuring broad data access while maintaining stringent security measures. Integrating data into clinical workflows. Coming up with approaches to seamlessly incorporate data analysis into daily clinical practices without disrupting care delivery.

And what else have you found as far as ways that they can push towards better data literacy?

Yeah, measure the impact of the data literacy program. At a previous lifetime, we have the ability through one of our partners to become certified in the usage of their product. And Business owner and a data owner.

We had a data owner for all these different domains, and they all got certified through the programs that we were utilizing. So that was a big deal because it became a badge of honor within the organization to earn that. It took a long time to get the organization to a space where, hey, I'm the data owner.

You may be the data and product depending on the breadth and depth of your org. When you have those titles, added to your capability and skill set. They're not just like badges of honor in your organization. They become things that are monikers for how well you are understanding healthcare and then it helps to really overcome

data adoption. You'll never cease to be amazed by how hard the challenges and resistance when shifting to a data centric organization can become. Culturally, if there are people who have that responsibility, the shadow IT, the people managing the cube, probably someone in the decision support or finance teams, now have to go to a central location, you have to build the trust and show how things are progressing

a way that is positively impacting it,

people will start to say, Yes, I'm okay with a data centric

culture.

Those are really good points. And I would think that the last one can be a little tricky as far as overcoming the resistance, especially because there are people who are not doing things the right way, but maybe are afraid of, the punitive aspect. So I'm sure that can be tough for leaders.

It's tough for leaders because think about a case study or use case where you have a team of eight people and I'm clearly not making this up, that all they do is pull in data from different sources and they manually are the ones going through and cleansing it, configuring it, and then making it available for others to make decisions.

Once you put in tools and processes and capabilities for the data team to do that, so all that's coming in and getting done by automatically, because you have the tools to do that, those eight people may decide to forward the information or protect their jobs. So part of that conversation about data adoption is what happens when we improve our processes to a point

reallocate these colleagues or team members into other functions organizationally.

Maybe that's true, maybe it is a reduction, maybe it's not filling different open recs. There's always ways an improvement is going to create a little bit of strife when it involves

factor. Which is why then again, that change management aspect that we're always covering, we talked about yesterday, is so ultimately important in your organization. Make sure you know how to build relationships

I love the perspective from somebody who has experienced this. It really is valuable. And along those lines, we do have a summit coming up that will focus on foundations for AI and healthcare, exploring data governance and use cases. So reach out to us for more information or check out our events section under summits.

The next one coming up is April 3rd to the 5th in Phoenix, and we'll focus a lot on data governance. So don't forget to share this podcast with a friend or colleague. Use it as a foundation 📍 for daily or weekly discussions on topics that are relevant to you in the industry. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Sarah, thank you for joining and I hope you have a great weekend.

Thank you to everyone for listening. That's a wrap.

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