📍 Today, digital health, 2023 cloud human centered design and getting back to basics.  My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and create, or this week health, a set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current. And engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors. We're investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, short test and artist site two great companies. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Having a child with cancer is one of the most painful and difficult situations a family can face.

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 All right. We recorded a new stay show yesterday. And we discussed this article. And as I was looking at it, I realized we didn't get into it enough. And the new state episode with my guest and side, decided to jump into it a little bit more this morning and get away from the rants that like the one I did yesterday.

Here we go. Let's see where's this at healthcare it news. Digital health 2023 cloud or human centered design and getting back to basics and let's see. It's an interview with Marcus Perez, president of Alterra digital health. And it says he offers some intriguing predictions for what's ahead. Here we go. Digital health technologies.

Our hot as the sun today, healthcare provider organizations, CEOs, and other health, it leaders are studying and implementing these technologies to improve the patient and provider experiences and hopefully boost patient outcomes. Marcus pres president so forth. In May, 2022. North Harris computer corporation.

Yeah, wholly owned subsidiary of constellation software purchased Allscripts healthcare solutions. Hospitals and large physician practices business segment. The segment now operates as Alterra digital health, a business unit. Of Harris health care. There you go. That's where they came from. So they spoke to him. They asked him three questions. You predict that cloud technology will drive improvements in patient care in 2023.

Where and how good question. Cloud technology offers hospitals and large physician practices. The flexibility to access patient data. When and where they need it. Some of this technology's already in place as noted. By the expansion of telemedicine throughout the, , The pandemic essentially. Now patients are used to remote care and receiving direct input on their health status from their clinicians in that manner, the number of physicians using tele-health grew 14% so forth.

The massive growth demands that physicians have access to complete patient data. So they can build personalized care plans and. , and serve their patients. , the next chapter, as we continue with the transition to cloud supported electronic health records will come down to timing. According to the BDO 2021 healthcare digital transformation survey. 78% of respondents said their organization had deployed cloud technology and 20% said they were planning to do so.

Looking ahead to 2023, the adoption of cloud computing will continue. There's tremendous value in improving wellness, reducing the cost of care and ensuring patient continuity of care. The migration by hospitals and large medical practices from traditional it infrastructure and software to cloud-based system takes place today in industries such as travel banking, online purchases.

, hospitals and large medical practices have found that cloud technology simplifies operations, secures data and reduces expenses, which are practical factors in improving. The overall management within healthcare organizations. The data is also valuable as healthcare organizations manage at risk populations. I'm going to come back to that.

And they go, for example, a patient with diabetes typically sits down with their physician. Or diabetes nurse educator to review blood sugar levels. Over time. These levels are typically captured in an app using fast. , fire fast healthcare, interoperability resources. Both patients and clinicians access the information through cloud technology, which enables the clinician to review data with the patient to adjust insulin and diet.

For a better diabetes management. This is just one example of product disease management, but the technology behind this and other patient care interactions. We'll advance cloud computing in healthcare. All right, let's stop there. Before we go into human centered design. , We did this before, by the way, we did this before cloud. So it's not like cloud enabled this. We could do this before cloud makes this better.

Right. So I'm going to go back to the three things he said.

Hospitals and large medical practices have found that cloud technology simplifies operations, secures data and reduces expenses. Okay. I agree with two at a three of those. And I think it does more than that. All right. So the first simplifies operations. Absolutely. Cloud computing simplifies operations. First of all, you don't have to run a data center.

Second wall it's built on software. , a software architecture as opposed to a hardware architecture, therefore it is programmable. It can be automated. It can provide. , huge amounts of efficiency. And I believe also leads to the comment around securing the data or security. There are better security models available to you in the cloud.

You may not use them. You may not understand them, but there are better security models available to you in the cloud. The cloud is inherently better designed for security. Then most in-house systems. Okay. So it does simplify operations. It gives you options in terms of automating operations. It does cure your data, not necessarily inherently in the cloud, but it gives you options to secure your data, which I think are stronger and reduces expenses. This is the one that's tricky.

There are business cases where cloud reduces your overall cost. , but it requires you to make some hard decisions in order for that to be realized. And most organizations don't do that. Let's be honest. If you're going to automate a bunch of things that. Essentially says that you can reduce your staff.

And any business model, any ROI model you put together with the cloud will show cost savings. But those cost savings in a lot of cases will come through, reduce staff. , staff to operate your data centers, staff to and maintenance contracts to clean that data center. , you know, the people who are swapping out tapes, the.

, people who are E even, you know, quite frankly, your, your, , maintenance and operations teams, it just requires less people. So the ROI models are built with that, but very few organizations follow through on that. So it's not necessarily inherently, less, less expensive.

Plus you have to be concerned about lock-in. So you get into a cloud environment, you don't do the proper architecture because you didn't. Think about it or you didn't have the right staff in place to do the proper architecture and you're now locked into that environment. So now as they ratchet up prices, as they invariably do over time, you are stuck and your costs go up.

The one thing they don't talk directly about here, but they do through example. I guess they do it in a roundabout way. Is the cloud enables you to get closer to your end user and collect information directly from that end user. The cloud is a better architecture for IOT and IoMT devices in collecting that data. So inherently the cloud doesn't give you any huge benefit in terms of the ability to collect data over a traditional architecture. If you designed it correctly.

But because of the distributed nature of the cloud, you can get closer to your end users. You could use edge computing, you can do a whole bunch of things. That collects data from that hospital at home, that remote. , clinician and those kinds of things. So the cloud offers flexibility in terms of your design and your go to market. So there's a lot of, again,

Just it's a software design. It's very flexible. It's very adaptable to whatever your business models are going to be. All right. He goes on from there. It starts, you also suggest that the use of human centered design. To create more efficient workflows for clinicians will grow in 2023. What forces will drive this growth and why will this growth be important? I don't even have to read this to know this.

, clinician a. I'll read it for you. Clinicians themselves will drive the growth of human centered design. To avoid burnout, managing staffing, shortages, and approve. The care they provide. All right. So. Human centered design is more than just asking questions. Right. So we, we invariably know that if we're going to implement software, if we're going to implement some sort of new system that we should engage with the end user.

Human centered design is more than that, but. It is at least that, right. You at least have to understand the, the human at the center of the equation. You don't design workflows and systems and whatever, without engaging the person who is going to be using the system and understanding how they will utilize the system.

Right. So human centered design requires you to be at the elbow. So this is where it sort of comes in conflict with our work from home practices. Right. So we are looking at this now and saying, , you know, we want our employees to work from anywhere. They can work from home. They can work from another state, all that as well, a good, but at the end of the day, someone needs to be at the elbow of the clinician, watching how they work to say, you know what? We can do this better. If they watch the clinician, if they're at their elbow, they will look at it and go, oh my gosh.

You just did 15 clicks to get that. That information. We could actually pull that up in a pop-up and put that right in front of you. Or we can incorporate that into that. That landing page so that when you're, you're checking that patient in that information is right there. At your fingertips when you're ready to care for them.

Human centered design looks. I mean, it it's in the name, but it is a practice. It is a discipline. It is a, it is something to be studied at as something to be brought into your culture. It is not something that we just intrinsically do. Yes, we ask questions and yes, we listen to our end users. Hopefully we do that. But again, that's a cultural thing that you have to drive in human centered design though, is, is a whole set of practices to make sure that the.

The solutions that you were delivering to the organization, work for the person at the center, which is the person who's operating. The computer or the system and how they interact and more and more, it's not going to be a computer. It's going to be other devices and more and more, the interaction is not going to be b a keyboard. It's going to be in the way we ask questions or phrase things.

So, and I agree by the way, these, these drivers are absolutely going to be there. Human centered design is going to be driven by burnout. It's going to be driven by clinicians. It's not going to be an it driven initiative. It's going to be the clinicians looking at us and saying, look, this stuff has to work for us.

We don't have enough clinicians go around. We don't have enough nurses to go around. We don't have enough doctors to go around. We don't have enough techs to go around. And we cannot sit in front of this computer. And, and wrestle with it anymore. It's just not possible. It's not feasible. And so I think doctors are going to drive this transformation, the next level of transformation in the software that's being used.

And he ends the interview with this question. Finally, you say that the need to get back to basics and simplify technology and healthcare will be key in 2023. Why? And where will we see this most, by the way? Simplify simplify, simplify, simplify should be something that every it staff hears. , very often from a manager from the CIO.

Simplification is always key. Right. It's simplification of the architecture of the data. Simplification of the usage models for the technology and the software. Always going to be key. So anyway, he goes on to talk about this and he says, , healthcare and technology, clinicians. Used must be instinctive and easier to access, understand and navigate people expect and want technology that improves their everyday. Everyday lives. Each hospital physician practice is unique in its specific technology needs.

Digital health technologies have become the conduit for interaction with patient. Health data and administrative information as healthcare delivery continues to evolve, physicians must rely on real-time data. To treat their patients effectively. Once hospitals adopted EHR access to data within these digital medical records was complicated.

With data in the cloud, instead of siloed locations, clinicians, patients, payers. I can share that information throughout their house system and locations. In addition technology providers can push out software updates through cloud-based systems and he goes on, but at the end of the day, That's what it looks like.

Right. It looks like the it staff is taking the complex. Backend. And simplifying it. They have to simplify for the clinician. They have to simplify for the patient. They shouldn't have to know or understand how to navigate your organization. You should figure out how to do that and then digitize those processes so that it makes it easier for people to navigate your system, to communicate with their doctor.

To get a prescription to get an appointment, you name it, all those things. They don't want to know how complex it is. Healthcare is so complex. I get that, but that's not what they want to know. What they want to know is how do I get things to done within your health system and our job as it leaders is to make that a reality.  

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