Today in health, it, healthcare providers are doubling down on innovation, at least in a few key areas. We're going to take a look at that today. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health, a set of channels and events. Dedicated to leveraging the power of community to propel healthcare forward. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders. Short test artist site. Parlance certified health, notable and service. Now check them out at this week. health.com/today. Hey, we have a new service. Check it out. It's still in early release. This week health. Dot com slash news. We are. , essentially. Curating the news stories from around the industry for you on our website. Go ahead and check that out today. Shoot me a note. If you find it interesting or where the value. , that you do find it. I would appreciate that feedback. It's, , it's helpful as we develop, , and as always share this podcast with a friend or colleague, get the conversation started using his foundation for daily or weekly discussions on topics that are relevant to you and the industry. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Alright, interesting article. That is out there. It's on a Bain's website, Bain and company being.com 2023 healthcare provider it report doubling down on innovation. And it really sites two key areas, health system, it leaders are using emerging technologies to address labor shortages. And financial pressures. I'm just going to give you. , a couple of things at a glance here. So us healthcare providers. Continue to accelerate their spending on it and software as nearly 80% of healthcare, executive respondents in our new survey, increased spending materially. Over the past year. Spurred by emerging technologies, labor, shortages, and cost pressures. Revenue cycle management and clinical workflow optimization remain top areas of investment. While patient engagement has moved up the list of priorities, particularly among more advanced or digitally mature providers, providers continue to express a preference for fewer vendors with nearly two thirds of respondents saying. They look first to existing vendors, especially electronic health record providers for new functionality before evaluating new vendors and other offerings. And then finally, while almost 6% of health system respondents have a generative AI strategy today. About 50% are actively developing one. Or are planning to in the near future highlighting the transformative potential. And impact of AI. Let's see, there's a couple of charts here. It has become more important to healthcare providers. That's an interesting chart, shows the, , increase in ranking, , from 2022 to 2023. , let's see, touch more about revenue cycle and, , clinical workflow. Freestanding hospitals and physician groups are catching up in key I T areas. And this is probably where I'm going to spend a little bit of my time in my, so what today? And then providers seeks simplified tech stacks and vendors offering broader sweets. I'm finding that to be true as well. , simplification is a key word amongst it leaders today. It is, , , it's one of the ways that they're looking to drive out complexity, obviously, and drive down costs. , it's just easier to deal with one partner than it is to deal with 10 partners. And you also don't run the risk. Of which partners are going to make it and which partners aren't going to make it. Now with that being said, I want to talk about this whole concept of freestanding, hospitals and physician groups are catching up in key areas. What are the. Phenomena that I'm seeing is that these larger health systems. Are forming committees and they are. Agonizing over small details around their AI strategy and how they're going to implement how to maintain. Equity fairness and all those things across the, across the spectrum. Again, all great conversations and topics and need to be addressed. But while that's happening. I'm seeing these smaller health systems. Take the reins and move forward. Move forward quickly. And I was in a meeting yesterday. I'm at the health conference out here in Vegas. I was in a meeting yesterday where. , a larger academic medical center was talking about the ability to query the AI and the algorithms that are used at their health system. And they're going to provide that. To the public. So the public income. And say I'm receiving this kind of care. I would like to know what algorithms are being used and how AI is being used within the health system. And then it would provide that information back. Now I was sitting next to somebody who happened to be with our company. And one of the things I'm trying to do is educate the people. In my organization on how to hear things. And how to, , understand them. And I just, I flippantly leaned over and said, that's worthless. And it's not worthless from the perspective of understanding how algorithms are being used within your health system, or even transparency in the algorithms. I applaud both those efforts. But the number of patients that are going to go out to a health system and query. To determine how the, , how their information is being used by AI algorithms or what algorithms are being used in their care. Is, , one out of a million. And so, you know, developing that maybe for internal use makes perfect sense for research use may make some sense, but it makes absolutely no sense from a patient perspective, which was what was being talked about. , from the stage. And so as these systems are having these esoteric conversations and really looking at the minutia of how AI is going to be implemented. I, I talked about north Kansas city hospitals last week, and the incredible work that they're doing. With an AI platform. So they're specifically using notable. Who's a sponsor of the show. And they have taken all this information from their health system. They've ingested it through a series of. , different AI technologies. And now you can query it. You can query it with natural language, natural language, reasoning engine, and then essentially a co-pilot design construct. And so they have a. Essentially it administrative people who are querying the information, getting the information back a lot quicker than you have in other systems. They didn't have to build it all out. They didn't have to hire AI expertise. They're utilizing those kinds of systems. Saw the same thing from other, , systems that were at that notable conference last week. I'm a again at the health conference, I ran into some people. And we were talking about computer vision. And you know, it, it amazes me that you have monument health and you have Guthrie clinic. These are not major massive health systems. These are smaller houses homes. That are implementing some really high-end technology. Not that they are hiring those kinds of people within their organization or building it out. They are essentially, , they're essentially buying solutions that enable them to leapfrog their competitors and really come up with some. , some cutting edge. , programs to reduce readmissions, to prevent falls, to, , you know, to, , reduce the number of staff that they have to re hire for because the automation is doing a lot of the mundane tasks and it's taking the place. In some cases taking the place of, , some of the. , staffing shortages that we're, we've been unable to fill. And so this is an opportunity. It's an opportunity for those willing to, , take the initiative. Look at these solutions and get out there ahead of it. And when we interviewed BJ Moore at Providence, He said he really saw three ways that AI was going to be implemented. And he said, there's the easy button. And those are the solutions that you just go buy it off the shelf. And they essentially have it built in. We're seeing the EHR has come out with more and more. , AI solutions being integrated. We're seeing, , solutions like artist site, like notable and others. That are becoming foundational platforms for artificial intelligence, for health systems. That's the easy button. The harder button is developing yourself. And then there's something in the middle. And I liken that to Microsoft fabric and those kinds of things where it, it utilizes AI as the aggregate point of aggregation. So it's pulling in all that information and it's normalizing that information. But then you're going to develop the clinical workflows and the administrative workflows on top of that. Now there will be some obviously. That you can tap into just like any other Microsoft product. They. , give you the. , The tools that you need to make things, but at the end of the day, you're going to be the one who puts the spreadsheet together and whatnot. Now I do see generative AI sitting in front of that in the future. Where you're going to be again. Once you get all that information in there, you're gonna be able to query it and make those things happen. So I think there's a lot of exciting things happening. I think it's a real opportunity for the smaller health systems and, , almost a warning to the larger ones. That it's a. It might be time to start moving a little bit faster, at least with pilots and those kinds of things. So that's what I'm seeing. And I'm curious to see what I see at the health conference. I'm sure we're going to be talking more AI, generative AI, and, , you know, I wouldn't be surprised if we start talking. , Artificial general intelligence sometime soon. We'll see. All right. 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