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   📍 Today in health it we're discussing how the surging demand for energy and the rise of AI is straining the power grid in the us. Today's episode is brought to you by Omnissa, the first AI driven platform enabling seamless, secure, personalized work experiences. Discover more at thisweekhealth.

com backslash Omnissa. My name is Kate Gamble. I'm Managing Editor at This Week Health, where we host a set of channels and events dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time. I've spent the last 12 years interviewing healthcare leaders, and I'm excited to bring that knowledge into this community of leaders.

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Use it as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you and the industry. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we're discussing the rising demand for energy and how it's straining the power grid in the U S. And I'm joined by Sarah Richardson, President of This Week Health 229 Executive Development Community.

Sarah, thanks for joining us. Always great to see you, Kate. The rise in AI technology and increased energy consumption from data centers are placing a significant strain on the aging US power grid. AI driven processes and data centers, largely powered by companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, have led to skyrocketing electricity demands, which are projected to more than double by 2030.

The strain is complicating efforts to transition to renewable energy sources while maintaining climate goals. This is such an important issue. It's actually come up in some of our recent keynotes and events. Health systems are so reliant on data centers and it's only going to get worse as AI takes off.

give me some of your thoughts on how this potential energy crisis is affecting CIOs. Here's what I find super interesting about the timing of this conversation is the fact that so many organizations are also building in their ESG requirements into their long term strategic plans. When you think about that environmental, social, and governance aspects being really the three key factors when you want to measure sustainability and ethical impact in your investments.

As healthcare leaders, we have this responsibility to not only be Putting our best foot forward when we're caring for our patients. We also have this expectation that we're doing so in a responsible manner with what it takes to do that. So the move to the cloud, the increase in the need for AI and other computing capabilities.

makes you layer these pieces in. Think about data center reliability, how heavily we rely on our data centers for storing our patient data and a power disruption can affect access to critical information. So if you've got an ESG component of your strategy, you've got your cloud and data center reliability perspective, you're laying that also into cyber and the need to understand how ransomware can affect you because access to critical information has multiple points of potential.

failure. So again, this goes back to if I have a sustainability goal, what does carbon neutral look like for my organization and how could it complicate some of the projects I have on deck? It's also a cost factor when you think about an increased demand for electricity and how we can anticipate our rising operational costs related to energy consumption and part of our digital infrastructure.

That's a key component. When I think about that overall perspective of, hey, we are going to the cloud, whether that's private, whether that's hybrid, whether it's public, it's going to need to include all of these elements. Get your team involved in the risk management access of understanding power grid vulnerabilities, add it to your comprehensive risk assessments so that we're not adding a disruption in the delivery of care.

While AI and so many additional computing capabilities bring greater opportunities to us to deliver better patient care, the back end of that is actually getting more complicated. So it's that dynamic of, it's more complicated while we're simplifying it in some cases.

So Big pieces really to consider as part of your long term planning and strategy and outcomes. it's really going to be interesting to see if we do hear more about ESG becoming that component of of the strategy and environmental sustainability. becoming that core objective for CIOs.

And I know that Donna Roach, for example, believes it will and that it should be. But any other thoughts on some of the things that leaders can do to take steps in the right direction? Absolutely. I think about, so often, we can make fun of California, I live here, so we can. Because our legislation and some of our requirements are more stringent than others, but we've had release of new environmental, social, and governance legislation that sparked a new level of urgency for a lot of organizations.

And when you take perspectives from maybe the most draconian take on something, and then you think about how you apply it to your environment, it's a matter of When not if, and we hear that often in the things we discuss when it comes to cyber, think about that from an ESG perspective. So explore alternative energy sources to support infrastructure.

Think about what it looks like investing in energy efficient technology. How do we reduce the burden on the power grid? And Work with your partners. Ask your vendors how they are focusing on these so that we can also get there together in terms of long term climate goals. What's going to be hardest for CIOs and organizations is that if you work for a big organization, there's probably a team assigned to looking through these elements and figuring it out.

If you're a smaller organization, it's just one more thing on your plate. And what I love about so many of the partners that we work with every single day. is that they've said, ask us for help, make that part of the conversation. I would put it in my RFPs, I would put it in my contract renewals, and I sure as heck would have it be a component of budgeting season with every single one of my partners.

So when you think about all the regulations that are out there, and also a measure of doing the right thing, when you're proactively talking about it, and especially with your board, like having them understand, here's what federal, here's what state looks like, here's how this is going to impact us.

Planting the seed soon or early is really never too soon because of the types of implications this will have as we approach 2030. That's really practical advice. And I like what you said about California too, because you guys are onto something here. 📍 So thank you. And don't forget, share this podcast with a friend or colleague.

Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.