Are you agile?

Four years ago, one very late evening, I was sitting with a colleague of mine trying to come up with a plan for the unified communication strategy. I remember my colleague turning to me and announcing that strategy would be easy if things were not “traditional” in healthcare. Although traditional hierarchies and processes are optimized for day-to-day business they can’t handle the challenges of rapid change. 

All information technology departments are set up to handle the daily grime and support operations. After much discussion, we decided to create a “shadow” system, devoted to the design and implementation of strategy that is agile and operates under a different set of processes and guidelines. This system would continually assess the needs of the operation, industry and reacts with greater agility, speed and creativity. Harvard Business Review in the November 2012 edition talk about the need for creating this system within the organization to complement the “traditional” model. 

IT executives will have to create agility by forming a core team that is gathered around initiatives. And this “agile” team comes together on demand and is not meant to carry out orders from the leadership. Its members are change agents that bring energy, commitment and enthusiasm.  In this ever-changing healthcare landscape, creating this “second” structure within the traditional model requires a lot of IT maturity and something all organizations to strive for.

What is the connection between “A Faster Fourier Transform” and healthcare?

While the answer will become obvious as you read along, thefact that we are even asking this question validates why healthcare is laggingbehind in technology compared to other industries. How come the oil drillingindustries have technology that allows drills to auto navigate to find oil sources and positions a deep sea oil rig within a few feet of accuracy? Theanswer is applied engineering. Other industries apply right technology for aspecific problem. But in healthcare, we are catching up on “storing” and“printing”  patient records.  EMRs should be the lowest common denominator.With that said, Technology Executives have a duty to think about applied engineering in healthcare.

 There was a breakthrough in egg stem cell research mightallow stem cells in ovarian tissues to form new eggs. What’s in this for an ITexecutive? The company that did this was sold to GlaxoSmith Kline for $720Million which begs the question, “how will this disrupt healthcare?”

 There are ultra efficient solar power generators that couldessentially transform your windows into powerhouses. Light-Field Photographyhas the potential to change “imaging” in healthcare. Healthcare imaging isbased on traditional “image” transfer models, think about how much this willchange when you are able to pick layers within the picture and get it intofocus?  There are 3D transistors that arebeing built to make smaller and more powerful mobile devices. There arehigh-speed materials that are being discovered for new battery materials thatwill revolutionize “energy storage”

 There is a technology called Nanopore sequencing that allowsreading long DNA strands electronically allowing the possibility of genomesequencing a routine medical procedure.

Coming to the original question, Faster Fourier Transform,though an abstract theory will enable advanced multimedia devices and betterdata processing.
All these technologies will play a major role (indirectly,in most cases) in healthcare and as leaders we need to be ready to anticipatethis adapt to the impact.

The common thread that links all these technologies listedabove is that they have all been in the Technology Review published by MIT asthe top 10 Emerging Technologies.

Pixar or Disney - Case Study for Innovative Healthcare

Bob Iger, COO for Disney, recalls being at a new Disneyland opening in Hong Kong with Michael Eisner, CEO. He recalls watching the characters in the usual ceremony parade down the main street and realizing thatall the characters in the parade that had been created in the past decade were all Pixar’s.  After 10 years of The LionKing, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, there were then ten years of nothing for Disney.

During the same time Pixar was not only creating successful characters but were also lining up characters and projects like Cars,Ratatouille and WALL-E.
Soon after that, in March 2005, Iger would replace Eisner asthe CEO and go before the board to explain his observation, which would lead tothe eventual Disney-Pixar merger. This merger would itself be an interestingstudy for another time but if you look at the deal, this was a reverse acquisition.

What happened here was classic “complacency” making theleader in characters – Disney lost its niche in the animations era. Walter Isaacson quoted Steve Jobs later on as saying “… we kept Pixar as a greatcompany and helped Disney remain one as well.”

This case study begs to ask the question what are we as Technology Executives doing to develop a “great IT department that will helphospitals remain one”. Technology leaders should be leading the next wave of innovative business and revenue models. Telehealth, e-visits, home health,patient experience and predictive modeling, Bio-medical and Clinical Engineering are a few (basic) areas of potential. More to come on other ventures that are beyond the traditional IT portfolio that will help hospitalsand organization push their competitive edge.

Who are you? A Business partner or an IT Executive?

I have attended various CIO and technology research conferences, which all seem to have top level IT executives talking about how to get a “seat” at the table and how not be seen as a cost center, but rather be a partner with the business. Keynote speaker after keynote speaker harped on this issue and over 5 years the discussion has not evolved into anything meaningful. IT executives should not get complacent using this as “the issue” and being part of a pity party.

If you ran a business that developed a product, lack of acceptance by the customer means that the product that was delivered was not something the customer wanted or someone else is delivering a better product than your business. We should not be going to a conference to figure out how to “make” customers buy it?

For a while now, at least in Health care, we've experienced a surge in “acceptance” doing “Electronic Medical Records” implementation projects. But, what's next? What is in the pipeline that is going to make or keep IT executives relevant?

The question IT executives need to answer is “what have you done for your company lately that will make you a business partner?”

All's fair in love and business…. As long as there is passion…

Read this article in the CMIO Magazine website about losing IT resources to high-paying consulting firms, and having to juggle this against the dwindling reimbursement.


CMIO Magazine article

The title of the article was posing us a question “All’s fair in love and business?”. Before answering this question, we need to understand what makes it “fair”. Bottom-line for “love”, “war” and “business” is passion. Passion for the cause makes war fair, passion for emotion makes love fair, passion to excel makes business fair…Without getting into what is right or wrong, it is certainly a motivator for anything.

When institutions go through a major transformation, like an EMR implementation, there is pride and passion from everyone involved. This is because they are working toward “cause”, “emotion”, and “purpose to excel”. But, as soon as a project like this is complete there is a void. The duty to support an application does not trigger the same amount of pride as realizing the strategy itself.

Sometimes, pride and passion is no match for “life changing” compensation. Nevertheless, as leaders we should lay the path for future strategy and align our staff to that strategy. This is easier said than done. It is about aligning the leadership to strategy first, and then clearly articulating this to staff.

Remind everyone that EMR is the first step towards a larger strategy, and relate it in personal terms. I would love to hear from other CIOs, CMIOs and IT leaders on how they are managing this?

Technology execs should think like venture capitalists

New trend in venture capitalist investments. – Kaiser and Washington Post did this article.

This article is meant to challenge technology executives in healthcare to act like venture capitalists and focus on strategic initiatives that will increase efficiency and productivity.  

1.     Overall venture investing declined by nearly one-third as the economic recession set in.

2.       Venture capitalists are still looking for strong companies in all sectors – drugs, devices, and services – but, cost concerns and other factors have led to changes in demand. Investors are wagering customers will pay attention to the promise of lower costs.

3.       Venture capitalists are increasingly interested in nuts-and-bolts businesses like data mining and grassroots care management.

4.       Investments are happing in many grass root hospital operations

a.       Technology in Infections prevention

b.      Software based Billing efficiency

c.       In room televisions to walk patients through doctor’s orders

d.      RFID for inventory and staff management

e.      Home health to prevent “readmissions”

This article summarizes the importance of technology in cutting costs and improving efficiency.


Article Link