“Technology Isn’t the Barrier”: Q&A with Robbie Freeman, CNIO, Mount Sinai Health System

It’s perhaps the ultimate case of foreshadowing.

A decade and a half ago, while working as a bedside nurse, Robbie Freeman started to become increasingly frustrated with laborious processes that took away from interactions with patients. Fortunately, he channeled that frustration into something productive by creating a digital process for medication requests. In addition to improving efficiency and enabling more time with patients, it also set Freeman on a trajectory to eventually become VP of Digital Experience and CNIO at Mount Sinai Health System.

Recently, he spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO, about the “zigzagged” path that led him to his current role, and the exciting work his team is doing to leverage digital and AI tools to “reimagine the way we work,” whether it’s by improving in-basket management, more effectively retaining information during shift changes, or making it easier for patients to access care. During the interview, Freeman spoke about the importance of starting small and “working out kinks,” how his experiences in clinical and quality improvement helped shape him as a leader, and what he learned by going back in the trenches.

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Bold Statements

There’s a lot of synergy between the different areas with the work we’re doing in digital, in AI, and in informatics. And so, it does come together nicely. I’m always looking for opportunities to pollinate across the teams and make sure they’re supporting the important enterprise initiatives.

Generative and conversational AI are going to help get patients to where they need to go much quicker and more efficiently, and then we can have our team members focus on the highest value work.

We want to make sure that we’re asking questions and checking for bias, because we know that if you build these AI tools on biased datasets, you’re going to get a product that carries forward and can amplify that bias.

We want to get it right on a small scale, work out any kinks, make sure we understand it, and go from there. And that’s the approach we’re taking with GenAI. We want to get it right in smaller pilots and learn from that.

I always encourage them to try to see the healthcare system from different perspectives. I think it’s so important. It makes you more well-rounded as a leader.

Q&A; with Robbie Freeman, VP, Digital Experience & CNIO, Mount Sinai Health System

Gamble:  Hi Robbie, thanks so much for taking the time to speak. Let’s start with your role as VP of Digital Experience and CNIO — it’s not something we’ve seen a lot. Can you talk a bit about that?

Freeman:  Glad to. The two roles really come together nicely. I’m responsible for a few different teams and areas. On the digital side, we have our digital experience team where we’re bringing to life the different digital products and solutions that are used by patients, and also really thinking through what are the tools that we want our workforce to have when they come to work.

I’m also responsible for our clinical data science team. We build machine learning and AI products mainly focused around patient care. We’re trying to predict different risk scores and safety events that can happen in the hospital; for example, who may be likely to fall or become delirious or end up in the ICU or be malnourished.

And then as CNIO, I have a team of nurse informaticists; we’re the translators between our clinicians and the technology teams. We have nurses based at our hospitals and nurses that support our service lines.