“This Is Real Innovation”: Q&A with Michael Hasselberg, CDHO, University of Rochester Medical Center

When Generative AI was first introduced in the fall of 2022, there was a lot of excitement and a lot of expectations among the healthcare community – including Michael Hasselberg. “When I first played with this technology, I thought, ‘this is amazing. This is really going to be transformative,’” he said. And although his organization (University of Rochester Medical Center) is still in the “experimentation and piloting” stage, he’s already seen a tremendous impact – but not necessarily with the technology itself.

“I think the biggest transformation is that it has everybody talking about data and the importance of data,” noted Hasselberg, who serves as Chief Digital Health Officer as well as Co-Director of the UR Medicine Health Lab. As a result, stakeholders are having critical discussions around the key pieces that need to be in place, such as privacy, governance, and data warehousing. “That, to me, has been the biggest win.”

During a recent interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at HealthsystemCIO, Hasselberg talked about how his team hopes to leverage AI to improve efficiency and care quality, while enabling nurses to operate at the top of their license. He also discussed URMC’s groundbreaking initiative to expand patient care into the community; how they’re working to build buy-in among users; and why he believes it’s so critical to focus on nursing innovation.

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Bold Statements

That’s real innovation and it’s really been an ‘a-ha’ moment. We’ve already had several health systems reach out to us. They want to replicate this in their communities because it makes sense.

What I’m most excited about is where we are right now with generative AI and the large language models. We’ve done a lot of testing with these new AI models through our innovation team at the University of Rochester, and we’re really blown away with the potential of what this technology can do, especially on the administrative burden side.

It’s probably the first time in my career thus far that I’m hopeful that technology will actually make the lives of our clinicians better.

We also have to think about introducing this into workflows. This is one of those situations where technology is, in many ways, the easy part. The hard part is how do I fit it into our current operational workflows? How do I get cultural buy-in so that people trust this ‘AI co-pilot’ that’s eager to help out?

Now, everyone is talking about AI, and that’s allowing us to have discussions around what does our enterprise data warehouse look like? What about privacy and security and risks? How do we set up the appropriate governance structure? We’re now making investments on the data side, and that’s going to be key.

Q&A; with Michael Hasselberg, CDHO, URMC

Gamble: Hi Michael, thank you for putting aside some time to speak, I appreciate it. I know things are really busy.

Hasselberg: We had a big announcement that came out recently. We have a novel, innovative project where we’ve put virtual care stations in banks in rural communities. We’re doing it in partnership with two startup companies, a global telecommunications company, and a bank. We’re the first health system in the country to offer primary care in a bank. There’s a rationale behind it. We’re really excited.

Gamble: That’s very cool. Can you tell me a bit more about that and how it came about?

Hasselberg: Sure. During the pandemic, like every health system in the country, we had to turn on telehealth overnight. And as discussions started around the public health eme...