Did you know that there is a team of techies who serve the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or CMS?

What is their role in this federal agency? How is CMS changing with emerging technologies? 

And how might software engineers, project managers and other tech professionals help innovate from the inside to reform the complicated healthcare system in the US?

Andrea Fletcher is the first Chief Digital Strategy Officer and Executive Director of Digital Services at CMS, where she is responsible for leading digital modernization efforts and promoting interoperability and public access to health data.

On this episode of The Beat, Andrea joins hosts Dr. Jessica Shepherd and Dr. Gautam Gulati to explain how her team responds to tech emergencies and plans big strategic plays for CMS.

Andrea discusses the potential for the federal government to be a leader in AI adoption and shares her open-source software initiative to reuse tech stacks within and across federal departments and agencies.

Listen in for Andrea’s insight on leveraging data to rethink how we pay for and deliver care and learn how CMS is looking to evolve with ‘Jetson’s era’ technologies and improve the experience of healthcare for individual Americans.

Topics Covered

• What Andrea’s team of techies does as the Digital Service at CMS
• How Andrea’s team responds to tech emergencies and plans big strategic plays for the agency
• How Andrea’s team collaborates with other federal departments and agencies
• Andrea’s hope that the federal government will be a leader in the adoption AI (and what that might look like)
• What differentiates leading in government from the private sector
• Opportunities to innovate within the complicated Medicare and Medicaid systems
• Andrea’s open-source software initiative to reuse tech stacks across federal departments and agencies
• Andrea’s human-centered approach to leveraging AI in healthcare 
• Rethinking how we pay for and deliver care in a world of advanced technology
• What we can learn from the VA’s diabetes prevention research and outcomes-based care model
• Andrea’s predictions re: how clinics will change in the future and what roles AI might replace
• How to participate in shaping Americans’ healthcare experience

Connect with Andrea Fletcher

• The Digital Service at CMS
• Andrea at CMS
• Andrea on LinkedIn

Connect with Dr. Gautam Gulati & Dr. Jessica Shepherd

• ViVE
• HLTH
• Dr. Shepherd on Twitter
• Dr. Shepherd on LinkedIn
• Dr. Gulati on Twitter
• Dr. Gulati on LinkedIn

Resources

• US Digital Service
• FindSupport.gov
• White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research
• Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency
• VA Research on Diabetes
• DigitalVA