The Beat

About Misty Grambow:

Misty Grambow is a results-driven sales executive with over 26 years at U.S. Bank/Elavon, Inc., specializing in healthcare, higher education, and nonprofit sectors. As VP of Healthcare and Nonprofit, she leads strategic initiatives to drive growth, develop key partnerships, and optimize payment solutions. With deep expertise in lead generation, prospect engagement, and sales negotiations, Misty has a proven track record of expanding client relationships and delivering impactful solutions. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she excels in fostering business success through innovation and collaboration.

About Tom Priedeman:

Tom Priedeman is a seasoned financial executive with over a decade at U.S. Bank, specializing in healthcare corporate banking and capital markets. As Division Manager of Middle Market Healthcare, he leads a team providing corporate finance advisory, capital solutions, and working capital optimization for healthcare firms under $1 billion in revenue. Previously, he held senior roles at J.P. Morgan. With an MBA from Duke University and a background in accounting, Tom excels in strategic financial solutions and client growth.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Financial services are playing a crucial role in driving change in healthcare, particularly by addressing payment challenges and streamlining revenue cycle management. US Bank's commitment to providing capital and innovative payment solutions is making a tangible difference for healthcare providers.
• AI holds immense potential for improving the efficiency and patient experience in healthcare, but it also brings significant cybersecurity implications that must be carefully managed.
• Integrating payment solutions into the healthcare journey is essential for improving patient financial satisfaction and increasing revenue streams for healthcare providers. 
• Healthcare systems should prioritize user-friendly payment options, transparent billing practices, and proactive communication with patients about their financial responsibilities.
• Healthcare organizations need comprehensive solutions that address patient and non-patient payment challenges and can be customized to their specific culture and needs.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Misty Grambow on LinkedIn.
• Follow and connect with Tom Priedeman on LinkedIn.
• Learn more about U.S. Bank on their LinkedIn and website.

In this episode of The Beat Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Jeff Taylor from Orbita to explore the intersection of operational efficiencies and enhancing patient experience and engagement in healthcare. At Orbita, the team believes these two areas should evolve in parallel, yet many health systems are struggling with isolated, one-off solutions that fail to address the broader challenges their organizations face.

• Orbita is transforming the patient experience and improving healthcare interactions.
• Empowering patients through more involvement in their healthcare, making them feel both more in control and cared for.
• Achieving up to a 30% reduction in staff inefficiencies by integrating Orbita into healthcare workflows.
• Breaking down AI concepts, including the difference between machine learning and generative AI, and the importance of safety in implementation.
• AI allows you to maximize your resources by allowing you to make decisions about where to allocate your team, time, energy, and money for optimal impact.

Jeff Taylor is the CEO of Orbita.ai, bringing over 20 years of leadership experience in healthcare IT and business solutions. His expertise in driving growth, operational excellence, and organizational transformation is key to leading Orbita through its next phase of innovation and expansion. Orbita powers virtual health assistants that help healthcare organizations engage patients, improve outcomes, and reduce costs.

About Pranam Ben:

Pranam Ben is a visionary entrepreneur and leader in healthcare technology, known for building and scaling cutting-edge, award-winning software solutions. As the founder of The Garage, he continues to drive innovation in health IT following the successful acquisition of Visions@work by NIIT Technologies in 2011. With extensive global business experience across the UK, Japan, India, and the UAE, Ben has been featured in Fast Company, CBS Money Watch, and MarketWatch. Recognized as an Orlando Business Journal CEO of the Year, he remains a driving force in healthcare innovation and digital transformation.

Things You’ll Learn:

• A digital-first, data-first architecture is essential for scaling value-based care, providing a comprehensive view of the patient's health, and enabling timely interventions.
• AI, particularly machine learning and natural language processing holds immense potential to transform healthcare by driving intelligence from data and creating simplified, personalized user experiences. It can also be applied to various use cases.
• Transitioning to a digital-first, data-first strategy requires a fundamental shift in organizational culture, prioritizing adaptability and a commitment to value-based care principles.
• Data alone is not enough; it must be contextualized and actionable to drive meaningful change in healthcare. This involves cleansing the data, preparing it for analysis, and leveraging technologies like AI to deliver relevant insights to healthcare providers and patients.
• To enable holistic care, a platform should extend its view of the patient beyond the walls of the clinic, providing insight into their community, daily habits, and lifestyle.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Pranam Ben on LinkedIn.
• Learn more about The Garage on their LinkedIn and website.

About Vijay Verma:

Vijay Verma is a seasoned product leader currently serving as VP of Product Strategy at TeleVox Healthcare in the NYC metro area, where he spearheads AI-driven initiatives and contact center innovation. With 20+ years of experience driving digital transformation, he specializes in creating exceptional customer journeys that drive engagement and business growth. A specialist in Conversational AI and CX, he has pioneered AI-driven engagement platforms, impacting 30M+ users, and led enterprise-scale transformations resulting in significant NPS improvements. Vijay excels at leveraging emerging technologies, data-driven insights, and cross-functional teams to create innovative solutions that resonate with users and deliver measurable business growth.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Good communication is crucial for achieving positive clinical outcomes, necessitating platforms that work for both institutions and patients. TeleVox focuses on bridging communication gaps through patient-centered experiences that improve health outcomes and drive financial success for healthcare providers.
• Generative AI is poised to significantly impact healthcare by alleviating staff shortages and simplifying complex processes. 
• A major pain point in healthcare is the friction in communication, often leading to frustrating experiences for patients and staff burnout.
• Omnichannel communication strategies are essential for providing consistent and convenient patient experiences across various channels, including voice, SMS, and mobile apps. 
• Generative AI enables the efficient repurposing of healthcare content across different channels and languages.
• Smart Voice combines the empathy of a voice channel with the automation of a virtual agent and the intelligence of a call center. 

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Vijay Verma on LinkedIn.
• Learn more about TeleVox Healthcare on their LinkedIn and website.

About PV SubbaRao:

PV SubbaRao is a global technology leader with 25+ years of experience, currently serving as Senior Vice President of Global Healthcare and Life Sciences at Rackspace Technology. He leads a $500M+ portfolio, driving growth and operations across the Americas, with a specific focus on Health IT, Providers, Health Plans, and Life Sciences. PV champions an integrated solutions approach, leveraging Rackspace's full range of cloud services for the healthcare industry. Prior to Rackspace, he held leadership roles at Dell Services/NTT DATA Services, growing the Healthcare Provider business significantly. Based in Orange County, California, PV holds an MBA from Emory University and a graduate degree from IIT Mumbai.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Rackspace offers a unique approach to cloud solutions, positioning itself as a single point of contact for healthcare organizations looking to integrate strategy and execution. 
• By offering a "do-with" rather than a "do-for" model, Rackspace acts as an extension of a healthcare organization's existing team, enabling easier integration and collaboration. 
• AI and machine learning are poised to revolutionize healthcare by unlocking the potential of vast datasets and improving decision-making. 
• Quantum computing holds promise for personalized medicine through drug discovery and individualized care protocols driven by genome profiling. 
• Adopting Rackspace's cloud solutions and managed services can potentially achieve significant cost savings, between 18% and 25%, for healthcare organizations. These savings can be reinvested into driving transformation and innovation within the organization.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow PV SubbaRao on LinkedIn.
• Learn more about Rackspace Technology on their LinkedIn and website.

Are organizations harnessing the full potential of their technology investment?  Are they ready to adopt AI and integrated successfully, with impact, into their EHRs? Are they addressing technological impacts to care and business model design and adopting appropriate alternative care models to better compete in today’s market? To answer these critical questions, Sandy chats with Asher Perzigian, Managing Director in Accenture’s health Strategy & Consulting business and practice lead of Care Innovation. Asher shares a thoughtful approach to navigating the surge of AI applications and how his team is helping healthcare organizations address the challenges of implementing AI across the healthcare ecosystem. Together, they dive into the crucial role of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) as the digital backbone of healthcare systems, and the advancements needed for AI to achieve true interoperability across platforms.

In this episode, they talk about:

• What Accenture recommends when approaching the tsunami of AI applications
• How AI takes some burden off the care delivery (or any admin) process
• How does AI need to advance to achieve true interoperability
• What is AI’s role in the industry reset?
• Accenture’s latest exciting wins
• EHRs are the digital heartbeats of systems
• The biggest challenges for organizations when implementing AI
• What CIOs need to address to see how AI is necessary

A Little About Asher:

Asher Perzigian is a Managing Director in Accenture’s Strategy & Consulting Health Practice, where he is widely recognized for his expertise in commercializing and scaling innovative business transformation programs. He serves as the practice lead for Accenture’s North America Clinical Innovation practice. Throughout his career, Asher has partnered with top healthcare providers, payers, vendors, and life sciences organizations across North America. He is also responsible for managing Accenture’s relationship with one of the firm’s largest and most complex provider and care delivery clients. Based in Chicago, Asher enjoys live music, hockey, running, and spending quality time with his wife, son, daughter, and their extended family.

About Shay Perera:

Shay is the co-founder and CTO of Navina, with a decade of experience in elite intelligence units of the Israel Defense Forces, where he applied artificial intelligence from theory to real-world solutions. He contributed heavily to hands-on R&D efforts while assuming significant leadership roles. Armed with a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, specializing in machine learning, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Shay, alongside Ronen, earned the 2018 National Security Award for their groundbreaking work in AI.

Things You’ll Learn:

• AI is not just a futuristic concept but a current necessity for managing the overwhelming amount of healthcare data and streamlining clinical workflows, leading to improved patient outcomes and reduced administrative burdens for providers.
• The administrative burden is a significant pain point in healthcare, but AI can automate repetitive tasks, reduce the burden on providers, and streamline value-based care workflows, ultimately improving both clinical and economic outcomes.
• Emerging AI trends will change how physicians care for patients, saving time and enhancing knowledge of patient health.
• Clinical AI can act as a copilot, streamlining workflows and turning data into actionable insights for healthcare providers at the point of care and in the back office.  
• Healthcare organizations should focus on integrating AI solutions that can make physician life easier and ensure clinicians are involved as early as possible to gain trust in the process. 

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Shay Perera on LinkedIn.
• Learn more about Navina on their LinkedIn and website.
• Email Shay directly here.

Sandy Vance and Jason Warrelmann, the VP of Healthcare & Life Sciences at UiPath, discuss how AI and agentic automation are transforming the healthcare space. Jason also offers customer use cases to expand on real-life digital transformations. UiPath and Jason were at the ViVe event in February; check out the recordings on the ViVE website.

• The role that automation plays in the healthcare space: 
  • Humans don’t like being interoperability engines. 
  • Automation is a good universal API and it doesn’t hallucinate. 
• Studies show a high failure rate for AI projects across industries, including healthcare. 
  • A small pilot turns into a big expensive project involving different vendors
  • Technology changes so quickly
  • What kind of ROI will CFOs see?
• Examples of how UiPath is helping healthcare organizations achieve their goals with AI and automation.

Jason Warrelmann leads the Healthcare and Life Sciences Practice at UiPath, which focuses on transforming the healthcare landscape and developing capabilities, integrations, and reusable components that make UiPath a healthcare automation platform, not just a tool that works in healthcare.

About Kali Arduini Ihde:

Kali Arduini Ihde is a dynamic, results-driven digital transformation leader with 18+ years of experience in advancing healthcare through innovative technologies. As Director of Innovation at Northwestern Medicine, she orchestrates multi-million-dollar portfolios, fosters cross-functional alignment, and implements data-driven strategies to deliver client-centric solutions. She previously oversaw ePMO, scheduling, physician referrals, and operational transitions for Epic, forging strategic partnerships and streamlining organizational workflows. Kali holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Missouri, complementing her robust project management acumen.

Things You’ll Learn:

• It's crucial to ground innovation work in the organization's biggest problems. This ensures that any new technology being explored is directly relevant to improving patient care, workforce experience, or other key challenges.
• Finding real solutions amidst the AI hype requires a rigorous vetting process. Organizations should focus on finding solutions that can make meaningful impacts.
• Scaling AI innovation requires a dedicated team focused on implementation and widespread adoption. Innovation shouldn’t stop at testing it out but be applied and expanded to the whole organization.
• AI is poised to revolutionize healthcare by identifying issues and risks earlier. Coupled with precision medicine, the next generation of AI promises a future where treatment is tailored to the individual. This means that in 5-10 years, healthcare will look vastly different.
• Healthcare is expensive and takes a lot of people to complete. This should be considered when implementing AI solutions and technology.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Kali Arduini Ihde on LinkedIn.
• Learn more about Northwestern Medicine on their LinkedIn and website.
• Discover more about Northwestern Medicine’s innovations here.

In this conversation, Dr. Ryan Vega, Chief Health Officer for Vantiq, discusses the transformative role of AI in healthcare, the innovative capabilities of the Vantiq platform, and the importance of personalized healthcare solutions. He shares insights on the transition from the Veterans Health Administration to Vantiq, the use cases for their technology, and how generative AI is enhancing clinical decision-making. Dr. Vega emphasizes the need for transparency, safety, and effective orchestration of AI systems in healthcare, as well as the importance of collaboration with systems integrators and startups to drive innovation.

In this episode , they discuss: 

• Dr. Vega emphasizes the importance of workflow customization in healthcare.
• Vantiq's platform allows for low-code, no-code application development.
• Real-time orchestration of complex healthcare systems is crucial.
• Generative AI can significantly enhance clinical decision-making.
• Vantiq focuses on creating transparency and safety in AI workflows.
• The platform is designed to operate securely within healthcare environments.
• AI can augment human capabilities in critical care settings. 

A Little about Dr Ryan Vega: 

Dr. Ryan Vega serves as the Chief Health Officer for Vantiq and is the former Chief Innovation Officer for the Veterans Health Administration where he led enterprise innovation efforts across the largest integrated health system in the United States.

His work has spanned large-scale digital modernization efforts, design and deployment of innovative care and payment models, and early design and development of healthcare software focused on improving health care delivery and experience for patients and providers.

Dr. Vega also currently sits as the Physician in Residence for the Digital Medicine Society and holds academic appointments as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Administration at Georgetown University as well as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at George Washington University. He is the recipient of many awards for his work in healthcare innovation and has published numerous articles on the topic.