The Big Unlock

In this episode, Sara Vaezy, Chief Digital Strategy Officer of Providence Health, the first health system to confirm a Covid-19 infection in the U.S., discusses how the organization has come together in a coordinated way in response to the crisis. Providence was one of the first health systems to enable patients with a set of FAQ’s and assessment tools by reconfiguring their chatbot, Grace, which was developed over two years ago. In addition, the digital innovation group has helped Providence Health significantly scale up virtual visit capacity by redeploying and training clinicians in their same-day care operations to provide telehealth consults.

Providence Health has also successfully launched creative efforts to crowdsource PPE such as the 100 million mask challenge to ensure adequate availability of PPEs to protect the caregivers at the frontlines. Take a listen.

In this episode, John Kravitz, CIO of Geisinger Health, one of the largest health systems in the country, speaks about how the organization’s leaders have been “blown away” by how technology has stepped up to help address the covid-19 crisis. Geisinger’s IT organization has kept up with a 500% increase in telehealth visits and a doubling of remote workers to 13,000 employees and minimized disruptions to operations. John believes this crisis has created a new awareness of the opportunities with digital transformation. It’s a remarkable story.

In this episode, Diana Nole discusses Wolters Kluwer’s healthcare business and how they are building expert solutions for insights and evidence that are more deeply embedded into clinical workflows. She also discusses how digital transformation is much more than digital front doors.

Wolters Kluwer Health has invested significantly in digitizing their products and offerings over the past few years. They now use advanced technologies such as AI and NLP to enhance their heavily curated content to provide quick and easy-to-find answers for evidence-based clinical decisions. They are also enhancing the delivery of their content with emerging technologies such as voice-recognition. Additionally, they are also improving the user interface by delivering smaller nuggets of curated information customized for individual patients and caregivers. Diana and her team are using voice-enablement to enable clinicians to learn in a setting that’s more interactive and stay updated on the latest practices and clinical knowledge.

Diana believes in evidence-based data to enhance user experience with the latest available technology. Their focus now is on getting patients to engage more, especially those that need stay on very good pathways for their own health.

In this episode, Angela Yochem discusses how Novant Health, a $5.5 billion nonprofit integrated healthcare provider network based in North Carolina, focuses on improving care quality for consumers through advanced technologies. She also discusses her current role and responsibilities at the organization and how digital health is much more than digital front doors.

At Novant Health, digital care is not just about new models of care delivery using digital tools. It is also about enhancing traditional models of care delivery through digital means. Angela, along with her team, provide advanced digital capabilities to improve the quality of care for patients and community members and ensures increased access to care through digital means.

Angela believes that healthcare organizations must adopt contemporary methods and technologies to improve patient engagement and care delivery. However, this opportunity is closing rapidly due to the emergence of unconventional entrants in the healthcare ecosystem. In the podcast, she discusses how she and her team have developed approaches to identify and rapidly onboard innovative digital health solutions for high-impact areas such as stroke care. She advices health systems leaders to bring in people from outside of healthcare for diverse perspectives to solve the most complex problems.