Podcast
Escaping Innovation Theatre: Real Strategies for Transforming Healthcare
Mike Mosquito
Emerging Technology & Innovation - Special Projects, Northeast Georgia Health System
On this episode of Healthcare Market Matrix, host John Farkas is joined by Mike Mosquito, an advisory board member at Ratio and a pioneering leader in healthcare innovation and technology development. Mike shares his extensive experience with companies like McKesson and Allscripts and his role in leading innovation centers. He discusses how this background equips him to develop maturity models that enhance patient outcomes through technology. He emphasizes that healthcare technology companies must understand the specific problems they aim to solve, rather than just promoting their technologies’ features.
Mike also delves into the critical importance of technical and cyber infrastructure in successfully implementing new technologies within health systems. He highlights the necessity of robust governance models tailored for healthcare, addressing connectivity issues, especially in rural areas, to ensure effective technology deployment.
Throughout the conversation, John and Mike explore the governance, readiness, and affordability considerations that health systems must take into account when adopting new innovations. They stress the importance of healthcare providers flawlessly executing proof of concepts to become preferred vendors, cautioning against “innovation theater” that can erode trust and resources. John and Mike also discuss the evolving responsibilities and strategic importance of Chief Innovation Officers (CIOs), highlighting the long decision-making processes and integration challenges posed by regulatory compliance and budget constraints.
Show Notes
(1:05) Introducing Mike Mosquito
(6:48) Analyzing Innovative Solutions for Change Implementation
(11:48) How to Approach Conversations about Change
(16:26) Qualities of an Innovation Organization
(22:37) Strategies for Catching a Health Tech CIO’s Attention
(25:43) Meeting Consumer Mandates of Healthcare Technology
(35:31) Exploring the Need to Be Flawless
(38:21) Cautions Surrounding the Idea of Innovation Theaters
(41:52) Addressing the Failure of Delivering Solutions
(50:02) Advice for Venturing into the Innovation Ecosystem
(52:33) Closing Question
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Transcript
Introduction to Mike Mosquito
John Farkas:
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Healthcare Market Matrix, where we dive deep into the challenges that are faced by healthcare organizations that technology ultimately has the chance to help them solve. I’m your host, John Farkas, the CEO of Ratio. And as always, I’m excited to talk with our guest today, but I got to just tell you, today, we have a real treat for you. Mike Mosquito is a visionary leader in healthcare innovation and technology. He’s currently serving as the special projects leader for emerging technology and innovation at Northeast Georgia Health System.
And for the last few decades, Mike has been really at the forefront of helping drive digital transformation, integrating AI, managing large scale initiatives and transformation efforts. But chances are, if you’ve been to any of the major healthcare technology related events, you’ve seen Mike on stage, or leading, or participating in panel discussions. In fact, one of my favorite Mike moments this past year was at ViVE. I was hoping to catch him after one of his presentations, but seriously, the moment the panel was over, I think, honestly, there were five of his people that surrounded him and escorted him to the next stop on his speaking tour. And I had no hope of breaking through his guard there, and I just relinquished the fact that I would have to catch him later in the event, which I eventually did. But that just gives you a little glimpse into the in-demand nature of this person.
Mike is not short of point of view, and that’s a great thing. And something we need right now is the people that have the freedom and the courage to speak their mind because there’s a lot of change that needs to happen right here. He calls it the way he sees it, and it’s his creative approach to problems. That’s something I appreciate about him, and I know others do too. His ability to really take a look at some of the complex technical issues that we face and make that accessible is part of what makes him a favorite among his peers and professionals alike. So in this episode, we’re going to be focusing on the role of the chief innovation officer within a health system, the innovation arm of a healthcare entity. And it’s a position that Mike knows intimately, and we’re going to talk about the evolving responsibilities and nature of this role, some of the challenges it faces, some of the opportunities that it presents for leveraging technology and ultimately enhancing healthcare delivery.
So Mike, it is a pleasure to have you here. And so let’s start by diving in and tell us a little bit about your journey and what brought you to this auspicious moment.
Mike Mosquito:
Well, thank you very much for having me, John, glad to be on the Ratio podcast. I’m sorry I missed you that first time, that was a very tough day. That was back to back to back stage appearances.
John Farkas:
Yes, it was.
Mike Mosquito:
And so it is been like that this year. It’s been a great circuit for sharing and collaborating with peers and folks, like yourself, that are trying to drive change through this collaborative nature of education and understanding what the problems are in healthcare. These problems started for me many years ago when I started with a dot-com and developing technology, being a CTO that was developing technology for healthcare, moving over to folks like McKesson, and Allscripts, and Eclipsys to lead their innovation centers and emerging technology groups to deliver next generation technology, and emerging technologies that are now still used in healthcare today. And so for me, this journey has been about, one, where the problems lie, how do we find the right solutions and strategies that are going to deliver better care and better outcomes for the patients? But also, how to look at innovation as a specialized unit that can deliver something for a health system or for the industry that can evaluate, that can look at different aspects across the various continuums of care, and then how to take a very sometimes slow look at it, but implement at a rapid pace where needed.
And I say that slow look because all innovation is not good innovation for every health system, you’ve got to determine if you’re at the right level of maturity to adopt innovation. And not all departments can just take on innovation and these new technologies just because it’s on the marketplace and because a salesperson is looking to sell it to you. So there’s a proper time and place for developing that innovation. I think over my career, I’ve had a very blessed opportunity to have senior leaders that have given me the opportunity to drive that change in those businesses, increase the wherewithal within their business to be showcased as a leading provider of certain technologies. I think my background as a consultant has also helped me understand, one, how to better deliver advisory services that lead down that eventual implementation of a technology being CIOs, CXOs that are looking to present to their board a better view of their hospitals.
So my journey has not been short of being stuck way down in the weeds and bringing it up to the board level to present what does it look like to be an innovator and a changer, whether it’s on the pharmaceutical side of business, on the technology side of business, or on pure care with patient engagement and patient experience transformations. So for me, it’s been a great journey.
Analyzing Innovation Solutions for Change Implementation
John Farkas:
Yeah. It’s one of the things that I look at your backdrop and think, “Wow, there’s just not a whole lot of people that have come at it from as many different angles as you have through your time,” which is great because that’s part of what allows you… as I’ve heard you speak in panel scenarios and some of the presentations I’ve seen you make, your ability to come at it from a few different angles is really valuable and adds to the authority that you’re able to bring across. So that’s a fun part of your backdrop, for sure. So one of the things I know is we’re looking at healthcare systems, when you think about the term innovation, it means a lot… and you hinted at it in what you first said there, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different types of organizations.
And the innovation function for healthcare tech companies that are trying to sell in, they have an innovative solution, they see the innovation persona as something that’s worth pursuing in a conversation, that can look a bunch of different ways. And depending on the maturity of the organization and their ability to facilitate change within their organization, it can mean a lot of different things. Talk about that and just some of the different types of organizations that are out there, and what makes a facility, an organization, ready to look at something that could be a major change in how they do things?
Mike Mosquito:
Thank you very much for that and recognizing that. Yeah, I do prop that up quite often, the innovation looks different for a lot of different folks because one size is not fit for all. And so this tailoring of facilities and their maturity is important when they look at innovation. It’s important to understand, one, can you afford it? And that’s afford it not only upfront, but for the long-term of investment for supporting it and its updates, and its training for your clinical staff, if need be. And so I think a hospital has to go through a maturity model. While I’m at Northeast Georgia, I work with several health systems around the country, and help with them develop maturity models for understanding innovation, where are they on that landscape of understanding what does it look like to enhance patient outcomes through technology? Do they have a governance model that can govern technology as it comes in? Is it ingests into their organization?
Because you can’t just say, “Oh, we’re just going to plop this in here because we had a demo.” You have to understand what your technical infrastructure looks like, what is your cyber infrastructure that’s going to be supporting and providing the connectivity internal and external. And then those new technologies for our health system need to have a governance model that says, “Here’s where we start, here’s where we move to, here’s ultimately where we want to go.” Be able to explain that not only at the board level, but, John, be able to take that down to at the patient level, and whatever that may look like, if you’re a rural hospital that may have low connectivity, how do you feed that patient at home or that’s remote in the community that may not have high speed bandwidth?
So these technologies that are coming about, whether it’s radiology, and you’re looking at putting in new AI for radiology to help your radiologists provide better outcomes for your patients, you need to understand what does that mean, one, from incubating that technology as a POC, to understanding once you go full implementation, how will that change the workflow within the health system? And then when there are hiccups, have the best partner alongside you to understand, “This is where we had an error, here’s how we’re going to reduce the impact to the hospital or to the health system, and we’re going to do this together.” It’s a true partnership. So I would say, also, look at your partners, be able to understand, do you have the right partners that you’re buying technology from, and that there’s an understanding for, this is new technology, things are going to go wrong when it’s technical, and when it’s IT, and when it’s infrastructure, things break, processes break, people break processes, people break technology.
But when those things go… they happen, you leverage that partnership and that understanding of, “Here’s where we are as a bleeding edge or a second level innovator.” Because not everyone wants to be bleeding edge, not everyone wants to come out of the gate when it drops on the market in the first magazine or news article to take on those technologies, but they need to understand, if they’re going to take them on, what is their appetite and maturity for ingesting and supporting these emerging technologies?
How to Approach Conversations about Change
John Farkas:
Yeah. There’s so much… what you just said, I’m trying to figure out which limb to climb up on here. But one of the things I frequently hear, and we end up talking, in the context of this podcast and just in our work in general, we end up talking to a lot of CIOs of health systems, and one of the consistent refrains that we hear from them is some level of frustration that when they have a tech vendor coming to them, just how grossly ignorant they are of their system, their problem set, their maturity. And so you come in and you have this shiny thing that you want to bring and you expect for the world to fall down around you and everybody to bow at your feet, and at the end of the day, if you don’t know what you’re walking into and how to approach the conversation, you’re not going to win many friends or influence many people in those moments, you’re just going to frustrate a very busy executive who you get one hearing for, and if you don’t do it really good, you’re not going to come back.
So that’s just a good thing just to be aware of, first of all, you got to know who you’re going into and how to tune your conversation and your presentation. This is… coming at it from a sales perspective, but this involves marketing too, how do you demonstrate in how you approach your message that you understand the nature of what you’re asking in the context of change?
Mike Mosquito:
John, I’ll tell you, I am actually getting ready, I’m packing right now to leave to go to the CHIME CxO Leadership Academy, and Andrea Daughtry and I are teaching the session on partners versus vendors. And what you’re going through is exactly that. So I think if you were at Ohio HIMSS conference in May or June, you heard me talk about this on stage. It was a very candid conversation because there were a lot of people in the room that were selling technology, and it’s back to what you said at the beginning there, “Understand who you’re talking to first.” There’s no shortage of emails in my inbox right now for the hospital, of people trying to introduce themselves, sell me something, and pretend like they know the hospital. And what they say at first and what they introduce in those emails tell me it is a cold call, you don’t know me, you don’t know the health system. And that’s a tragic error if you’re introducing your new technology.
And it’s hard for you to get through those first level doors, but you can’t come at it from a very uneducated standpoint of not understanding healthcare either, and how the healthcare system works, and how do patients flow into and out of… back into a setting of home care through the system, and how to introduce those technologies. I think as we talk about looking at those technologies and how innovation occurs, we have to also look at how do we take new, ingest it as a way of saying, “Hey, we have a problem first.” And that’s where a lot of vendors… they don’t start there, they don’t start with identifying the problem their technology is solving, they start talking about how neat their AI is, and how neat their engine and their algorithm, and the amount of savings that’s coming out of their solution.
You haven’t identified that I understand that you know that there’s a problem there. Where’s the problem that we’re trying to solve? All this technology out there. And I’ve been on the other side of developing technology and selling technology, but I always started with, “Here’s the problem I’m coming to solve Mr. CIO, Mr. CEO, Mr. CFO, you’re funding a problem that’s going to solve something that’s costing you money, time, or resources, and we want to solve that in this manner. And then here are technologies that can help you do that.” So you’ve got to understand what the problem is first, and that there’s actually a problem that needs to be solved, not that we’re just replacing it because ours is better. Because there’s not money and budget in health system just to replace something just because something-
Qualities of an Innovation Organization
John Farkas:
For a small incremental trip, yeah, move. Yep. Especially right now. So Mike, talk about the different… So like we said at the start, there’s a bunch of different permutations of the chief innovation officer or the innovation arm of an organization, talk about some of those differences. If you could break them down into sub-personas, what are some of the common denominators? What is a really serious innovation organization look like? What is one that is in place to be assistive, and what’s one that’s there as a badge because we need to say we’re innovative-
Mike Mosquito:
Which is dangerous.
John Farkas:
And common.
Mike Mosquito:
I’ll tell you, if you attended the health conference, you’ll see at health there are hospital logos all in the air of innovation arms in those health systems, where they bring technology in, and they’re coming in to show that they can identify, develop, and implement technologies, they can change processes, they can develop models of care that can enhance patient outcomes. What they’re doing is saying, “Hey, Mr. Entrepreneur, we’ve identified you as having some technology that we might want to put a POC and investment in, and take a piece of that because we’re going to help you grow it, we’re going to put it within our health system, we’re going to operationalize that, we’re going to put a business case together, we’re going to put the use cases together, and then we’re going to make it marketable. We’re going to help you put that on the market, and we’re going to take our share of that for being that key contributor, and for being your first client, and helping you get other clients because we’re referenceable.”
Now, without calling names of certain incubators of technology, there’s some big ones out there. You’ve probably seen them, you probably know of them, but those studios, those venture studios, they accelerate and incubate in a way where they know healthcare, they know technology, John, and they know how to mentor and fund startups, and they’ve been doing this and they’ve been making money off of it. That is at the high end, and then again-
John Farkas:
So you’d put the venture studio… the studio model at the high end of the ecosystem there, in that they understand… first of all, they know that they can apply technology to solve specific problems, and they’re looking for things that they can build a business where the problem is so significant that they can build a business around it.
Mike Mosquito:
Correct. And it’s a business where they’re solving problems, whether it’s cancer, heart disease, it doesn’t matter where you’re falling in, they’re putting in and going through the ropes of saying, “Here’s a new technology. We identified that there’s a problem and this technology… Hey, this really can solve this problem.” So it really is looking at the problem. From a venture studio standpoint, they want to see, “If I saw it for us, how many other healthcare systems can we solve it for?” That’s the business, because now, we’ve made it referenceable and we’ve made it a product that we’ve already vetted, and we’re going to invest in that because we know it could be a business that could be not in one hospital, two hospitals, but 200 hospitals, or even globally, a game changer for healthcare. So they have to look at how do I build resources, how do I give the access to care to not only their innovation studio, but also to their health system, and how do they build a use case around bringing that technology to the forefront of use?
John Farkas:
Good. And so that’s the high end of the ecosystem. Take us down a notch. So would it look like if… What’s the next step?
Mike Mosquito:
The next step is they don’t have money, there’s not a fund there yet, but there is interest in evaluating new innovation and technology. So they can’t provide cash to invest into a new startup, but they can provide a proof of concept, they can take that technology into their health system, and then they can slowly move that through the use cases that they help build so that this startup now has proof points to take to other health systems and be able to sell their technology. They’re a speaking voice, they’re a promoter, they’re on the tour with them to say, “This technology works,” they may even have site visits, but they’re not actually investing, they’re going to take a piece of that company because they’ve helped them build a brand within their health system and be a reference point, and they may help them with other hospitals.
John Farkas:
And so in a situation like that, will the chief innovation officer be on point for that? Will that be a tandem operation maybe between the CIO and the chief innovation officer? How is that typically set up?
Mike Mosquito:
Sometimes it’s set up as a tandem operation where the CIO and the innovation officer, and the lead over the innovation center, they work together to evaluate, “Hey, we’ve identified, does this fit? Can we provide, one, the infrastructure, the security, and the clinical input to evaluate this technology that we’re looking at bringing in?” There are others where the innovation arm works autonomously, sets everything up, they work with the chief medical information officer, the CNIO, then they bring the CIO in and say, “Hey, we’ve framed this up, we know there’s clinical need for the problem that we’re trying to solve, and now we want you to help us evaluate the technical infrastructure to make sure it fits. We know what we know, but we don’t know what you know.” So then they bring the CIO in and then that’s when the innovation begins. But they’re not doing that from a standpoint of investing funds, it’s investing thought leadership and some sweat equity to get that POC up and running, and that that solution implemented within their health system because they see the value.
Strategies for Catching a Health Tech CIO’s Attention
John Farkas:
And so I’m going to jump into a little bit of a nuanced conversation, and what I know is there’s no pat answer for this, but maybe if you can give us some directions here. So looking at that type of organization, which I think is among the more common scenarios, if you’re a health tech organization and you’re trying to get the attention of one of those CIOs, if you’re trying to show them that you’ve got a solution that they really ought to consider, what are some of the… and I’m talking at a positioning perspective here, and like I said, there’s no pat answer here, but I am looking for some of the general things that we want to make sure are covered, what would they be looking for? What would be some of the qualifiers that would let them say, “Okay, I should let this company in the door to talk to us because they’re, at least, showing these three elements of their maturity as an organization.”
Mike Mosquito:
I will say they need to have objectives, and have identified objectives that are enhancing patient care, operational efficiency, cost reduction. They have to have a competitive advantage if there’s a marketplace with multiple players there, and then show some strategic growth and an ROI post-investment of that sweat equity. So there has to be some ROI of, “Hey, our efficiencies have increased and we can track that.” That is something that is trackable, and we can actually have a care model that shows improvement. So those objectives and innovation arms, they need to have that typical frame of reference around enhancing patient care, enhancing clinical and operational efficiency. So talk about streamlining processes, reducing waste, improving overall efficiencies of the health system delivery, and that could be inside the hospital or at home, and then when you’re looking at adopting new solutions, reducing those operational costs or improving financial performance, when you bring these solutions on board.
Everybody knows that you get the revenue cycle, AI conversation going, and they’re going to talk about how much money they can save you and put back in your pocket, that is a typical conversation you’re going to have around revenue cyclists. That’s the age-old conversation. But standing on the forefront of innovation, when you talk about health systems, how do you differentiate yourself and your solution? Well, it’s around the patient. Ultimately, the nebulous is around, there are patients in your health system, and the talent that you bring in, the resources that you bring in need to be driving better patient outcomes because you’re billing for that patient interaction. So that growth that you see, it’s about improving patient outcomes, but it’s also about reducing the cost it takes to provide that outcome.
Meeting Consumer Mandates of Healthcare Technology
John Farkas:
Yep. Yeah. And so bottom line, you have a clear line on the problem… I mean, this is stuff we’ve already talked about here, you have a clear understanding of the problem and a clear line, the value, and how you’re able to solve for it, and you’re showing that in ways that are pertinent and highly relatable to the folks you are going in there to talk to. Good. So then we’ve got this, and there’s an infinite continuum of differences here, but we have the advanced, which is the studio model, we have the mid-range, which is the folks that are able to bring a solution as a proof of concept and partner, in that regard, to figure out how to deploy, then we’ve got the folks that have an innovation badge out there, but aren’t necessarily empowered positions, that can talk about transformation as widely as others, but what have you seen in that regard?
Mike Mosquito:
I’ve seen folks ask for innovation, they’ve heard the buzzwords, their board has asked, “When are we getting AI? What is our innovation strategy?” So it’s not driven because of need, but it’s driven because of an ask on high, as I call it. The board has pushed out a mandate that we want to be competitive in the marketplace too. When are we getting AI? Then you have to educate and say, “You know what? Clinical decision support has been AI for decades.” So we’ve had AI technology, if you want to talk about that, but for true innovation, they put that badge on there as a marketing and competitive edge. Because now the patient is a consumer, they’re a shopper, they want to go to health systems that are using leading edge technology, transparency, my HIPAA disclaimers, online now for you guys. I had to go to a hospital to be evaluated for a heart procedure, my job was to evaluate what technology, what was the youngest doctor using for those procedures, and become educated about how he kept up on technology.
And after having a full bill of health, Mike’s good to go, it was because I did my research upfront, I am actually a consumer looking for the better technologies within a health system. Health systems now know the hospital across the street that can claim they have solutions that are next generation, that are going to give you better outcomes, better patient outcomes, and a better quality of care, patients are going to come. They can market that. And so now, you have to have that badge of, “We are a leading edge health institution that has researched the better programs, and solutions, and strategies to deliver care.” And that’s a marketing play. And you’ve got to make sure that you can deliver on that next generation care, that you’re just not putting lipstick on the pig and pushing out the same care, the same protocols, the same processes, and you’re really not innovating anything, you’re not really doing anything, you don’t have the budget to innovate, you don’t have the resources, with the understanding, nor training to implement those next generation solutions.
You may partner, but when the partner’s gone or you can’t afford to support that partner, then you have a problem. That’s where the gap begins, because you’ve introduced a marketing play that really can’t get you where you need to be in the marketplace to be competitive.
John Farkas:
Yeah. And that’s a good cautionary for some of these technology companies. Because they might spend a whole lot of time going after somebody who seems to be warm to their equation, and then they might get in at some measure and find that they don’t have the infrastructure or the maturity to follow through, and you’ve just spent a whole lot of time, effort, and energy selling into and getting something spun up that ultimately spins down in a hurry once they confront the reality of what it’s going to take to deploy that type of change.
Mike Mosquito:
You have to put the right strategy in play, John. I think the right strategy is have your executive team on board and communicate clearly, and that’s clearly, with the CEO, with the CXOs that are reporting to the board, “Here is a strategy.” And there are a lot of acquisitions of other systems, they come together, and one may have an innovation team, and one may have a loosely inquisitive innovation team. Or there are pockets where you need to sit down, and have alignment, and look at the best of use within the health system or within the organization, where one organization may lead looking and evaluating at certain strategies and certain modalities of care, they may have a better opportunity, and so you need to bring that in.
You need to build a better landscape of evaluating innovation and then be able to go slow enough that the organization can catch up to it. Because you can step on the gas with innovation and break a lot of things. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize. AI can do great things, it can also break a lot of things, and that’s including your clinicians that are having to use and train how to use these technologies.
John Farkas:
Yeah. One of the challenges that we face frequently, and I know that you have seen this and a bunch of different permutations, you have this company, and let’s say it’s a founder-led healthcare technology company, they are super stoked about their technology, they know it has the capability to transform XYZ, and they jump in and they are real stoked to make this happen, and they are convinced they have a great use case. What they typically underestimate is just how difficult… and I say this and I’m like… The only reason I’m investing the breath to say this is because I keep seeing it happen, and it just seems so rudimentary, but it’s true, no organization looks at change easily. Any large organization, change is hellish. And if you don’t understand that coming in and understand the expense of change, and what you are asking an organization to do, and you’re coming at it with that understanding, even if you’re talking to the innovation arm, the innovation arm is there and they’re daily confronting the sluggish nature of movement in the organization they’re trying to serve.
And so they’re sitting there in between in that liminal space, between a very stagnant organization, and all the forces of transformation that they are trying to sift through and determine what to bring forward, and they’re stuck in that messy middle. And so as an organization marketing into that, your ability to demonstrate your understanding of what you’re asking is really important, because if you come in and just say, “Everybody should fall at our feet, and this is the really smart thing to do, duh.” It’s just-
Mike Mosquito:
That’s not the reality, it’s healthcare.
John Farkas:
Yeah. But it is the funny reality of a lot of these solutions. They just think that that’s going to happen because they’re excited about what they’re bringing. And so having that understanding and working with… because ideally, the innovation team is a great bridge, but you need to be ready to work with them to equip them with the material, the information, the perspective they need to become your advocate. That’s an important posture to adopt in this.
Mike Mosquito:
It really is. It really is. You need to be able to come in and you got to be a guide. The chief digital information officer, the chief innovation officer, those roles are there to be a guide through this first, and explain, this is a lengthy decision-making process, from operations to clinical decision-making, and even bringing our patients on board. And we gather that information to make sure that those multiple levels of approval and understanding, protect from the operation of the hospital all the way to the patient, is protection of the people that are in that continuum of care. Now, then you’ve got regulatory compliance requirements, you’ve got budget constraints, you can’t buy everything, not everything’s on the table to be bought. Even if you can’t identify the problems, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right relationships and procurements on board. So all of this coming into play from a partner that may have the best solution, they’ve got to understand that the strategy behind it takes a long time.
And then you’ve got to demonstrate clear value when bringing this technology through the venture arm or through the innovation studio, and then the pilot programs and trials, they need to be flawless. If you’re going to identify problems, identify problems, fall on the sword, and recover quickly, and understand that you’re there to fix them together. But understand, you start at a smaller scale, you’re not getting the $10 million check out the gate when you’re a new startup, and your technology has been proven yet. That doesn’t happen. If you do, you found the unicorn.
Exploring the Need to Be Flawless
John Farkas:
Yeah. So you said something there that I’ve heard repeated multiple ways, multiple different personas here, the need to be flawless. Let’s talk about that. That’s an interesting requisite for an early stage tech company, not a small charge, and it is an important charge in healthcare and often underestimated. So talk about that standard and where you’ve seen problems in that regard.
Mike Mosquito:
So when an organization says they have tech, they come in, they want to implement it. And when I say flawless, I’m not talking about everything is just beautiful, flawless means that if there’s a problem, you flawlessly hold your hand up and say, “We made an error. We had a misstep here. We are going to fix it with you, and we now identify why that was there.” Because it depends on the type of program you’re in. In pilot program, you’re there to help find those errors. So you don’t sit and go, “I’m not sure. It must’ve been something with your clinical staff to break our solution. We haven’t seen this problem before.” I heard that one sitting around a room, and that was horrible. “Not us, there must be something wrong with your organization. It wasn’t me.”
John Farkas:
It wasn’t me.
Mike Mosquito:
Right. Right. We’ve never seen that happen with our solution before. These are words you should not use because this is a new technology. Now, you’re seeing it, how are you going to fix it and identify the problem so that it doesn’t happen again? So when I say flawless, I mean flawless around owning the good and owning the bad on both sides. Because I have seen way back in my career when technology was being innovated, from the first EHRs and EMRs, folks coming in with any myriad of solutions that could not do the work that was required to gather patient information from all these disparate systems and put it in one location to be served up into one screen, into a dashboard, and to be able to be available anywhere all the time. That came about because people did fail on the integration front, and that’s gotten better over time, but a lot of people had to fall on the sword because they could not create that connectivity.
And when you say, “Well, I’m not sure why it’s not connecting,” then you basically self-eliminated yourself from the solution category being the preferred vendor. And so over time, you’ve got to figure out how do you manage those challenges, and how do you flawlessly either accept and adopt change and make change, or walk away as the loser of implementation, and that’s not good for your future sales.
Cautions Surrounding the Idea of Innovation Theaters
John Farkas:
Yeah. Getting the proof of concept is only the first step, and then making that happen and making sure it happens flawlessly is a critical component. Talk a little bit… let’s touch on the idea, which I know is a thing that is worthy of some consideration here, but the idea of innovation theater. I know we’ve kind of talked around it some here, but it can be a real issue I think… from your perspective, what does that mean, how have you seen that play out in situations, and what can you do to avoid… or what are some of the red flags that will help you understand that that could be what you’re facing?
Mike Mosquito:
Well, I think, pretending like you have innovation is very dangerous. So we covered that before, and I think that when you talk about innovation theater, you’re acting and portraying yourself in one measure, but you’re not delivering under that measure, and that is very dangerous for patient care. Wasted resources, it’s going to divert time, money, and attention away from the real problems and the real projects that need to be addressed within an organization. That genuine impact around innovation theater is about how do we showcase flashy new stuff as a POC but it can never be implemented? We got a marketing spiel from it… pamphlets for everybody to see, or a commercial that we pushed out. But in the end, John, this erodes trust. In the end, when you can’t deliver and your patients find out that they are not being given that next level care that the hospital 15 minutes down the road can deliver, now you’ve eroded trust.
And now your quality metrics that you’re going to be measured against are going to start to degrade over time, cynicism around staff being able to deliver, your stakeholders within the community, all those promised benefits that you’ve marketed, when they don’t show up, they’re going to create those missed opportunities that are within the community that you’re serving, especially if you’re providing core services for that community. And you want to achieve meaningful success through that progress of innovation, and that meaningful success means patient had this experience five years ago, this next five years, we’re improving the processes, the engagement, and the outcomes. And what does that mean? We were going to show you our roadmap and plan, we’re going to bring patients in and help them tell us where there are potholes in our plan, we’re going to fill those potholes, and then we’re going to put out technology that’s going to build trust within the community, that includes the underserved, those disparate communities that don’t have connectivity, how are we going to help drive change in those communities, how are we going to give them special consideration and provide that care?
But if you talk about technology only in the city and urban areas and you’re not addressing those disparate communities, because you’re saying, “Oh, we’ve got all this technology,” but you can’t get to your population of people in the rural population, I think you start to erode that trust because you’re not a true innovation center. You’re not.
Addressing the Failure of Delivering Solutions
John Farkas:
Yep. Yeah. It means demonstrable efficacy, you got to be able to show it and be it… You said something, before we started recording, that I want to double back on because I know it’s a factor a number of our clients face, and it’s an emerging issue or echo that I hear in the space, and that is the idea that a lot of buyers might put out there, our EHR is going to… or does it, or is promising they’re going to do it, or we think they’re going to do it, and so they hesitate to implement a solution, it might be a point solution, it might be a smaller platform that can deliver for real on some of the needs that exist for now. They push pause because one of the big vendors, their EHR said something about that, addressing that issue. Talk a little bit about that, and what can a healthcare technology company who is encountering some of that friction do to address it?
Mike Mosquito:
I will tell you I have a list, my quick list, of top innovators and CIOs. And one particular CIO, he steps on the gas and doesn’t let off. His job is to be the bleeding edge and to make sure the health system is putting the best innovation in front of their patients and for their clinicians. And when there’s a misstep, they correct the misstep, they share it amongst the other health systems around them, so they’re collaborating and showcasing, “Hey, we’ve already gone down this path, don’t you also step in this path,” which I think is missing in healthcare. Health systems should be collaborating on the best technologies. And if they’re all on the same EMR, they should understand, “Hey, this is already working over here. Are we going to wait on this potential roadmap problem to be fixed in the EMR in the next what, six releases, seven releases, eight releases?” We don’t know.
It’s on the roadmap, it’s not guaranteed, there’s not a definitive timeline. And usually, when that timeline gets here, it’s going to get pushed. So a lot of CIOs have determined, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to-
John Farkas:
The old push.
Mike Mosquito:
You’re right, “It’s in the next release, but we’re going to push it a couple of cycles.” That’s normal. I came from McKesson, Eclipsys, these things were commonplace when releases were coming out if you weren’t ready to go to market and make them GA. How do you do this today? You find the best on the market for the solution to a problem you’re trying to solve and you give it a test bed, and when it’s working, what I’m seeing out here, that people are now not waiting, they’re not waiting on that, “It’s coming.” Now, there’s the 90% that are going to wait because they want one throat to choke. They believe in their EMR, they don’t want to go out and test another solution. But what’s happening in a lot of these bleeding edge and leading edge institutions is that they are finding these nuggets of care, and I have a list of solutions out there that are working today.
While the EMR may have it or may not have it in the future, it solves a problem today, it reduces cost, it improves the quality of care, it improves patient outcomes, and it’s going to provide what you need today. That means your hospital is leading edge, it’s creating trust, the governance around it has been proven to be sustainable and to provide as needed. It has guardrails. So why are you waiting if you’ve got a solution that you can solve for today? And it doesn’t mean that it has to be in the EMR. If interoperability is the ultimate need, these solutions can provide it, these solutions can’t integrate back in to the EMR. They spent the money to put your data where it needs to be, and ultimately, the data is key. If you can get the data from these new solutions into your EMR into the patient record that’s referenceable, when that patient is anywhere in your ecosystem of care, you should be looking at these third-party solutions that are going to provide those strategies for you to solve problems.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting… it’s a fear because… the one throat to choke is definitely a theme that I hear emerging, and a desire, and I understand it because we were in a snowstorm of micro point solutions for a long time and a lot of people spent a lot of money to create a lot of complexity. And we’re in the opposite pendulum swing from that right now, and that’s a good thing, I think. And we can’t move to a point where we’re waiting for some of these gigantic organizations to meet the need because they’re just not nimble enough, the needs are too prolific and acute right now to hope for some of those things to be solved in the big solutions.
So I think it’s a thing to… if I think about the world of the health tech companies that are out there, doing the work of understanding how long it’s taken for some of these innovations to come through an EMR, and helping your buyer understand what they’re likely up against between here and what is likely to deploy, and when it does deploy, is it going to be what you need, or is it going to be some little attempt at it? All that is important and stuff to talk to directly because those challenges do exist. Your ability to position yourself as a partner so that they understand that when you come in and are going to give them that support, that you’re not just going to throw tech at them and walk away but you’re going to be there with them, is important. And then having the courage to push into some of that headwind, I think is a critical-
Mike Mosquito:
And be able to be a guide. I think, John, other leaders in this area, they’re looking at being a guide and a thought leader, and sharing, “Here’s working for us. Here’s what you shouldn’t wait for.” When I attend these conferences and we’re in round table sessions, or I get called into a meeting with another health system, I’m sitting around to share not only from my advisory background, and some things that you do from Ratio, but be able to provide that advisory background of, “Here’s what’s working. Here’s why you shouldn’t wait,” and be able to take those proof points back to the executive leadership and say, “Why are we waiting on something for a potential tomorrow when we know it’s working today?”
And so it’s to bring facts and solutions that solve problems, but it’s also to help your organization understand we need to look around this ecosystem together. If there’s someone in another facility that’s been working on it, pull them up to say, “Okay, they’ve been working to solve this problem,” the whole ecosystem of care should be looking that direction and saying, “Yes, that works, but are we going to wait to solve that two, three years from now when it could be solved today?” Because ultimately, what may happen, what I’ve seen, John, is that you wait for the solution to be delivered, and ultimately, the EMR vendor buys a solution you were going to put in. Seen that happened? So you waited?
John Farkas:
Yeah. Well, yeah, that has happened, and then you just hung out and waited to get a more expensive version of what?
Mike Mosquito:
Right. Exactly.
Advice for Venturing into the Innovation Ecosystem
John Farkas:
Yeah. Well, that’s a good word and probably a good place for us to wind up. I know we’re at time here, but Mike, I am just curious if you have any parting shots or thoughts here as you consider what we’re talking about, if you were to give a piece of advice to those brave young tech companies out there trying to find their way into the innovation ecosystem?
Mike Mosquito:
I would say, keep innovating. It’s needed in healthcare, it’s needed in the industry, and multiple industries. I left healthcare for a while to go learn from other industries, John, and bring back that knowledge of innovation and emerging technology, how it changes our landscape. And it changed my perspective, and I think you hear that when I’m on stage and presenting on various topics. But innovation is a machine, and sometimes you need to warm that machine up and go slow, and then sometimes that machine’s already warm and ready to go, you can create and drive straight through and not have to worry about fuel in the tank, the engine is warm, the tank is full and the organization is ready to drive. But you need to make sure you understand which of those positions you’re in. And if it’s in, I need to warm my machine up, and then drive slow to get my engine warm. Then you need to adhere to that and be able to collaborate, educate, and adopt that methodology throughout, and look at these innovation companies as an opportunity to, one, show you what they can do.
Don’t be scared of them, but let them show you what they can do under your governance and guardrails of healthcare and the provider network, or even the payer network. Let them show you what they can do, and then when it’s time for you to raise this child up to be able to drive on their own, they’re able to go, because you’re not going to be in that position to look at all technology, but the technology you do look at, and I’m talking to the innovators out there, put your best foot forward first. When you step up to speak to someone like myself, or the CIO, or the CDIO, make sure your knowledge about what we do, who we are, is on point, and make sure you understand that what your technology is going to solve for. Bring the strategy behind the problem first, identify that first, and then talk about your technology.
Closing Question
John Farkas:
Because you’re likely to have that one opportunity. Mike, thank you for your insight. We are thrilled to have you a part of the Ratio Advisory Board, and appreciate the perspective you bring in that context. And what I want to just touch on real quick is if somebody’s wanting to tune into your frequency, what’s the best place for them to find you?
Mike Mosquito:
You can find me on LinkedIn. My podcast is… drop it as well, John, called The Buzz podcast. You’ll be able to find me on BotOn Health, which is an AI platform for communication and translation services. So if you go to that website, you’ll find me. If you find me on LinkedIn, you’ll find the Recap. So if I’m at a conference and you’re looking to be on the Recap, find me, we’ll get a picture, and you may even get a sound bite dropped on the conference floor. But I’ll be at the Fall conference, see you soon, I’ll be out and about, so I hope to see everyone out there. But it’s been a great being on the show today. I’m looking forward to doing it again-
John Farkas:
Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. We are grateful. Mike Mosquito, thank you for joining us today on Healthcare Market Matrix.
Mike Mosquito:
Thank you.
Outro:
Healthcare Market Matrix is a Ratio original podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, then jump over to healthcaremarketmatrix.com and subscribe, and we’d really appreciate your support in the form of a five-star rating on your favorite podcast platform, it does make a difference. Also, while you’re there, you can become a part of the Healthcare Market Matrix community, and get access to courses and content that’s created just for you by signing up for InsightSquared, a monthly newsletter dedicated to bringing you the latest health tech marketing insights right to your inbox. Ratio is an award-winning marketing agency headquartered in the Nashville, Tennessee. We operate at the intersection of brand and growth marketing to equip companies with strategies to create meaningful connections with the healthcare market, and ultimately, drive growth. Want to know more? Go to Goratio.com. That’s G-O-R-A-T-I-O.com. And we’ll see you at noon Central next week for an all new episode from our team at Ratio Studios. Stay healthy.
Transcript (custom)
Introduction to Mike Mosquito
John Farkas:
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Healthcare Market Matrix, where we dive deep into the challenges that are faced by healthcare organizations that technology ultimately has the chance to help them solve. I’m your host, John Farkas, the CEO of Ratio. And as always, I’m excited to talk with our guest today, but I got to just tell you, today, we have a real treat for you. Mike Mosquito is a visionary leader in healthcare innovation and technology. He’s currently serving as the special projects leader for emerging technology and innovation at Northeast Georgia Health System.
And for the last few decades, Mike has been really at the forefront of helping drive digital transformation, integrating AI, managing large scale initiatives and transformation efforts. But chances are, if you’ve been to any of the major healthcare technology related events, you’ve seen Mike on stage, or leading, or participating in panel discussions. In fact, one of my favorite Mike moments this past year was at ViVE. I was hoping to catch him after one of his presentations, but seriously, the moment the panel was over, I think, honestly, there were five of his people that surrounded him and escorted him to the next stop on his speaking tour. And I had no hope of breaking through his guard there, and I just relinquished the fact that I would have to catch him later in the event, which I eventually did. But that just gives you a little glimpse into the in-demand nature of this person.
Mike is not short of point of view, and that’s a great thing. And something we need right now is the people that have the freedom and the courage to speak their mind because there’s a lot of change that needs to happen right here. He calls it the way he sees it, and it’s his creative approach to problems. That’s something I appreciate about him, and I know others do too. His ability to really take a look at some of the complex technical issues that we face and make that accessible is part of what makes him a favorite among his peers and professionals alike. So in this episode, we’re going to be focusing on the role of the chief innovation officer within a health system, the innovation arm of a healthcare entity. And it’s a position that Mike knows intimately, and we’re going to talk about the evolving responsibilities and nature of this role, some of the challenges it faces, some of the opportunities that it presents for leveraging technology and ultimately enhancing healthcare delivery.
So Mike, it is a pleasure to have you here. And so let’s start by diving in and tell us a little bit about your journey and what brought you to this auspicious moment.
Mike Mosquito:
Well, thank you very much for having me, John, glad to be on the Ratio podcast. I’m sorry I missed you that first time, that was a very tough day. That was back to back to back stage appearances.
John Farkas:
Yes, it was.
Mike Mosquito:
And so it is been like that this year. It’s been a great circuit for sharing and collaborating with peers and folks, like yourself, that are trying to drive change through this collaborative nature of education and understanding what the problems are in healthcare. These problems started for me many years ago when I started with a dot-com and developing technology, being a CTO that was developing technology for healthcare, moving over to folks like McKesson, and Allscripts, and Eclipsys to lead their innovation centers and emerging technology groups to deliver next generation technology, and emerging technologies that are now still used in healthcare today. And so for me, this journey has been about, one, where the problems lie, how do we find the right solutions and strategies that are going to deliver better care and better outcomes for the patients? But also, how to look at innovation as a specialized unit that can deliver something for a health system or for the industry that can evaluate, that can look at different aspects across the various continuums of care, and then how to take a very sometimes slow look at it, but implement at a rapid pace where needed.
And I say that slow look because all innovation is not good innovation for every health system, you’ve got to determine if you’re at the right level of maturity to adopt innovation. And not all departments can just take on innovation and these new technologies just because it’s on the marketplace and because a salesperson is looking to sell it to you. So there’s a proper time and place for developing that innovation. I think over my career, I’ve had a very blessed opportunity to have senior leaders that have given me the opportunity to drive that change in those businesses, increase the wherewithal within their business to be showcased as a leading provider of certain technologies. I think my background as a consultant has also helped me understand, one, how to better deliver advisory services that lead down that eventual implementation of a technology being CIOs, CXOs that are looking to present to their board a better view of their hospitals.
So my journey has not been short of being stuck way down in the weeds and bringing it up to the board level to present what does it look like to be an innovator and a changer, whether it’s on the pharmaceutical side of business, on the technology side of business, or on pure care with patient engagement and patient experience transformations. So for me, it’s been a great journey.
Analyzing Innovation Solutions for Change Implementation
John Farkas:
Yeah. It’s one of the things that I look at your backdrop and think, “Wow, there’s just not a whole lot of people that have come at it from as many different angles as you have through your time,” which is great because that’s part of what allows you… as I’ve heard you speak in panel scenarios and some of the presentations I’ve seen you make, your ability to come at it from a few different angles is really valuable and adds to the authority that you’re able to bring across. So that’s a fun part of your backdrop, for sure. So one of the things I know is we’re looking at healthcare systems, when you think about the term innovation, it means a lot… and you hinted at it in what you first said there, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different types of organizations.
And the innovation function for healthcare tech companies that are trying to sell in, they have an innovative solution, they see the innovation persona as something that’s worth pursuing in a conversation, that can look a bunch of different ways. And depending on the maturity of the organization and their ability to facilitate change within their organization, it can mean a lot of different things. Talk about that and just some of the different types of organizations that are out there, and what makes a facility, an organization, ready to look at something that could be a major change in how they do things?
Mike Mosquito:
Thank you very much for that and recognizing that. Yeah, I do prop that up quite often, the innovation looks different for a lot of different folks because one size is not fit for all. And so this tailoring of facilities and their maturity is important when they look at innovation. It’s important to understand, one, can you afford it? And that’s afford it not only upfront, but for the long-term of investment for supporting it and its updates, and its training for your clinical staff, if need be. And so I think a hospital has to go through a maturity model. While I’m at Northeast Georgia, I work with several health systems around the country, and help with them develop maturity models for understanding innovation, where are they on that landscape of understanding what does it look like to enhance patient outcomes through technology? Do they have a governance model that can govern technology as it comes in? Is it ingests into their organization?
Because you can’t just say, “Oh, we’re just going to plop this in here because we had a demo.” You have to understand what your technical infrastructure looks like, what is your cyber infrastructure that’s going to be supporting and providing the connectivity internal and external. And then those new technologies for our health system need to have a governance model that says, “Here’s where we start, here’s where we move to, here’s ultimately where we want to go.” Be able to explain that not only at the board level, but, John, be able to take that down to at the patient level, and whatever that may look like, if you’re a rural hospital that may have low connectivity, how do you feed that patient at home or that’s remote in the community that may not have high speed bandwidth?
So these technologies that are coming about, whether it’s radiology, and you’re looking at putting in new AI for radiology to help your radiologists provide better outcomes for your patients, you need to understand what does that mean, one, from incubating that technology as a POC, to understanding once you go full implementation, how will that change the workflow within the health system? And then when there are hiccups, have the best partner alongside you to understand, “This is where we had an error, here’s how we’re going to reduce the impact to the hospital or to the health system, and we’re going to do this together.” It’s a true partnership. So I would say, also, look at your partners, be able to understand, do you have the right partners that you’re buying technology from, and that there’s an understanding for, this is new technology, things are going to go wrong when it’s technical, and when it’s IT, and when it’s infrastructure, things break, processes break, people break processes, people break technology.
But when those things go… they happen, you leverage that partnership and that understanding of, “Here’s where we are as a bleeding edge or a second level innovator.” Because not everyone wants to be bleeding edge, not everyone wants to come out of the gate when it drops on the market in the first magazine or news article to take on those technologies, but they need to understand, if they’re going to take them on, what is their appetite and maturity for ingesting and supporting these emerging technologies?
How to Approach Conversations about Change
John Farkas:
Yeah. There’s so much… what you just said, I’m trying to figure out which limb to climb up on here. But one of the things I frequently hear, and we end up talking, in the context of this podcast and just in our work in general, we end up talking to a lot of CIOs of health systems, and one of the consistent refrains that we hear from them is some level of frustration that when they have a tech vendor coming to them, just how grossly ignorant they are of their system, their problem set, their maturity. And so you come in and you have this shiny thing that you want to bring and you expect for the world to fall down around you and everybody to bow at your feet, and at the end of the day, if you don’t know what you’re walking into and how to approach the conversation, you’re not going to win many friends or influence many people in those moments, you’re just going to frustrate a very busy executive who you get one hearing for, and if you don’t do it really good, you’re not going to come back.
So that’s just a good thing just to be aware of, first of all, you got to know who you’re going into and how to tune your conversation and your presentation. This is… coming at it from a sales perspective, but this involves marketing too, how do you demonstrate in how you approach your message that you understand the nature of what you’re asking in the context of change?
Mike Mosquito:
John, I’ll tell you, I am actually getting ready, I’m packing right now to leave to go to the CHIME CxO Leadership Academy, and Andrea Daughtry and I are teaching the session on partners versus vendors. And what you’re going through is exactly that. So I think if you were at Ohio HIMSS conference in May or June, you heard me talk about this on stage. It was a very candid conversation because there were a lot of people in the room that were selling technology, and it’s back to what you said at the beginning there, “Understand who you’re talking to first.” There’s no shortage of emails in my inbox right now for the hospital, of people trying to introduce themselves, sell me something, and pretend like they know the hospital. And what they say at first and what they introduce in those emails tell me it is a cold call, you don’t know me, you don’t know the health system. And that’s a tragic error if you’re introducing your new technology.
And it’s hard for you to get through those first level doors, but you can’t come at it from a very uneducated standpoint of not understanding healthcare either, and how the healthcare system works, and how do patients flow into and out of… back into a setting of home care through the system, and how to introduce those technologies. I think as we talk about looking at those technologies and how innovation occurs, we have to also look at how do we take new, ingest it as a way of saying, “Hey, we have a problem first.” And that’s where a lot of vendors… they don’t start there, they don’t start with identifying the problem their technology is solving, they start talking about how neat their AI is, and how neat their engine and their algorithm, and the amount of savings that’s coming out of their solution.
You haven’t identified that I understand that you know that there’s a problem there. Where’s the problem that we’re trying to solve? All this technology out there. And I’ve been on the other side of developing technology and selling technology, but I always started with, “Here’s the problem I’m coming to solve Mr. CIO, Mr. CEO, Mr. CFO, you’re funding a problem that’s going to solve something that’s costing you money, time, or resources, and we want to solve that in this manner. And then here are technologies that can help you do that.” So you’ve got to understand what the problem is first, and that there’s actually a problem that needs to be solved, not that we’re just replacing it because ours is better. Because there’s not money and budget in health system just to replace something just because something-
Qualities of an Innovation Organization
John Farkas:
For a small incremental trip, yeah, move. Yep. Especially right now. So Mike, talk about the different… So like we said at the start, there’s a bunch of different permutations of the chief innovation officer or the innovation arm of an organization, talk about some of those differences. If you could break them down into sub-personas, what are some of the common denominators? What is a really serious innovation organization look like? What is one that is in place to be assistive, and what’s one that’s there as a badge because we need to say we’re innovative-
Mike Mosquito:
Which is dangerous.
John Farkas:
And common.
Mike Mosquito:
I’ll tell you, if you attended the health conference, you’ll see at health there are hospital logos all in the air of innovation arms in those health systems, where they bring technology in, and they’re coming in to show that they can identify, develop, and implement technologies, they can change processes, they can develop models of care that can enhance patient outcomes. What they’re doing is saying, “Hey, Mr. Entrepreneur, we’ve identified you as having some technology that we might want to put a POC and investment in, and take a piece of that because we’re going to help you grow it, we’re going to put it within our health system, we’re going to operationalize that, we’re going to put a business case together, we’re going to put the use cases together, and then we’re going to make it marketable. We’re going to help you put that on the market, and we’re going to take our share of that for being that key contributor, and for being your first client, and helping you get other clients because we’re referenceable.”
Now, without calling names of certain incubators of technology, there’s some big ones out there. You’ve probably seen them, you probably know of them, but those studios, those venture studios, they accelerate and incubate in a way where they know healthcare, they know technology, John, and they know how to mentor and fund startups, and they’ve been doing this and they’ve been making money off of it. That is at the high end, and then again-
John Farkas:
So you’d put the venture studio… the studio model at the high end of the ecosystem there, in that they understand… first of all, they know that they can apply technology to solve specific problems, and they’re looking for things that they can build a business where the problem is so significant that they can build a business around it.
Mike Mosquito:
Correct. And it’s a business where they’re solving problems, whether it’s cancer, heart disease, it doesn’t matter where you’re falling in, they’re putting in and going through the ropes of saying, “Here’s a new technology. We identified that there’s a problem and this technology… Hey, this really can solve this problem.” So it really is looking at the problem. From a venture studio standpoint, they want to see, “If I saw it for us, how many other healthcare systems can we solve it for?” That’s the business, because now, we’ve made it referenceable and we’ve made it a product that we’ve already vetted, and we’re going to invest in that because we know it could be a business that could be not in one hospital, two hospitals, but 200 hospitals, or even globally, a game changer for healthcare. So they have to look at how do I build resources, how do I give the access to care to not only their innovation studio, but also to their health system, and how do they build a use case around bringing that technology to the forefront of use?
John Farkas:
Good. And so that’s the high end of the ecosystem. Take us down a notch. So would it look like if… What’s the next step?
Mike Mosquito:
The next step is they don’t have money, there’s not a fund there yet, but there is interest in evaluating new innovation and technology. So they can’t provide cash to invest into a new startup, but they can provide a proof of concept, they can take that technology into their health system, and then they can slowly move that through the use cases that they help build so that this startup now has proof points to take to other health systems and be able to sell their technology. They’re a speaking voice, they’re a promoter, they’re on the tour with them to say, “This technology works,” they may even have site visits, but they’re not actually investing, they’re going to take a piece of that company because they’ve helped them build a brand within their health system and be a reference point, and they may help them with other hospitals.
John Farkas:
And so in a situation like that, will the chief innovation officer be on point for that? Will that be a tandem operation maybe between the CIO and the chief innovation officer? How is that typically set up?
Mike Mosquito:
Sometimes it’s set up as a tandem operation where the CIO and the innovation officer, and the lead over the innovation center, they work together to evaluate, “Hey, we’ve identified, does this fit? Can we provide, one, the infrastructure, the security, and the clinical input to evaluate this technology that we’re looking at bringing in?” There are others where the innovation arm works autonomously, sets everything up, they work with the chief medical information officer, the CNIO, then they bring the CIO in and say, “Hey, we’ve framed this up, we know there’s clinical need for the problem that we’re trying to solve, and now we want you to help us evaluate the technical infrastructure to make sure it fits. We know what we know, but we don’t know what you know.” So then they bring the CIO in and then that’s when the innovation begins. But they’re not doing that from a standpoint of investing funds, it’s investing thought leadership and some sweat equity to get that POC up and running, and that that solution implemented within their health system because they see the value.
Strategies for Catching a Health Tech CIO’s Attention
John Farkas:
And so I’m going to jump into a little bit of a nuanced conversation, and what I know is there’s no pat answer for this, but maybe if you can give us some directions here. So looking at that type of organization, which I think is among the more common scenarios, if you’re a health tech organization and you’re trying to get the attention of one of those CIOs, if you’re trying to show them that you’ve got a solution that they really ought to consider, what are some of the… and I’m talking at a positioning perspective here, and like I said, there’s no pat answer here, but I am looking for some of the general things that we want to make sure are covered, what would they be looking for? What would be some of the qualifiers that would let them say, “Okay, I should let this company in the door to talk to us because they’re, at least, showing these three elements of their maturity as an organization.”
Mike Mosquito:
I will say they need to have objectives, and have identified objectives that are enhancing patient care, operational efficiency, cost reduction. They have to have a competitive advantage if there’s a marketplace with multiple players there, and then show some strategic growth and an ROI post-investment of that sweat equity. So there has to be some ROI of, “Hey, our efficiencies have increased and we can track that.” That is something that is trackable, and we can actually have a care model that shows improvement. So those objectives and innovation arms, they need to have that typical frame of reference around enhancing patient care, enhancing clinical and operational efficiency. So talk about streamlining processes, reducing waste, improving overall efficiencies of the health system delivery, and that could be inside the hospital or at home, and then when you’re looking at adopting new solutions, reducing those operational costs or improving financial performance, when you bring these solutions on board.
Everybody knows that you get the revenue cycle, AI conversation going, and they’re going to talk about how much money they can save you and put back in your pocket, that is a typical conversation you’re going to have around revenue cyclists. That’s the age-old conversation. But standing on the forefront of innovation, when you talk about health systems, how do you differentiate yourself and your solution? Well, it’s around the patient. Ultimately, the nebulous is around, there are patients in your health system, and the talent that you bring in, the resources that you bring in need to be driving better patient outcomes because you’re billing for that patient interaction. So that growth that you see, it’s about improving patient outcomes, but it’s also about reducing the cost it takes to provide that outcome.
Meeting Consumer Mandates of Healthcare Technology
John Farkas:
Yep. Yeah. And so bottom line, you have a clear line on the problem… I mean, this is stuff we’ve already talked about here, you have a clear understanding of the problem and a clear line, the value, and how you’re able to solve for it, and you’re showing that in ways that are pertinent and highly relatable to the folks you are going in there to talk to. Good. So then we’ve got this, and there’s an infinite continuum of differences here, but we have the advanced, which is the studio model, we have the mid-range, which is the folks that are able to bring a solution as a proof of concept and partner, in that regard, to figure out how to deploy, then we’ve got the folks that have an innovation badge out there, but aren’t necessarily empowered positions, that can talk about transformation as widely as others, but what have you seen in that regard?
Mike Mosquito:
I’ve seen folks ask for innovation, they’ve heard the buzzwords, their board has asked, “When are we getting AI? What is our innovation strategy?” So it’s not driven because of need, but it’s driven because of an ask on high, as I call it. The board has pushed out a mandate that we want to be competitive in the marketplace too. When are we getting AI? Then you have to educate and say, “You know what? Clinical decision support has been AI for decades.” So we’ve had AI technology, if you want to talk about that, but for true innovation, they put that badge on there as a marketing and competitive edge. Because now the patient is a consumer, they’re a shopper, they want to go to health systems that are using leading edge technology, transparency, my HIPAA disclaimers, online now for you guys. I had to go to a hospital to be evaluated for a heart procedure, my job was to evaluate what technology, what was the youngest doctor using for those procedures, and become educated about how he kept up on technology.
And after having a full bill of health, Mike’s good to go, it was because I did my research upfront, I am actually a consumer looking for the better technologies within a health system. Health systems now know the hospital across the street that can claim they have solutions that are next generation, that are going to give you better outcomes, better patient outcomes, and a better quality of care, patients are going to come. They can market that. And so now, you have to have that badge of, “We are a leading edge health institution that has researched the better programs, and solutions, and strategies to deliver care.” And that’s a marketing play. And you’ve got to make sure that you can deliver on that next generation care, that you’re just not putting lipstick on the pig and pushing out the same care, the same protocols, the same processes, and you’re really not innovating anything, you’re not really doing anything, you don’t have the budget to innovate, you don’t have the resources, with the understanding, nor training to implement those next generation solutions.
You may partner, but when the partner’s gone or you can’t afford to support that partner, then you have a problem. That’s where the gap begins, because you’ve introduced a marketing play that really can’t get you where you need to be in the marketplace to be competitive.
John Farkas:
Yeah. And that’s a good cautionary for some of these technology companies. Because they might spend a whole lot of time going after somebody who seems to be warm to their equation, and then they might get in at some measure and find that they don’t have the infrastructure or the maturity to follow through, and you’ve just spent a whole lot of time, effort, and energy selling into and getting something spun up that ultimately spins down in a hurry once they confront the reality of what it’s going to take to deploy that type of change.
Mike Mosquito:
You have to put the right strategy in play, John. I think the right strategy is have your executive team on board and communicate clearly, and that’s clearly, with the CEO, with the CXOs that are reporting to the board, “Here is a strategy.” And there are a lot of acquisitions of other systems, they come together, and one may have an innovation team, and one may have a loosely inquisitive innovation team. Or there are pockets where you need to sit down, and have alignment, and look at the best of use within the health system or within the organization, where one organization may lead looking and evaluating at certain strategies and certain modalities of care, they may have a better opportunity, and so you need to bring that in.
You need to build a better landscape of evaluating innovation and then be able to go slow enough that the organization can catch up to it. Because you can step on the gas with innovation and break a lot of things. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize. AI can do great things, it can also break a lot of things, and that’s including your clinicians that are having to use and train how to use these technologies.
John Farkas:
Yeah. One of the challenges that we face frequently, and I know that you have seen this and a bunch of different permutations, you have this company, and let’s say it’s a founder-led healthcare technology company, they are super stoked about their technology, they know it has the capability to transform XYZ, and they jump in and they are real stoked to make this happen, and they are convinced they have a great use case. What they typically underestimate is just how difficult… and I say this and I’m like… The only reason I’m investing the breath to say this is because I keep seeing it happen, and it just seems so rudimentary, but it’s true, no organization looks at change easily. Any large organization, change is hellish. And if you don’t understand that coming in and understand the expense of change, and what you are asking an organization to do, and you’re coming at it with that understanding, even if you’re talking to the innovation arm, the innovation arm is there and they’re daily confronting the sluggish nature of movement in the organization they’re trying to serve.
And so they’re sitting there in between in that liminal space, between a very stagnant organization, and all the forces of transformation that they are trying to sift through and determine what to bring forward, and they’re stuck in that messy middle. And so as an organization marketing into that, your ability to demonstrate your understanding of what you’re asking is really important, because if you come in and just say, “Everybody should fall at our feet, and this is the really smart thing to do, duh.” It’s just-
Mike Mosquito:
That’s not the reality, it’s healthcare.
John Farkas:
Yeah. But it is the funny reality of a lot of these solutions. They just think that that’s going to happen because they’re excited about what they’re bringing. And so having that understanding and working with… because ideally, the innovation team is a great bridge, but you need to be ready to work with them to equip them with the material, the information, the perspective they need to become your advocate. That’s an important posture to adopt in this.
Mike Mosquito:
It really is. It really is. You need to be able to come in and you got to be a guide. The chief digital information officer, the chief innovation officer, those roles are there to be a guide through this first, and explain, this is a lengthy decision-making process, from operations to clinical decision-making, and even bringing our patients on board. And we gather that information to make sure that those multiple levels of approval and understanding, protect from the operation of the hospital all the way to the patient, is protection of the people that are in that continuum of care. Now, then you’ve got regulatory compliance requirements, you’ve got budget constraints, you can’t buy everything, not everything’s on the table to be bought. Even if you can’t identify the problems, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right relationships and procurements on board. So all of this coming into play from a partner that may have the best solution, they’ve got to understand that the strategy behind it takes a long time.
And then you’ve got to demonstrate clear value when bringing this technology through the venture arm or through the innovation studio, and then the pilot programs and trials, they need to be flawless. If you’re going to identify problems, identify problems, fall on the sword, and recover quickly, and understand that you’re there to fix them together. But understand, you start at a smaller scale, you’re not getting the $10 million check out the gate when you’re a new startup, and your technology has been proven yet. That doesn’t happen. If you do, you found the unicorn.
Exploring the Need to Be Flawless
John Farkas:
Yeah. So you said something there that I’ve heard repeated multiple ways, multiple different personas here, the need to be flawless. Let’s talk about that. That’s an interesting requisite for an early stage tech company, not a small charge, and it is an important charge in healthcare and often underestimated. So talk about that standard and where you’ve seen problems in that regard.
Mike Mosquito:
So when an organization says they have tech, they come in, they want to implement it. And when I say flawless, I’m not talking about everything is just beautiful, flawless means that if there’s a problem, you flawlessly hold your hand up and say, “We made an error. We had a misstep here. We are going to fix it with you, and we now identify why that was there.” Because it depends on the type of program you’re in. In pilot program, you’re there to help find those errors. So you don’t sit and go, “I’m not sure. It must’ve been something with your clinical staff to break our solution. We haven’t seen this problem before.” I heard that one sitting around a room, and that was horrible. “Not us, there must be something wrong with your organization. It wasn’t me.”
John Farkas:
It wasn’t me.
Mike Mosquito:
Right. Right. We’ve never seen that happen with our solution before. These are words you should not use because this is a new technology. Now, you’re seeing it, how are you going to fix it and identify the problem so that it doesn’t happen again? So when I say flawless, I mean flawless around owning the good and owning the bad on both sides. Because I have seen way back in my career when technology was being innovated, from the first EHRs and EMRs, folks coming in with any myriad of solutions that could not do the work that was required to gather patient information from all these disparate systems and put it in one location to be served up into one screen, into a dashboard, and to be able to be available anywhere all the time. That came about because people did fail on the integration front, and that’s gotten better over time, but a lot of people had to fall on the sword because they could not create that connectivity.
And when you say, “Well, I’m not sure why it’s not connecting,” then you basically self-eliminated yourself from the solution category being the preferred vendor. And so over time, you’ve got to figure out how do you manage those challenges, and how do you flawlessly either accept and adopt change and make change, or walk away as the loser of implementation, and that’s not good for your future sales.
Cautions Surrounding the Idea of Innovation Theaters
John Farkas:
Yeah. Getting the proof of concept is only the first step, and then making that happen and making sure it happens flawlessly is a critical component. Talk a little bit… let’s touch on the idea, which I know is a thing that is worthy of some consideration here, but the idea of innovation theater. I know we’ve kind of talked around it some here, but it can be a real issue I think… from your perspective, what does that mean, how have you seen that play out in situations, and what can you do to avoid… or what are some of the red flags that will help you understand that that could be what you’re facing?
Mike Mosquito:
Well, I think, pretending like you have innovation is very dangerous. So we covered that before, and I think that when you talk about innovation theater, you’re acting and portraying yourself in one measure, but you’re not delivering under that measure, and that is very dangerous for patient care. Wasted resources, it’s going to divert time, money, and attention away from the real problems and the real projects that need to be addressed within an organization. That genuine impact around innovation theater is about how do we showcase flashy new stuff as a POC but it can never be implemented? We got a marketing spiel from it… pamphlets for everybody to see, or a commercial that we pushed out. But in the end, John, this erodes trust. In the end, when you can’t deliver and your patients find out that they are not being given that next level care that the hospital 15 minutes down the road can deliver, now you’ve eroded trust.
And now your quality metrics that you’re going to be measured against are going to start to degrade over time, cynicism around staff being able to deliver, your stakeholders within the community, all those promised benefits that you’ve marketed, when they don’t show up, they’re going to create those missed opportunities that are within the community that you’re serving, especially if you’re providing core services for that community. And you want to achieve meaningful success through that progress of innovation, and that meaningful success means patient had this experience five years ago, this next five years, we’re improving the processes, the engagement, and the outcomes. And what does that mean? We were going to show you our roadmap and plan, we’re going to bring patients in and help them tell us where there are potholes in our plan, we’re going to fill those potholes, and then we’re going to put out technology that’s going to build trust within the community, that includes the underserved, those disparate communities that don’t have connectivity, how are we going to help drive change in those communities, how are we going to give them special consideration and provide that care?
But if you talk about technology only in the city and urban areas and you’re not addressing those disparate communities, because you’re saying, “Oh, we’ve got all this technology,” but you can’t get to your population of people in the rural population, I think you start to erode that trust because you’re not a true innovation center. You’re not.
Addressing the Failure of Delivering Solutions
John Farkas:
Yep. Yeah. It means demonstrable efficacy, you got to be able to show it and be it… You said something, before we started recording, that I want to double back on because I know it’s a factor a number of our clients face, and it’s an emerging issue or echo that I hear in the space, and that is the idea that a lot of buyers might put out there, our EHR is going to… or does it, or is promising they’re going to do it, or we think they’re going to do it, and so they hesitate to implement a solution, it might be a point solution, it might be a smaller platform that can deliver for real on some of the needs that exist for now. They push pause because one of the big vendors, their EHR said something about that, addressing that issue. Talk a little bit about that, and what can a healthcare technology company who is encountering some of that friction do to address it?
Mike Mosquito:
I will tell you I have a list, my quick list, of top innovators and CIOs. And one particular CIO, he steps on the gas and doesn’t let off. His job is to be the bleeding edge and to make sure the health system is putting the best innovation in front of their patients and for their clinicians. And when there’s a misstep, they correct the misstep, they share it amongst the other health systems around them, so they’re collaborating and showcasing, “Hey, we’ve already gone down this path, don’t you also step in this path,” which I think is missing in healthcare. Health systems should be collaborating on the best technologies. And if they’re all on the same EMR, they should understand, “Hey, this is already working over here. Are we going to wait on this potential roadmap problem to be fixed in the EMR in the next what, six releases, seven releases, eight releases?” We don’t know.
It’s on the roadmap, it’s not guaranteed, there’s not a definitive timeline. And usually, when that timeline gets here, it’s going to get pushed. So a lot of CIOs have determined, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to-
John Farkas:
The old push.
Mike Mosquito:
You’re right, “It’s in the next release, but we’re going to push it a couple of cycles.” That’s normal. I came from McKesson, Eclipsys, these things were commonplace when releases were coming out if you weren’t ready to go to market and make them GA. How do you do this today? You find the best on the market for the solution to a problem you’re trying to solve and you give it a test bed, and when it’s working, what I’m seeing out here, that people are now not waiting, they’re not waiting on that, “It’s coming.” Now, there’s the 90% that are going to wait because they want one throat to choke. They believe in their EMR, they don’t want to go out and test another solution. But what’s happening in a lot of these bleeding edge and leading edge institutions is that they are finding these nuggets of care, and I have a list of solutions out there that are working today.
While the EMR may have it or may not have it in the future, it solves a problem today, it reduces cost, it improves the quality of care, it improves patient outcomes, and it’s going to provide what you need today. That means your hospital is leading edge, it’s creating trust, the governance around it has been proven to be sustainable and to provide as needed. It has guardrails. So why are you waiting if you’ve got a solution that you can solve for today? And it doesn’t mean that it has to be in the EMR. If interoperability is the ultimate need, these solutions can provide it, these solutions can’t integrate back in to the EMR. They spent the money to put your data where it needs to be, and ultimately, the data is key. If you can get the data from these new solutions into your EMR into the patient record that’s referenceable, when that patient is anywhere in your ecosystem of care, you should be looking at these third-party solutions that are going to provide those strategies for you to solve problems.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting… it’s a fear because… the one throat to choke is definitely a theme that I hear emerging, and a desire, and I understand it because we were in a snowstorm of micro point solutions for a long time and a lot of people spent a lot of money to create a lot of complexity. And we’re in the opposite pendulum swing from that right now, and that’s a good thing, I think. And we can’t move to a point where we’re waiting for some of these gigantic organizations to meet the need because they’re just not nimble enough, the needs are too prolific and acute right now to hope for some of those things to be solved in the big solutions.
So I think it’s a thing to… if I think about the world of the health tech companies that are out there, doing the work of understanding how long it’s taken for some of these innovations to come through an EMR, and helping your buyer understand what they’re likely up against between here and what is likely to deploy, and when it does deploy, is it going to be what you need, or is it going to be some little attempt at it? All that is important and stuff to talk to directly because those challenges do exist. Your ability to position yourself as a partner so that they understand that when you come in and are going to give them that support, that you’re not just going to throw tech at them and walk away but you’re going to be there with them, is important. And then having the courage to push into some of that headwind, I think is a critical-
Mike Mosquito:
And be able to be a guide. I think, John, other leaders in this area, they’re looking at being a guide and a thought leader, and sharing, “Here’s working for us. Here’s what you shouldn’t wait for.” When I attend these conferences and we’re in round table sessions, or I get called into a meeting with another health system, I’m sitting around to share not only from my advisory background, and some things that you do from Ratio, but be able to provide that advisory background of, “Here’s what’s working. Here’s why you shouldn’t wait,” and be able to take those proof points back to the executive leadership and say, “Why are we waiting on something for a potential tomorrow when we know it’s working today?”
And so it’s to bring facts and solutions that solve problems, but it’s also to help your organization understand we need to look around this ecosystem together. If there’s someone in another facility that’s been working on it, pull them up to say, “Okay, they’ve been working to solve this problem,” the whole ecosystem of care should be looking that direction and saying, “Yes, that works, but are we going to wait to solve that two, three years from now when it could be solved today?” Because ultimately, what may happen, what I’ve seen, John, is that you wait for the solution to be delivered, and ultimately, the EMR vendor buys a solution you were going to put in. Seen that happened? So you waited?
John Farkas:
Yeah. Well, yeah, that has happened, and then you just hung out and waited to get a more expensive version of what?
Mike Mosquito:
Right. Exactly.
Advice for Venturing into the Innovation Ecosystem
John Farkas:
Yeah. Well, that’s a good word and probably a good place for us to wind up. I know we’re at time here, but Mike, I am just curious if you have any parting shots or thoughts here as you consider what we’re talking about, if you were to give a piece of advice to those brave young tech companies out there trying to find their way into the innovation ecosystem?
Mike Mosquito:
I would say, keep innovating. It’s needed in healthcare, it’s needed in the industry, and multiple industries. I left healthcare for a while to go learn from other industries, John, and bring back that knowledge of innovation and emerging technology, how it changes our landscape. And it changed my perspective, and I think you hear that when I’m on stage and presenting on various topics. But innovation is a machine, and sometimes you need to warm that machine up and go slow, and then sometimes that machine’s already warm and ready to go, you can create and drive straight through and not have to worry about fuel in the tank, the engine is warm, the tank is full and the organization is ready to drive. But you need to make sure you understand which of those positions you’re in. And if it’s in, I need to warm my machine up, and then drive slow to get my engine warm. Then you need to adhere to that and be able to collaborate, educate, and adopt that methodology throughout, and look at these innovation companies as an opportunity to, one, show you what they can do.
Don’t be scared of them, but let them show you what they can do under your governance and guardrails of healthcare and the provider network, or even the payer network. Let them show you what they can do, and then when it’s time for you to raise this child up to be able to drive on their own, they’re able to go, because you’re not going to be in that position to look at all technology, but the technology you do look at, and I’m talking to the innovators out there, put your best foot forward first. When you step up to speak to someone like myself, or the CIO, or the CDIO, make sure your knowledge about what we do, who we are, is on point, and make sure you understand that what your technology is going to solve for. Bring the strategy behind the problem first, identify that first, and then talk about your technology.
Closing Question
John Farkas:
Because you’re likely to have that one opportunity. Mike, thank you for your insight. We are thrilled to have you a part of the Ratio Advisory Board, and appreciate the perspective you bring in that context. And what I want to just touch on real quick is if somebody’s wanting to tune into your frequency, what’s the best place for them to find you?
Mike Mosquito:
You can find me on LinkedIn. My podcast is… drop it as well, John, called The Buzz podcast. You’ll be able to find me on BotOn Health, which is an AI platform for communication and translation services. So if you go to that website, you’ll find me. If you find me on LinkedIn, you’ll find the Recap. So if I’m at a conference and you’re looking to be on the Recap, find me, we’ll get a picture, and you may even get a sound bite dropped on the conference floor. But I’ll be at the Fall conference, see you soon, I’ll be out and about, so I hope to see everyone out there. But it’s been a great being on the show today. I’m looking forward to doing it again-
John Farkas:
Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. We are grateful. Mike Mosquito, thank you for joining us today on Healthcare Market Matrix.
Mike Mosquito:
Thank you.
Outro:
Healthcare Market Matrix is a Ratio original podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, then jump over to healthcaremarketmatrix.com and subscribe, and we’d really appreciate your support in the form of a five-star rating on your favorite podcast platform, it does make a difference. Also, while you’re there, you can become a part of the Healthcare Market Matrix community, and get access to courses and content that’s created just for you by signing up for InsightSquared, a monthly newsletter dedicated to bringing you the latest health tech marketing insights right to your inbox. Ratio is an award-winning marketing agency headquartered in the Nashville, Tennessee. We operate at the intersection of brand and growth marketing to equip companies with strategies to create meaningful connections with the healthcare market, and ultimately, drive growth. Want to know more? Go to Goratio.com. That’s G-O-R-A-T-I-O.com. And we’ll see you at noon Central next week for an all new episode from our team at Ratio Studios. Stay healthy.
About Mike Mosquito
Mike Mosquito is a national thought leader for transformation, innovation, and emerging technology. Throughout his career, Mike has created and directed cross-functional teams and implemented enterprise technology solutions for public, private, and government entities. He is recognized across multiple industries for developing and managing multi-million-dollar strategies, organizations, programs, projects, and emerging technology products. Additionally, Mike empowers these large cross-functional teams to collaborate and make fact-based decisions guided by executive, business, and technology-themed roadmaps.
With 20+ years of healthcare IT experience, functioning at the Fortune 10, he has managed teams as an executive as a provider and consulted for some of the top businesses in the world. As a leader in healthcare IT and multi-industry consulting, Mike and his teams provide strategic and technical solutions for problems emerging technology support in addition to the integration of IT, Clinical, and Business Management. The solutions include AI governance, integration, digital and experience transformation, data analytics, developing centers of excellence, process automation, strategic innovation roadmaps, and providing companies with a new landscape for implementing, managing, and supporting entities from start-up to large business growth investments.
Mike attended the United States Air Force Academy and is a graduate of Auburn University, where he earned a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree, with a minor in Materials Engineering. He also earned a Master of Business Administration degree with a special concentration on Business Information Systems Management and Information Technology from the Michael J. Coles College of Business through Kennesaw State University. In addition to being a certified CHCIO, Certified, Digital Health Executive, and active member and teaching staff of CHIME, he also serves on the board at Georgia HIMSS as Communications Chair. Mike maintains a variety of professional memberships, including, American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), Association for Executives in Health Information Technology (AEHIT), and Project Management Institute (PMI). He is also a guest presenter at various institutions and national speaking events.