- This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined
by your brilliant chief executive officer and leader.
We're joined today by Jim Jacobs, the president
and the CEO of Quant.
Uh, he's gonna talk today about data management,
about artificial intelligence
and more Jim's the kind of leader who's been in the space
of sort of decision making, clinical decision making
and support, uh,
before it was something
that was talked about every single day.
He's got himself a master's in decision support.
Uh, he's been the leader of a few companies.
He's been now with qu leading quant for,
I think six, seven years now.
And just a terrific person to visit with.
Jim, thank you for being here.
Can you take a moment to tell us a little bit
about yourself and about Met?
- Sure, I'd be happy to, and thank you so much
for the opportunity to speak with you
and, uh, your audience.
Um, yeah, I've been in healthcare for a long time, uh,
currently president, CEO at quant.
I'm very fortunate to be a part of an amazing team
that's been pioneering active data archiving
and data management since 1999.
Very much look forward to the discussion,
and we are absolutely in an interesting time right now.
Uh, things are actually getting more interesting, uh,
the further we go, so I look
forward to having this discussion.
- Jim, thank you so much.
Uh, you know, we, we all know
that healthcare leaders are facing an overwhelming spike in
technology offerings.
So many d different offerings out there, sort
of amid this rapid innovation amidst so many offerings,
being, being sort of forward it or put in front of leaders.
What's important for leaders
to keep in mind and, and, and why?
Why is it important?
- Yeah. There's a couple of real important things
to keep in mind, which is, uh, are the new systems
that you're looking at replacing, uh, old systems?
Are there overlaps?
Do other systems need to be rationalized?
And are there systems that can actually be archived
to help free up dollars with the margin pressures that are
so extreme, it's often the case
that we can actually help free up the dollars.
And so really those two aspects.
Plus looking at security, are there systems that you have
that are older, that don't have good security?
As you're facing new choices,
making sure you're filling in the gaps
and creating a complete plan is one
of the recommendations we make.
- Thank you. And when you look at sort
of digital transformation to population health initiatives,
health organizations are relying on data
to make sustainable improvements as it comes
to data management and legacy data.
Everybody's dealing with so much legacy data.
Wh what key challenges are organizations facing
and what steps can they take to navigate those challenges of
how to deal with legacy data?
This comes up seemingly every day.
How, how can organizations deal with
and what steps they take to navigate that?
- Yeah, that's a great question
and it's an involved, uh, set of discussions,
but it, at the, at its most basic level, it's,
it's assessing the data you have, making sure
that you've got a good data governance program in place,
that the right stakeholders are at the table,
having discussions about the usefulness of data.
We're a big believer in leaving data in discreet form,
get it out of the systems, the older systems,
and put it all together so that it can be accessible from,
from new capabilities and new technologies.
And we'd also recommend people take a step
back and take a broader view.
There are, there are immediate short term cost discussions
that people have, but, uh, we found
that if you really take a step back
and look at total cost, uh, of what the data means,
what the value of the data is, what are, what are the risks
that you're really facing, it's a much better discussion
to think about, uh, overall cost of the organization instead
of just point expenses that you have, uh,
on any given day today.
- A hundred percent. And we hear that so often
as systems try
and hit this right balance between point solutions and,
and larger, broader solutions.
Talk about a data from perspective of
artificial intelligence.
Everybody sees artificial intelligence
becoming increasingly integrated into healthcare
in a lot of different ways.
How do you make sure that your data infrastructure
ultimately works in tandem with AI tools
and continuous advancements here?
How do you make that work
and maybe what do you see the next five,
10 years in data management, you know,
that you do this consistent
with the way that'll allow AI to work with you?
Well, any thoughts there for systems?
- Yeah, we think the data's foundational, uh,
getting the data organized, having it, uh, uh, in a way
that it's easily accessed
because it needs to be in discreet format
and organized around patients
or around whatever the entities are that you're going
to maybe use the data.
Uh, we've even recently seen people using long-term patient
accounting data for payer scorecards and denial management.
So making sure there's good hygiene around the data, uh,
is such a key, uh, that we see that, that, um, uh,
drives good AI projects.
Uh, we also recommend people stay away from sort of
what we call the easy button of just dumping
data into a PDF.
Uh, it makes it much more difficult to do things
with the data, uh,
and keeping it in a, in available form is critical as far as
what the next to five to 10 years.
Um, that just makes me smile broadly. I don't actually know.
I think that some of the biggest opportunities
around disease management answering questions like,
what are the early indicators of Alzheimer's?
Uh, when do we understand, uh, when,
when patients are actually starting to have issues years
before, uh, the significant events start to onset.
So we believe that the technologies
that are coming about are phenomenal.
They're amazing. The sky's the limit in terms
of the problems they can help solve.
And from a data management,
the hospitals just need to get ready.
They need to get prepared, they need
to make sure they have a good program for valuing the data,
making sure that data's gonna be available
and spend the money now
to make sure you're prepared for the future.
- And lemme ask you a another question.
I'm gonna drive into two different questions.
I I I'll ask you to wrap up.
What else should the listeners be thinking about leaders be
thinking about before we get there?
Jim, I'd love to ask you,
what are you most excited about this year?
What are you most focused on and excited about this year?
- That there are new use cases for data
that are already coming to light,
and they are sort of proving out the fact
that we're at the tip of the iceberg.
We're at the very beginning of
what I would call an AI adoption curve, if you will.
I missed, I mentioned the patient accounting, uh, one
that's brand new in the past, say, 12 months.
So I'm excited about the fact that the marriage of ai,
generative AI and, and data, uh, more
and more hospitals are valuing the data.
Um, they view the data more and more as an asset.
And the more that happens,
we think the richer the data sets will be,
the richer the analysis will be,
the richer the insights will be.
And AI has become a catalyst to really drive that forward.
I think Salesforce has a phenomenal commercial outright now,
and they say, if AI is the new Wild West, doesn't
that make data the new gold?
Uh, we've believed that for a very long time
and think it the, um,
what's happening now is proving that out.
- But, but it's interesting what you say
because if you just dump it into a PDF, it makes it very,
very hard for the ai, different sort of algorithms
that are coming, the different ways of driving that
to use that data.
So I think that point is so well taken.
Anything else our wizards should be thinking about? Jim?
- I think that, um, when you think about data, one
of the main drivers has always been around compliance.
And that's a, that's a very good driver.
If hospitals more
and more adopt the point of view that data is, is an asset
that it's valuable, then I think people are gonna want
to keep it around longer.
Because to your question about what's gonna happen in five
years, no one really knows.
So if you've gotten rid of a lot of data,
if you've deleted a lot of data under the guise
of a compliance regulation,
we believe there's huge opportunities that are being missed.
And that an eye to the future is critical
because it's a very exciting future that's in front of us.
- Jim, I wanna thank you for joining us.
You're one of the most principled
and centered leaders I get to visit with.
I can't tell you much. I appreciate your time in the
working with qu.
Uh, for those that are e listening in, uh,
quant will also be at the Becker's Healthcare annual
meeting, which is April 8th to 11th in Chicago.
They have a booth 4 27.
Would love to have you come by and say hello to Quant.
But, uh, Jim, what a pleasure to visit with you
and what an amazing career.
Thank you so much for joining us today
on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
- Well, thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate and have a wonderful day.