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Becker's Healthcare podcast made for the people who
power US Healthcare. I am Molly Gamble with
Becker's, and today delighted to spend time with
Tim Callahan.
Tim is the chief technology officer for University
of Michigan Medicine or Michigan Medicine.
Tim, welcome to the podcast. How are you
and where do we find you today?
I'm doing absolutely great, and I'm working from
my home office today.
Terrific.
Well, Tim, for listeners who might not be
as familiar with Michigan Medicine as they otherwise
could be, could you provide a brief overview
just to help us get reacquainted with the
organization?
Yeah. So Michigan Medicine is really the the
health care provider
arm
and,
medical school to the University of Michigan. So
most are very familiar with the University of
Michigan, certainly with our national champion football team
of last year,
and we're looking forward to repeating that again
this year.
But, again, Michigan Medicine is really the health
care providers of the hospital system associated
with the health care system,
as well as as well as the medical
school.
We also have affiliates
on the western side of the state and
also
in the central western part of the state.
So the reach expands quite a bit beyond
Ann Arbor and is,
continuing to expand
statewide
as we look out into our future.
Right.
And then over the past quarter, Tim, where
have you been focusing most of your your
time and energy
within Michigan Medicine
as chief technology officer? What's been really core?
Yeah. So I'm about 2 years into the
role, and I accepted the role because Michigan
Medicine
had a very strong desire to modernize their
infrastructure. And really what that meant to them
was they wanna move a lot of their
workloads to the cloud. So we've been spending
a lot of time issuing RFPs
and getting ready for that cloud migration.
We're moving Epic to the cloud. We're moving
sector to the cloud. We're moving all of
our general purpose workloads to the cloud. So,
but because we're a public institution, because we're
part of, the University of Michigan,
we need to issue a whole bunch of
RFPs, and we need to get ready for
that migration.
In the midst of all of that,
there was also an acquisition with Sparrow Health.
So we've also been deeply,
engaged
in integration
and consolidation,
collaboration with,
with affiliates. So I mentioned that we have
UMH West and and, Sparrow.
So we are working with them to understand
how our cloud strategy could impact them,
as well as what can we do together.
How do we share common best practices?
How do we,
look at the applications that we have within
the broader ecosystem,
and how do we achieve synergies between those
3 different organizations?
Mhmm.
And that work of migrating workflows to the
cloud,
what's the most taxing
aspect of that work for for you as
the leader of those efforts? You mentioned a
lot of RFPs.
Michigan Medicine is a public institution like you
said. Is there something that you didn't hint
at, Tim, that has been especially demanding on
your time or your team?
Well, I think, with with all IT projects,
probably
the preparation,
is super important
in that journey. There's preparation work, there's foundational
work,
that needs to be done that's really behind
the scenes,
that doesn't get, seen a lot throughout the
organization. So they're kinda wondering, hey. What are
you doing?
But those foundational pieces are really critically important.
The other aspect that's really critically important in
a health care
migration to the cloud or a health organization
moving to the cloud is this aspect of
business disruption.
So when you move a workload from an
on prem
environment
to a cloud location, you wanna do that
very, very seamlessly.
You don't wanna impact the end user community.
So I I mentioned, you know, we're gonna
be moving Epic to the cloud. We wanna
have users
using the on prem system, you know, Sunday
during the day, and then we wanna use,
those same users to wake up on Monday
and access the cloud based solution. They should
not
notice anything different other than the fact that
everything's working better and faster than it was
on Sunday.
So being able to move these things without
having any end user disruption is the real
trick of the trade
and something that we're,
and the team are very good at implementing
both on the epic side of the journey
as well as sector and the general purpose
workload. So we've developed a very comprehensive strategy
in terms of how we're gonna move these
really critically important workloads
and how to do that in a nondisruptive
manner, which is super important in a health
care setting. Mhmm.
And it's also I mean, that's a distinct
need for a leader too because you mentioned
this work, the prep for that migration behind
the scenes.
Also, the seamless transition
where it's almost as though people don't even
detect it. I mean, success being
defined in part by being hard to distinguish
or notice
and fitting right in,
that can sometimes be
a unique challenge as a leader when when
the goal isn't necessarily more visibility or attention
to what's being being done. Right?
Right. No doubt.
When when success is that you've that nobody
notices anything that you're doing, you know, it's
hard to, you know,
really highlight yourself as a leader, but that
really is success in the cloud migration
or a migration or a consolidation. We we
wanna make sure that we're being nondisruptive,
to the business, but yet delivering a lot
of value,
in in performing that move.
So we have all the confidence in the
world that once the move is created,
we'll be able to deliver all sorts of
tools and technologies to our energy community they
simply didn't have in the on prem environment.
We'll be able to deliver that in the
cloud. So that's really the goal and the
anticipation
and really the excitement around some of these
projects. Mhmm.
Well, zooming out from Michigan Medicine, I I
wanted to talk to you about something more
broadly, and this really spans industry wide. But
there was an interesting stat that came out
this week from an IBM report. It caught
my eye. And this report uncovered
a paradox in which you've got a lot
of CEOs
saying how much they value collaboration between technology
leaders and their CFOs.
And then it turns out that only a
small fraction of tech c level leaders are
actually working closely with finance to
align their tech metrics with the business goals.
And this, again, not health care specific. This
report spanned
26
industries. But, Tim, I I wanted to bring
it to your attention and see what you
think about this.
As a CTO,
what do you think contributes to that disconnect
where CEOs are saying they really want the
technology and finance leaders
to work closely together and collaborate, and then
it turns out it's not happening as much
as one might think.
Yeah. Those,
those numbers
somewhat surprised me.
I I know that in at least the
last decade of my career,
I've worked
for organizations,
that have a lot of rigor and maturity
around,
you know, product development life cycles and business
case use cases,
to where really any of the types of
things that I might want to do, whether
it be, cloud migration, whether it be an
integration,
whether it be a consolidation,
at any IT type of initiative,
we need to develop some element of a
business case to understand how much we're gonna
spend,
and
what the budget's gonna be,
both from a product perspective, from an infrastructure
perspective, as well as from a a people
perspective or even a consulting
effort perspective. All of those elements need to
be brought in so that we can clearly
define to the organization
what we anticipate,
expending on that effort. So I've been maybe
blessed,
that to be a part of organizations that
have that type of
rigor. But what one of the interesting things
about,
this particular,
topic is you specifically called out CFOs.
And what I what I found interesting to
that distinction
is
there's a lot of financial metrics that are
important to businesses.
But in a health care system, sometimes you
do things
not because it makes financial sense, but because
it's gonna better patient care or better,
or create a better patient experience. So you
may do something that financially doesn't make sense,
but you'd you're going to embark on that
project or that initiative because it's gonna save
lives or you're going to create a better
customer experience,
which will,
which will better the community. So there there
are these aspects
of certainly within health care of
broadening your discussion, not just for the CFOs,
but broadening to the to the entire c
suite to make sure that we're capturing all
of the needs and wants of the organization
and make sure everyone's
voice is being reflective as we move forward.
So
so I was surprised by the metrics. I
think it's super important. I think it's important
to work with the CFO. I think it's
important to work with a broader c suite.
I think it's important to have good governance
in really anything that you do from a
technology perspective.
So I would encourage
those that are operating in a vacuum,
you know, to to maybe broaden their,
their scope and and broaden their,
their communication,
channels,
aspects of the business.
Mhmm.
Well, thanks, Tim. And for listeners, this was
the report out of IBM August 2024 across
26 industries. Those stats,
66% of CEOs emphasizing the importance of collaboration,
and then only 39% of technology leaders
working with finance.
So I think, Tim, your point is well
received. CFOs, that's one role. There can be
a lot of other ways, whether it's operationally,
customer experience, patient care, that technology needs to
be integrated into a health system like Michigan
Medicine. Shifting gears just a little bit, you
know, speaking of C level executives and and
leaders, can you share, Tim, an important leadership
lesson that you learned firsthand throughout your career?
What is the lesson? And then I think
more importantly, what's the story behind it? How
did you arrive at it?
Well, I've learned within IT
that there are a a 1000000 and one
ways to accomplish a given objective.
And the way that I would go about
accomplishing a particular task may be different than
someone else on my team.
And it's important to reflect on that. I
think as leaders,
it's our job to set the vision. It's
our job to,
define
where we're going and why we're going there.
But to loosen the reins or give our
teams,
lots of rope and lots of latitude
in order to develop
the way that we would accomplish that vision
or the way that we would accomplish those
goals because there are very different ways,
that we can do that. And for those
of us who have been in IT
for a long, long time,
at some point in time, your teams
take away your username and password or take
away your access to certain systems
because they don't want you meddling in routers
or switches or or or databases or things
of that nature. And the reason that they're
doing that is because they're telling you, hey.
There's better ways to do it, or we
don't want you doing that stuff. We want
you doing these other things.
So it's a humbling experience when those things
happen,
as an IT leader that your team says,
maybe you shouldn't have access to that, or
maybe we don't want you doing those particular
things.
And I crossed that bridge many, many moons
ago.
But it is fun to reflect, and it
is important to say, here's the vision. Here's
what we're trying to do. Here's why we're
trying to do that,
and allow the teams to develop thoughts and
strategies about how they're going to accomplish that.
Mhmm.
And where does the the skill and the
leadership
trait of asking good questions come in here?
Because
like you said, Tim, if you're trusting the
team to come up with the plan, you
lay out the vision, but they're the ones
really owning and developing the plan.
How does your ability to ask questions? Maybe
if you spot something that's a bit fuzzy
or it could be a potential pitfall
rather than rolling out your plan, Tim's version.
Do you find yourself just trying to probe
more and help them identify those things themselves?
What does that look like?
You know, I I think developing
or,
getting really good at the Socratic method of
painting that picture
is really important. And what I mean by
the Socratic method is Socrates,
asked a lot of questions,
in his,
teachings.
And in asking those questions, he helps provide
illustrations and help help the teams, you know,
see,
the goal at the end of,
you know, his objective or what his vision
was. And I think that's really important in
IT. A lot of times,
when you've been in IT as long as
I have, you've seen what works and you've
seen what hasn't worked.
But you don't necessarily
want to impress or tell the teams this
is the way that we're gonna do it,
as I said in the past.
What you wanna do is you wanna kinda
show them these are the different ways that
you can do it. And then while you're
showing them the different ways that they can
achieve those objective,
ask questions.
And and asking of those questions, you should
be showing your teams
the pitfalls or the advantages of one way
over another way. And I do a lot
of that when I'm when I'm scheduling meetings
with vendors,
when I'm trying to educate the teams on
what works and what doesn't work, I ask
a lot of questions
not because I don't know the answer, but
because I want the teams to understand what
the answer to those questions are and why
it's important to the overall vision,
that we're trying to achieve.
So
asking questions is super, super important even if
you know the answer to it. As a
leader, asking those questions
to really highlight
significance and importance,
to your teams is really important and understanding
why you would go down one path as
opposed to another.
Mhmm.
Mhmm. Great. And and, Tim, as we wind
down here, is there anything else you'd like
to share with our listeners? We kinda danced
around a few different topics today. Anything we
didn't get to that they should know or
keep in mind?
Yeah. No. I,
you know, first off, you know, thanks for
having me, and and thanks for,
thanks for the time today.
But as as we conclude,
you know, IT is a lot of fun.
And
and I got into IT because I really
thought of it as a big giant, you
know, puzzle.
And it was fun to put those different
pieces together.
And at the end of the day,
as I said, there's lots of different ways
to achieve a different IT objective.
It's also super important to have fun along
the way, and I think that you can
do that.
You can do really complicated things. You can
do very innovative things. And I think at
the end of the day, when those things
are accomplished,
when those,
objectives are met, that it's fun to reflect
back on it. And, hopefully, it's fun.
It was it was fun to accomplish it,
along the road. So
have fun while you're going about doing your
your IT goals and objectives.
And if we're gonna wrap up, you know,
it is important to have fun during these
IT projects.
Absolutely.
Well, Tim Callahan, chief technology officer with Michigan
Medicine, thank you again for being our guest
today. Just a real pleasure to catch up
with you and
hear your take on a number of different
topics, Tim. So I hope it's a a
great fall for you and your team and
Michigan football.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much again for having me,
and and you have a great rest of
the day. You too. Thanks, Tim.