Hello, everyone, and thank you for tuning in
to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
We are thrilled to be joined today by
Barbara Casey, president of strategy and transformation at
Pixel Health. Barbara, thank you so much for
joining us.
Thank you, Laura. I'm so happy to be
here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Now I'm
excited for today's conversation.
Really, we have a lot to talk about
it and so much is happening in health
care. It's can be hard to keep up.
So that'd be great to jump right in.
Can you please tell us a little bit
more about Pixel Health? Sure. Sure. We are
a digital health consulting services organization.
We help design and plan and implement technology
based solutions
that simplify and improve the way health care
organizations operate.
We are also very collaborative with our clients.
We work with them side by side,
and
we pretty much have integrated
consulting services as well as technology services.
We facilitate the use of technology,
simplify the process
of using it, and help overcome the organizational
constraints
many times of optimizing its adoption.
Absolutely. I know that optimization piece is always
easier said than done. So I can imagine
a lot of organizations and leaders, you know,
would be music to their ears. How is
Pixel Health working to address the most pressing
issues in health care IT today?
So we have 4 distinct areas, Laura, that
we focus on.
Couple that are more on the,
process and people side are connected health care
and accessible health care. So in connected health
care, we think of that as everything that
is related to data, how it flows
from the infrastructure
to connecting
people, devices,
you know, business processes,
all of those things, let's say, for providers.
It's also the staff, you know, supporting doctors,
supporting nurses, and inpatient as well as remote
locations. How do we do that?
Accessible health care really is more about access.
So it's about patient access optimization.
And as we think about these audiences, we
we think about the experiences that people wanna
have. So for its staff, it's in the
work environment.
If it's patients, it's with their caregivers and
clinicians, right, their doctors, how they get into
the health system.
Is it digital? Is it self-service? Is it
through a contact center?
We do all kinds of
consulting that supports those efforts
for those different stakeholders.
The third area that we cover and work
on is what we call our IT foundation
services.
And this is really to promote resilient, secure,
and cost effective
IT.
We work with our clients and their IT
organizations
to really help them figure out how to
how to just improve and optimize what they
do.
We also have a lot of deep expertise
in infrastructure,
mostly on the networking side, I would say,
and the telecommunications
side.
So we we do a lot of work
there, and we really have a platform and
architectural approach
when we work with with our health system
clients.
The 4th area that we work on is
more about the how. So I would say
it's innovation and and adoption.
In that particular
pillar,
we end up doing a lot of human
centered design work,
journey mapping, things like that. You know, really
defining the experiences that we wanna have in
any of the digital health services that we're
providing.
We also do organizational
design,
product thinking type workshops, so really organizing an
IT department or even
health system by product types,
and then really thinking about how to weave
in innovation
as well as sunsetting some capabilities.
So that's really more about
product and service development and how to keep
that fresh inside of an organization.
So that's more almost how how do we
how do you run your health system, and
we focus on those things as well as
we're developing new ideas with our clients.
Well, that's amazing to hear, you know, and
certainly a really needed service, for most health
care organizations.
Now looking ahead, what strategic areas is your
organization focusing on to enhance your clients' performance?
So we do have a couple of areas
that we're focused on. In in that connected
health care space,
we are
ideating and working with our clients on what
we're calling spaces that care.
So that's imagine
the actual hospital room
as being a member of the care team,
if you will.
So the hospital room itself is ambient aware.
It's sensor rich. It's context aware. It starts
automating
possibly
business processes that nurses don't have time to
do.
It, you know, it acts almost like a
member of the care team if it's doing
its job. It's underpinned by AI,
and so it's really enabled, and it it
becomes a whole new vision
for, I think, a lot of what we
wanna be able to do in the inpatient
setting. So that's one.
A second one is really the whole idea
of access optimization
and, you know, how do we really help
health systems increase
prioritizing
patient access? Or, I mean, it's, I shouldn't
say, it's it is a priority for health
systems today, for sure,
recognizing their critical role in delivering care.
However, you know, digital progression,
we find, is often hindered by operational constraints
in this area.
Sometimes if health system wants to go full
bore with online scheduling,
they are sort of plagued by what's happening
in their physician practices in terms of the
workflows and the way that doctors want to
schedule,
you know, and it it is a shared
experience. Right? It's a shared experience between a
patient and a doctor, so we have to
respect
both stakeholders in that analysis
and really do the work
sometimes on operations,
to help make some of those digital self-service
things happen. So we're we're doing a lot
of those things right now to really change
the way
health care experiences for patients in terms of
access can just be a lot more like
what we would experience
with other industries.
You know, being able just to do everything
you wanna do on your phone and
and not necessarily having to call somebody to
make an appointment as an example or or
get in to see somebody quickly.
That makes a lot of sense. You know?
And I can imagine truly,
something patients would be excited about too. As
we all know, having that access on the
phone and seamless ability to have more control
over the health care experience certainly is something,
patients have wanted and needed.
Now from your perspective, can you share an
example of where Pixel Health has done this?
Sure.
I'll go to the connected health care space
side. So one of the things that we've
done recently and and implemented
with is with Boston Children's. We did a
about a two and a half year project
with them as
one of their work streams to upgrade their
EHR to Epic. They went all Epic. They
had multiple
EHR systems, and and they recently implemented Epic
in the summer.
And as a work stream there, they also,
at the same time, mind you, wanted to
implement their clinical communications
technology stack and have that go live literally
at the same time.
And so we did a a number of
different things with them to make that happen
and make it go well for the nurses
and doctors treating patients.
One of the things we did was really
understand their connectivity.
So,
really making sure that their network was working
well so that when a doctor or a
nurse went to have a phone call or
do a secure text or, you know, put
in some documentation
that it actually worked,
that the connectivity was there, and and it
it they didn't drop calls, and they didn't
lose their place in their workflow.
So we implemented
a 5 g private network, a stand alone
5 g network with the assistance of T
Mobile.
That was a big work stream in that
project,
and it was the first of its kind.
And nowhere else had there been a stand
alone 5 g network specifically
to underpin the clinical care team
and all the different things that they're trying
to get done. So that was interesting. And
we also,
implemented
several
systems to make sure that the technology would
work for doctors and nurses the day they
showed up. And
and that took a long time because it
was really, you know, getting those systems to
actually go live correctly
on the day and be
really staggered to do that,
as well as just all the work flows.
So we worked with them kind of unit
by unit to really create what are the
workflows that are gonna be optimized, and and
then how do we make sure it all
works the way they would want it to
in the experience that they wanted to have.
We we're really big on human centered design
work, so we start typically
with the experience that that our care teams
wanna have. In this case, you know, in
a patient, it might be a patient experience
that we're really trying to map, like, a
journey
and understand what that needs to be like.
So that's where we've done it recently, and
they're they're having a lot of stick of
success right now
in terms of their clinical communications of work.
That's fascinating to hear, and what a great
opportunity to be part of something first ever,
really in the nation and then to see
it be successful as well at a place
as important as a children's hospital. I I
can imagine that's very gratifying and certainly impressive.
Looking ahead, what excites you about the power
of information and technology in health care?
Well, I know it's probably
said often, but
AI is is extremely
exciting and powerful
and, you know, I guess that's the the
scary part of it too is that it
could be there are risks involved. And so
we all have to chart carefully into those
waters and and understand, you know, what governance
should be there or, you know, what are
sort of the the boundaries that we should
put on it. But at least from the
things that we've seen in working with our
clients and really trying to do,
I call it augmented intelligence as opposed to
artificial intelligence, because I think
the augmentation
really to the humans
is so important. I think that's the piece
that that's really going to to be the
game changer is that it can hopefully allow
us to
get more complex or, you know, allow the
human to really do what the human does
well,
and and then alleviate some of the burden,
you know, cognitive or otherwise, that individuals are
trying to to master
on a daily basis and, you know, hopefully
do a lot of the rote or repetitive
type motions
for us or, you know, whether that's writing
or
business process automation or, you know, whatever that
is. That's I think it'll be a game
changer, and I know everybody else does too.
I also think
because of all this advanced tech,
there are
some basics that we need to go back
to
in terms of going slower to go faster,
and,
I think doing just a lot more thoughtful,
focused planning,
using human centered design, you know, doing
a lot of the journey maps up front,
you know, defining those experiences we wanna have
up front
will really help us go faster in terms
of how we then implement new technologies
in the future. So
that's maybe a little twist on your question.
I love that. I I think it makes
a lot of sense. You know, it's really
exciting to be part of that wave of
innovation that's happening right now in the health
care space and really making very positive changes
for health care teams as well as their
patients and communities at large. I wanna thank
you, Barbara, for sharing your time and insights
with us today and Pixel Health for sponsoring
today's content. To our listeners, thank you for
joining us, and please be sure to check
out other Becker's podcasts. Have a wonderful rest
of your day. Thank you, Laura. Thanks for
having me.