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Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Health Care
podcast recorded live at the 9th annual health
IT, digital health, and RCM conference in Chicago.
We're joined today by Karen Hunter, chief nursing
informatics officer at Adventist Health. Karen, to get
us started, can you please tell us a
little bit about yourself, your background, and your
role
at your organization? Yes. Good afternoon, Jeremy.
I'm the chief nursing informatics officer, as you
said, and I work for Adventist Health. We're
a $8,000,000,000
revenue, 28 hospital, roughly 400 clinics,
system in the West Coast based out of
Roseville, California.
In my role, I leverage mostly my nursing
background. Was a bedside nurse for roughly
9 years, then went into management for 6
years. While I was there, we had a
fatal medical error.
It got my attention. I, a 17 year
old girl came in with a heart and
lung transplant,
and discovered the organs donated were the wrong
blood type. And it taught me the power
of data. Now one, erroneous piece of data
cost this girl her life. And so I
looked at how does technology help us be
better, better clinicians,
better operators,
and so forth. So I went back to
school, got my master's in nursing informatics, never
looked back.
Mhmm. So AI adoption is exploding in health
care. In your view, what would you say
is the most significant or promising application of
this technology right now?
And, how is this informing your organization's innovation
strategy?
Absolutely. I think this is huge. This is
gonna transform health care. I I know I'm
not alone in that opinion.
The most significant and promising application today is
augmenting
clinicians,
making them better, smarter, safer,
not replacing them, not doing their job for
them, but surfacing information, analyzing it, you know,
at lightning speed and being able to
pull that up, apply algorithms, and surface,
and help the clinician prioritize what's going on
with the patient, identifying those soft spots in
the clinical picture that may not be so
evident at first look, first glance.
We are moving forward at Adventist Health. We're
on a 2 year journey to replace our
EHR with a new system and we're going
to embed AI in this.
But I'm happy to say we do have
a nursing focused AI strategy or solution in
place right now,
which helps,
nurses in the emergency room adequately assess
patients. So the nurse enters their assessment in
the HR.
When they click submit, immediately pops up with
a confirmation
or suggestion. You might consider additional factors in
this patient's condition that could, make them a
higher priority to be seen in the emergency
room. We found it very helpful with throughput
and really have come to rely on it
as a effective guide.
Again, however, it still remains with the nurse
whether to accept that decision or not.
So health care leaders are managing greater volumes
of data and more devices
populations.
In this complex environment, what clinical data integration
tools or practices
are you seeing drive improvements in patient outcomes
and operations? And do you mind sharing a
couple examples?
Absolutely.
I remember when I was working in ICU,
we had an, I think at that time,
an average of 19 different pieces of clinical
equipment in the room. And I used to
joke that we had to be able to
troubleshoot any one of those in the time
it takes you to hold your breath
because a critical,
care patient was relying on them.
So nurses are not new to managing all
this information and, and coming forward.
However,
interoperability
is not,
as robust as it could be. And I
think that's a fundamental thing that we often
forget in chasing the next shiny object.
But simply ensuring that, like, our vital signs
machines
are integrated to the HR.
If we wait for someone to manually enter
those vital signs, we risk, you know, mistakes.
We risk omissions.
Mhmm. And, also we don't get the benefit
of the real time data analysis and tools
that are in the system.
So I think this is a fundamental thing,
interoperability, making sure all that data is flowing
seamlessly in real time between systems.
So how can health care organizations better support
IT and clinical teams as they carry out
innovation efforts? And, what are some of the
common pitfalls here? Wow. This is a good
question because
everyone is so passionate in health care. Our
IT colleagues,
could make more money elsewhere, but they choose
to work in health care because they feel
called to,
support patients and drive patient care.
But they don't always understand the language of
the clinician. And that's a particular,
value my role brings the organization is that
the goal between to help translate between the
two specialties
Mhmm. And translate what the priorities are. Think
we have to work together. We have to
forge this math together and continue to work
on understanding each other, trusting each other.
The common pitfalls, you know, just miscommunication and
misunderstanding each other.
But roles like mine and informatics can help
with that.
So based on your experience in the health
care industry, what is your top piece of
advice for other leaders as they prepare for
further advancements in technology and greater demands for
care? I've been waiting for this question.
As we move forward, we have to maintain
rigor and discipline around all of our activities.
We can't just grab onto a shiny object
because it's popular, the pool kids have it,
or the hospital across the street has it.
Right? We have to think about what is
it we're trying to accomplish? What is the
problem we're trying to solve?
We have to apply metrics and continuously evaluate.
Are we achieving our goals? And then we
can't be afraid to cut the cord and
just say, this is not working out. This
this product is not delivering the value expected.
And that's okay. Right? And, that's how you
innovate and iterate and learn. And as we
do that, then we'll end up with value
add at the end of the day and
not just a bunch of technology that's shiny,
but doesn't deliver the promised value.
Well, Karen, as we wrap up, do you
have any final thoughts you'd like to leave
with our listeners today?
I think this is the time to be
in health IT. This is what I've been
waiting for my whole career.
I had visions of this in grad school
20 years ago, and and it's so exciting.
I'm so thrilled to be here at this
time and supporting our clinicians and, through the
technology adventure. Just out of curiosity, can can
you define a little bit, like, what makes
right now so exciting in IT compared to
other times in your career?
I think we have the,
ability now through our infrastructures
and speed and large language models to actually
process all the complex patient data. And we
also have means to gather that data in
easy ways. So patients have wearables and and
things like that we we could only dream
about before.
And then our, mobility. Right? I I've created
a device for nurses,
15 years ago that was mobile,
but we could not, get it off the
ground. It does,
what Rover does for nurses today in Epic.
But having that real time data access, the
ability to process all that information and summarize
it in a meaningful way with AI, this
is the pinnacle for me. Well, I I'm
now I'm curious. Mhmm. So when you look
out there, is there one piece of technology
you see that maybe we're not doing now
that in 5, 10 years, you feel like
will be a real big game changer or,
like, you know, really kind of help improve
health care?
You know, what what what, like, technologies are
you most excited about right now? I am
most excited about ambient listening
with AI because I see it as removing
eliminating the need for a keyboard Mhmm. Eliminating
the need to manually enter data. And I
think that has been the enemy
for so long. I've as a nurse, I
spent so much time capturing notes, trying to
remember what did my patient do this morning?
What did they eat for lunch today? You
know, all these, you know, days that I
could just now can enter by voice throughout
my day, or even I anticipate cameras can
capture
important information as we move through the shift
with the patient. I think that's the game
changer to not have to worry about capturing
that information, that focus. What does this all
mean? What is it telling me about my
patient? And how do I get my patients
in the next level of care and health?
Well, Karen, this was absolutely fascinating. I really
appreciate your time today. Thank you so much,
and you have a lovely rest of your
day. Thank you very much. My pleasure.