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This is Chanel Banger with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and I'm recording live at the 9th
annual Health IT Digital Health and RCM conference
in Chicago.
And sitting down right now with Anil Saldanha,
the chief innovation officer at Rush. Anil, thank
you so much for joining me today. Oh,
thanks for the opportunity.
Perfect. Well, to get us started, can you
please share a bit about yourself, your background,
and your role at your organization?
Sure.
So my role is, chief innovation officer. So
I'm tasked with, bringing novel
ideas,
processes,
partnerships, and also
help out at the intersection of public health,
community health, and delivery
at, Rush.
The organization,
Rush,
you know, we are a 3,500,000,000
health care system here in Chicago as well
as Northwest Indiana. We primarily,
you know, 3 major hospitals,
with outpatient,
centers
across,
you know, the region.
We are also on the US News,
hospitals on a row for many years, and,
we've been highly ranked by, Innoviscient
and, CMS star ratings.
And multiple specialties at Rush are, the top
50,
for many specialties, basically.
Got it. Thank you so much for the
introduction.
And as the chief innovation officer at such
a prestigious
institution,
you're the perfect person to ask this. AI
adoption is exploding in health care. In your
view, what is the most significant or promising
application of this technology right now, and how
is this informing your organization's innovation strategy?
So, in the last, at least 2 or
3 years,
you know, AI has has become the buzzword
in
whatever the industry is trying to do. In
terms of,
I think the key,
applications or
strategies is is scribing, and you might have
heard this from many people.
So, you know,
physician, burnout and, you know, clinician burnout, it's
it's a big issue in,
in health care. And, Rush, just like any
other health care system, is basically looking at,
AI scribing
capabilities that are provided by various products.
And,
so
AI scribing, primarily AI has been pretty good
in, summarization.
So that's their, I would say, the key
or strengths of AI right now.
And, you know, definitely, like, Rush is looking
at, scribing,
partners,
that we are basically piloting,
at Rush. And, we've also,
looked at, you know, AI,
from a conversational AI perspective as part of
our, what do you call, rush access center.
And, we've introduced, like, Salesforce as a CRM,
but we also,
you know, brought in, like,
partners, doing conversational AI for IVR
because,
still,
when you look at, like, the first touch
point for a lot of patients is is
still through the telephone. And Rush gets a
lot of phone calls from patients,
looking for a doctor,
looking for guidance, and, you know so
to staff up,
to cater to the volume of, you know,
this touch point from
patients through, like, the phone or, you know
so we are looking at, AI based solutions
to, you know, kind of help us, particularly
in the rush access center, to help us,
you know, automate some of this,
you know, outreach from patients and better guide
them and, you know, basically,
you know,
take care of the volume that you're seeing,
basically.
Thank you for that specific answer. And kind
of going off of that a little bit,
On a daily basis, healthcare leaders are managing
greater volumes of data and more devices across
a growing number of care settings and populations.
In this complex environment, what clinical data integration
tools or practices are you seeing drive improvements
in patient outcomes?
And can you share another specific example?
So definitely. And, so, you know, Rush has
been, using the EMR, like, primarily Epic for
the last, I would say,
15 years, I would guess, roughly around that.
So we've built a lot of capabilities,
using EPYC and EPYC data warehouse. And our
EPYC teams have built a lot of, data
in clinical data integration tools over the years.
And one of the products that we primarily
use,
on the warehouse side is is called
the in InnoSystems,
HealthConnect.
And, that's been,
a product that our EPIC teams primarily use
in data integration.
But, also, we've seen,
a, I would say,
increasing,
adoption of the FHIR APIs,
in EPIC. And, you know, tools that help
with FHIR, based, interactions
are all are also on the rise.
And, with, you know, cloud platforms from,
Microsoft
and Amazon,
you know, they're very dedicated and focused FHIR
API. So we've seen a lot of integration,
needs using these cloud platforms,
Microsoft and Amazon, basically, AWS.
So these have been the primary or popular,
you know, tools that we have seen in
a clinical integration or data integration perspective.
Got it. And moving forward, how can health
care organizations
better support IT and clinical teams as they
carry out innovation efforts? And what are some
common pitfalls here?
So, basically, health care organizations
have to be on the lookout for
their business needs, which is in care delivery,
but also, like, you know, they need to
be patient centric. And, you know, the patient
is at the center of everything a health
care organization
such as Rush does.
So, you know, we have a lot of
pain points for patients in terms of access.
Health equity is is a big, you know,
goal strategic goal for Rush. So equity,
is is a driving force for, you know,
Rush in terms of the way we do
a lot of our clinical operations,
across across the system. So
in terms of IT and clinical team support,
you know, we've built a lot of expertise
over the years. I mean, I talked about,
you know, Rush embracing EPYC as their EMR,
like like, around 4 15 years ago. So
we built a lot of expertise around that.
But we're also seeing a lot of, like,
I would say, shifts in the way the
industry is moving. So there's a lot of
consumer,
you know, transition. You're moving from a inpatient
setup to more of an ambulatory
setup. We just had a pandemic. So that
kind of, you know, made a big push
towards digital health. Technologies
are,
things like, remote patient monitoring, telemedicine,
telehealth,
you know, think of survey capabilities.
You know, they've all been, you know, available
to health care organizations. So from my perspective,
I think health care organizations
have to be open to embracing, like, technologies,
companies, startups,
and just look around,
what other, health systems around the nation are
doing, and you don't have to reinvent the
wheel. And,
my,
recommendation for health systems such as Russia's,
lot of times it's easier to just partner
with another health system that has solved a
problem
because it's easier to, collaborate
and compete rather than just be working in
silos and competing, you know. So because we
are all work, facing the same problems and
challenges, so sometimes it's much easier to collaborate
with other health systems that have solved particular
problems, you know?
Absolutely. And kind of building up the advice
for organizations
and narrowing it down a little bit. Could
you share one piece or your top piece
of advice for health care leaders as they
prepare for future advancements in technology and greater
demands for care? So in terms of, health
care leaders,
the the big recommendation that I want to,
give
is is basically just be open, you know,
and, you know,
be, be open to new ideas, novel ideas.
Innovation is
is is is important, you know, and, like,
you might have,
you know, good times and bad times in
terms of, you know, like finances
or
just, you know, things like epidemics or pandemics,
you know, things
do happen at times. But
I would say technology and you know, innovation
is
something that you can embrace,
to bring in new ideas and collaboration
into the healthcare system.
And, you know, so that's the way to
solve problems, collaboration and partnerships,
and,
basically just experience that you have over the
years, you know. Yeah.
Absolutely. So remain open and embrace technology. I
love it. Well, no, I wanna thank you
for your time today. But before I let
you go, is there anything else that listeners
should
know? Oh, thanks for this opportunity,
you know? Love it. Well, thank you so
much, like, yet again for your time today
and for joining me on the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast. Thank you so much.