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This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we are live at the 9th
annual health IT, digital health, and RCM conference.
I'm currently joined by Louis John Son, who
is the chief medical information officer at Ochsner
Health. So, Louis, thanks so much for joining
me today, and I'd love to get us
started by having you introduce yourself and tell
us a little bit more about your background.
Sure. Thanks for having me. I'm a general
surgeon, by training, but now I am in
the CMIO role at Ochsner, Ochsner, and I've
been there for, 16 years.
And,
I was originally involved in started to get
involved in health care leadership
around 2012.
And then in 2019, I transitioned to the
the IT world, and I've been in the
CMIO role since 2020.
Wonderful. Well, thanks for being here. And I'd
love to start our conversation today with AI
adoption. So this is exploding right now in
health care. In your view, what is the
most significant or promising application of AI right
now, and how is that informing your organization's
innovation strategy?
Forming your organization's innovation strategy?
Yes. I think right now, as as far
as what's what's had the biggest impact
is ambient
technology.
You know, I was just talking to a
physician this week who is extremely proficient with
technology, extremely proficient in the EMR.
But
e even with that, the, ambient technology was
saving her about an hour a day. And
she told me that she, you you know,
was no longer having to kind of redo
her clinic in her mind every day,
because it was catching all these these details
that you would have to go back and
remember. So even for someone that was that
was very efficient to begin with, it was
still saving an hour. We've seen
lots and lots of similar stories. I'm sure
you've heard as well, of people who have
been affected like that. And that's
a a really big deal, you know, when
you talk about
just,
you know, there are a finite number of
hours in the day. People have limited free
time. Getting an an extra hour is huge
for people. So I think that's what's had
the biggest impact so far. And I think
as far as what's more promising, you know,
what what I initially found more exciting was
kind of the generative
AI applications where they're generating content, for example,
creating drafts to in basket messages.
But,
you know, if you look at at some
of the other things that are coming in
terms of summaries, and they, you know, I
initially thought summaries weren't really as exciting. But
if you look at the ability to customize
a a summary of the patient chart and
tell it that you want, you you know,
to look back 3 months or you want
a 1 paragraph or a 2 paragraph,
or a bulleted list of the patient's chart
and you wanna know you know, focus on
labs and not as much on vitals and
tell it kind of tailor it to what
you want. I think that has the potential
to save people a lot of time as
well.
And let's shift gears a little bit toward
data.
With the, you know,
great volume of data that we're seeing now
that we're integrating
all of these different AI technologies and innovations,
I'd like for you to kinda go in
a little more detail about the different types
of data and how these, play a role
in the overall health care.
Yes. We we do use a massive amount
of data, and, you know, everyone has their
their their different dashboards and and data sources
that they use, the data integration tools. We
have we have all that. We have great
dashboards. But I think just as important as
as having the data is how you you
explain the data to people and explain the
why behind why it's important. And I think
that, you know, we have we have clinical
data, and then we have kind of efficiency
data that we look at in terms of
how how much time people are spending in
EMR, whether they might be struggling. And I
think as a CMIO, we spend a lot
of time
explaining a lot of the the technical data
to to physicians or or, you know, helping
physicians with with the EMR and things like
that. But I think the the reverse is
also important in terms of explaining
the why behind the clinical data to some
of the IT staff, which may not have
the clinical background. So I I always focus
on that and try to go over all
of our clinical data, you know, our metrics,
how we're doing on
hypertension control, diabetes control, and those population health
metrics and explain to to everyone
why those are important. Why does it matter
that someone has a normal blood pressure, a
normal blood sugar, and and how it impacts
their health so that everyone understands
what we're all working towards and why we're
doing what we're doing.
100%.
And as we talk about greater volumes of
data, all these different types, and then we're
adding adoption of new technologies into the mix,
our IT staff becomes significantly more burdened.
So I'd love to hear how you think
health care organizations can better support both our
IT and and clinical teams as well as
they carry
out innovation efforts. And if you've seen any
pitfalls in this.
I think health care organizations can help their
IT team by,
by providing clear prioritization.
I think that's that's really the most important
thing. That's something we put a lot of
time and effort into, because if you I'm
sure you've heard people say, if everything's a
priority, then nothing is a priority. And
you have to be clear with people about
what what do you wanna do and what
are you not gonna do? Because you can't
you can't do everything. And people have lots
and lots of great ideas. And it's not
really about how great the idea is. It's
more about what do we have the capacity
to do? And what if we think this
idea is high priority, what are we going
to divert resources from and stop doing so
that we can do that instead? So we
work a lot with our operational leaders and
our clinical leaders and our service lines to
determine
what are your top 3 or your top
5,
priorities. And and you have to sometimes
make a lot of difficult decisions to determine
that, but I think it's really important so
that everyone knows, you know, what what their
focus should be.
And as we wrap up our conversation
today, I'd love to know your top piece
of advice for health care leaders as they
prepare for further advancements in
technology and greater demands for care.
My advice for health care leaders would be
to be willing and ready to to pivot,
and change force because I think you you
never can predict what's coming. I think if
someone had made a
in 2019, it made a 5 year plan
of of of what they thought was gonna
happen. I I don't think it it would
bear any resemblance to what really happened over
the the past 5 years. I think that
will continue to be to be true. I
think there will continue to be to be
challenges and changes, and you have to you
have to be willing to change for us
and be willing to learn,
in order to adapt to to whatever's next.
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining
me today, Louis, on that Becker's healthcare podcast.
Again, we are live at the 9th annual
health IT, digital health, and RCM conference.
Thank you.