This is Laura Dierdo with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Tim Callahan,
chief technology officer at University of Michigan Health.
Tim, it's a pleasure to have you on
the podcast today.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Excited for the
conversation.
Now I I'm looking forward to as well
learning more about what you're doing at University
of Michigan Health and really digging into how
you're thinking about the future, some of the
cool technologies and initiatives. But before we dive
in, could you tell us just a little
bit more about University of Michigan Health and
what makes it unique?
Yeah. So, Michigan Medicine is,
the health care provider,
component to the University of Michigan as well
as,
the medical school itself.
So in terms of the size of the
academic medical center, we're a fairly large,
academic medical center. We also have,
what we refer to as affiliates, but,
they're wholly owned subsidiaries,
that we have,
UmH West on the Western side of the
state and Sparrow,
which is more of,
the North Central portion of the state,
which again contributes to the the size
and footprint,
to our organization. So if you really,
take the aperture back a little bit and
take a look at Michigan Medicine,
the medical school, Sparrow, their medical school,
UmH West,
and the provider network that they have, it's
a fairly large academic medical center, one of
the largest in the country.
Absolutely. Well, it's fascinating. And, you know, I
I know being able to serve so many
different communities, I can imagine, has, great benefits,
but also some challenges involved there too. So,
that's great to hear. Now when you're thinking
back to the last year or so, what
accomplishments are you most proud of?
Yeah. So as I look back,
over the last year, really over the last
couple years, I've been in the role about
three years.
And I came into the role,
with the organizational
directive of,
we need to,
modernize our IT infrastructure that we have within
Michigan Medicine.
And really what that meant to the executive
team being Marshall Runge and Andrew Rosenberg and
and others,
David Miller and and others,
was really around the fact that they wanted
to inject public cloud into how they move
the organization forward. And I have been moving
Epic to the cloud for the last ten
years.
So I was super excited about the opportunity
of not just moving Epic to the cloud,
but, our imaging application, all of our general
purpose applications.
Because we're a public institution, we had to
issue a lot of RFPs. So in the
early days
of me coming into the organization,
it was really about doing a lot of
administrative paperwork
to get these RFPs out, to get system
integrators to respond to it.
We're now over the last year
in the exciting,
point to where we've made a lot of
decisions
around,
those RFPs
that went out.
We've signed legal paperwork,
and we're now beginning to roll up our
sleeves to actually
begin the implementation of this very hard work
that's in front of us. So, in terms
of the accomplishment,
it's closing out the book, so to speak,
of the initial,
tranche of RFPs,
that we sent out,
being able to execute on those successfully and
being able to roll up our sleeves and
start to execute on the work,
is is really,
we're we're very proud of that. We're very
excited about that, and we're very optimistic about
the future.
Well, that's great to hear, you know, and,
amazing experience you have, as you mentioned, moving
up into the cloud and other,
applications.
I know there's a lot of hospitals and
health systems out there today that are really
just starting that journey, into incorporating the cloud
into their health systems. So,
I guess, is there anything that any advice
you'd have or words or wisdom for those,
leaders at hospitals and health systems that are
beginning some of that migration,
into the cloud to make sure it says
moving as efficient as possible?
Yeah. One of the things that we did,
when I first came into the role is
we really did take kind of a step
back to better understand
what exactly we had within the in the
environment.
And even if you weren't new to the
role, I think that's a really important
piece,
to conduct,
before you
start to engage with cloud providers.
The a lot of organizations
who start to have the executive mandate of
what we need to move to the cloud,
the natural question that cloud providers are gonna
ask you is great. What are you gonna
move to the cloud?
How much are you gonna move to the
cloud? And when are you going to move
those things to the cloud? And all of
that those questions and the answers to that
are really, really important. So we spent about
the first nine months of
detailed analysis of the environment.
So we knew,
how many CPUs, how much memory, how much
storage we had within the environment.
And we also had a very rough plan
already mapped out in terms of,
moving,
those assets to the cloud and how quickly
we would be able to do that over
a five year period. So when we issued
the RFPs and we started to engage with
the cloud providers,
we were very clear, and they clearly understood
exactly what we were gonna move and how
quickly we were gonna move it. And that's
really important and instrumental
in,
engaging the cloud providers
and really helping them understand
how they will wrap,
an engagement
around that.
Got it. That's a a great piece of
advice and certainly,
well worth that reflection point. So you make
sure you're moving forward in the smartest way
possible.
I I appreciate that. Thank you so much,
Tim. Now,
when you look ahead, where do you see
some of the big growth opportunities for you
and your team over the next twelve months
or so?
Yeah. So as we look over the next
twelve months,
whether you whether you call it a growth
opportunity or whether
the pure excitement of the move. I'm not
sure which is which.
But we you know, you've
there's probably not a month or two that
goes by that you don't see a health
care system moving up into the cloud. It's
a fairly common occurrence.
And you're beginning to now see health care
systems,
moving,
their imaging,
to the cloud.
And and that's beginning to be a fairly
common occurrence.
And you're beginning to hear health care institutions
beginning to move general purpose workloads to the
cloud. That, again, is kind of a common
occurrence. What we're gonna do over the next
twelve to eighteen months is we're gonna do
all three of those things.
And I don't know of another health care
institution
that is going to embark
with kind of the scale, the speed, and
the velocity that we're about ready to engage
in. And that's really the growth and the
excitement,
that we have in front of us.
And that'll allow all of the existing staff,
to really spread their wings in terms of
this is how you used to do things
in the on prem world. This is how
you used to do this is now how
we will do things in the cloud world.
And they're already beginning to,
kind of unwrap those packages and beginning to
understand how they're gonna do things like infrastructures
code,
and how we're gonna do service catalogs and
and all of the future,
things that we've been talking about for the
last three years, they're actually now beginning to
play with those toys and understanding, oh, this
is how this works, and this is how
that works. So,
that's the excitement that we have within Michigan
Medicine is beginning to be able to do
all three of those things
at once. And the reason that we're doing
that,
is because we have to shut down one
of our data centers in 2027.
And that's part of our cloud goal and
initiative
is to decommission one of our data centers
and leverage public cloud for Doctor.
But it's gonna be really, really exciting and
really, really challenging kind of in the in
the same,
same vein.
Absolutely. Wow. What a huge initiative. And as
you mentioned, you know, in doing all of
those things at once, I I think it
makes a lot of sense, but at the
same time, I can imagine,
requires a lot of planning, a lot of
coordination, and,
really truly, being focused in on the tasks
at hand.
When you look at, that and and how
the team will evolve and change,
based on moving all of that to the
cloud,
what do you see as being paramount for
for your team? Do you see,
needing new skills or or, any kind of
expertise that you would like to bring on,
whether from the outside or or build from
within? I I'm just curious as how you
see, on the team level things changing as
you make this big shift, to the cloud.
Yeah. No. It's a great question.
One of the one of the other things
that we did is, you know, during the
RFP process
is we knew and understood
that,
our existing staff,
we'd have to put good training programs in
place, and we would have to upscale those
staff. A tremendous,
organization and tremendous staff in terms of running
on prem data centers, but that's different than
running in the cloud.
So we actually did an RFP,
to,
bring in,
kind of a training package
that would assess,
kind of where people are currently at as
well as recommend training pass and programs to
get them,
better acclimated and prepared for public cloud.
So we'll be putting that in place as
well here in 2025,
to kind of set the team up for
success,
as we begin to move things to the
cloud and as we begin to operationalize,
these components in the cloud. So we're super
excited about that.
The other thing that we did as part
of the RFP process is we actually,
asked, some system integrators to, help us.
So we got some, really exceptional system integrators,
ahead out of Chicago and, Optimum,
to kinda help with our migration as we
were moving,
out into the cloud, both for our general
purpose workloads as well as Epic.
Sector,
is a managed services,
so they're they're providing skills and expertise as
well.
So I think when you when you look
at the totality
of that, it's really the the exceptional system
integrators that we're gonna bring into the organization
and the natural learning that will happen,
from from,
kind of the over the shoulder help and
assistance that they'll provide,
the on the job training that will transpire
as we begin to move these things, as
well as the training plans and programs
and tools
and,
capabilities that we'll put within the organization.
I think that will really set us up,
for success.
And our cloud provider,
we we actually selected Azure as our, preferred
cloud provider. They're also providing a great deal
of, training,
and have opened up their training curriculum to
us,
to further provide additional tools and capabilities
to the existing staff. So that's a really
important piece.
We think that we've got it well covered,
in a variety of different ways.
And, again, that these are the things that
are making the staff super excited to to
be a part of this.
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, really
cool to have that opportunity,
to be part of that team, I'm sure.
Now I I know a lot of opportunities
we've talked about, but there are challenges, I'm
sure, that you have your eye on. What
are you really anticipating coming down the pipe,
in the near future?
So
so even though we're,
we have this significant cloud initiative,
in front of us,
and and
it's not a small amount of work. As
you can imagine, moving everything that we're planning
on, moving. It's it's a mountain of work
that we plan on doing.
But we're really doing that,
to
make our IT operations more efficient and more
modern.
The organization itself is still looking
to our IT organization
to continue to innovate and drive innovation.
So we're looking at things like, you know,
how do we implement AI? And we've actually
stood up OpenAI
within our Azure environment. We're beginning to play
with those platforms.
We've been looking at how do we provide
end user computing for our epic environment and
how do we reenvision
end user computing,
further down the road to enhance and increase
our security,
that we can deliver back to the organization.
So not only do we have this mountain
of work that's in front of us, we're
still being asked by the organization,
by our patients to continue to drive innovation,
which the institution is is well known for.
So it's a it's a tricky balancing act,
and that's really, you know, one of the
challenges that we have in front of us
is how do we do this mountain of
work yet continue to drive the innovation that
we're so well known for.
That's a really good point. And, definitely,
it seems like, something that you have to,
again, kind of plan for and put in
place. I'm curious. Given this,
tension in being able to innovate but also
doing the strategic
things that are in front of you.
What is the number one thing that you're
doing right now to, set your organization up
for that long term success?
Yeah. I think there's a variety of things.
So you've heard about, you know, kind of
the, the training initiatives and the skills initiatives
we have in place,
being able to bring in some of the
system integrators to kinda help and make sure
that we're successful.
We're also going through a reorganization,
that's also,
beginning to take, shape and transpire.
And that's really standing up a cloud capability
center or cloud center of excellence,
depending on on, how you would prefer to
call that. But really what that is is
that's really
creating a specialized team that is super focused
on driving cloud adoption,
and integration initiatives. And we're doing that,
in order to accelerate,
our move to the cloud. Again, we need
to shut down,
that data center. And we're also doing that
so that we can go back to the
business,
and drive innovation,
through the business.
Michigan Medicine has a lot of research,
wants and needs, and we know that we
can be,
more responsive
and more agile in those requests.
And we see cloud as a vehicle to
be able to do that.
So so those are some pieces that we
wanna continue,
to make sure that we move the needle
on. We also I mentioned the fact that
we have these affiliates with UmH West and
with Sparrow.
There's,
an organizational wide initiative in terms of how
to do further integration.
So we're all not only are we challenged
with Michigan Michigan Medicine's moved in the cloud
and all of that mountain of work that's
associated with it. We also have the mountain
of work of how do we then integrate,
Sparrow and UmH West. What pieces would we
wanna integrate
for those respective organizations if they would wanna
borrow pieces
and parts of our cloud strategy,
what would those look like and how can
we be good stewards back to those organization?
Those are also some of the the challenges
that we have in front of us. But
if we look for how we're gonna set
the organization up for success,
further integration and consolidation where it makes sense,
allowing regional,
preferences and and,
and and and allocations,
and configurations,
where it makes sense,
and really providing a good ecosystem that other
organizations can come into
are gonna be fundamental to our success,
as we move forward. So there's a lot
of things that we need to do to
ensure,
that we're meeting those organizational goals of moving
to the cloud and modernizing our infrastructure,
getting really good at integration, and how do
we create synergies that don't exist today. And
then how do we prepare for maybe other
organizations that may wanna come in to the
Michigan Medicine family,
so that we can continue to to spread,
our footprint
and serve, the needs, of the people of
the state of Michigan? All of those are
are super great challenges,
and those are all of the things we're
trying to do in order to set up
the organization for long term success.
Oh, it's fantastic to hear. It seems like
you have a great pathway into,
a much stronger
cloud atmosphere and ecosystem. And, certainly, it's exciting
to think about all the possibilities once you
achieve that. Tim, thank you so much for
joining us on the podcast today. This has
been a really informative and fun conversation, and
I look forward to connecting with you again
soon.
Sounds great. Thank you so much, Laura. Appreciate
it.