Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. Fantastic to have
you. Today, we're talking about how accountable AI
partnerships
build smarter health systems.
And I'm very excited to be joined by
Joe Benardello,
chief growth officer and cofounder of IKS Health.
Joe, thanks so much for being here today.
It's great to have you. Well, thank you,
Lucas. I appreciate it, and I appreciate you
you taking the time and and inviting me
to to join. Very interested in exploring this
conversation together. It's going to be great. For
those that might not know you, I wanna
start off with introductions.
Could you share a little bit about yourself
and and your work in health care?
Sure. So, you know, I think,
my first,
entry point in health care was, back in
2002.
And prior to that, I had worked in
finance, technology, and transportation.
And I think I was struck at that
time when I looked at the efficiencies that
other industries had gained through technology
and then saw the state of health care.
And that thinking really launched the start of
our our company in in the 2006.
We we opened our doors in in in
2007.
And the problem that we were trying to
solve then is the problem that we're continuing
to try and solve now. And namely, how
do we enable
position enterprises
to meet the operating and demand challenges
that they're faced with today? And and I
think the interesting part is we've been solving
the same problem
since 2007,
really focused on on how are we able
to
make a differentiated
value contribution that allows for a better impact
at scale
to quality of care, availability
of care, and cost of care. But what
has been really interesting is is that mission
has remained
eternal. That identity
has has remained unquestioned.
But what we do
and how we do have continued to evolve.
And because the challenges of health care are
ever changing and reimbursement is so different,
employee relationship
to work is so different,
labor availability,
access,
legislation,
And then finally, technology
is so different.
So we see AI
is is a tremendous enabler
to allow
impact at scale
at a cost never before
attainable for systems
in order again to to to to better
serve their patient population
and doing so in a financially sustainable manner.
And I think that's what I'm I'm really
excited about. But but I feel like the
same
problem that we've been solving is is ever
present
and is gonna be needed internally.
How do we equip our health care providers
to to do more,
treat better,
and yet have quality of life and and
pursue their own joy through practice?
I was gonna say again, you've seen the
sort of the full length of this. You
mentioned 2007. Right? It's quite a bit of
time. Right now, I feel like, though, the
technology landscape in health care is
possibly as crowded as we've seen it in
a long time. It's increasingly crowded. It's It's
only going to get more in the the
next year, I'd say.
From your perspective right now, how can organizations
identify
the right partner for their needs, and what
are some of the factors that you would
highlight
that really matter most
in that decision?
Yeah. And I think that we're a bit
in the age of parlor tricks, and we're
moving into the age of value. And,
you know, if you look at so many
of these companies that have emerged,
their big risk point
is in identifying what they're going to develop.
And then their big risk point is, am
I going to get this sale done?
But these models are generated that as soon
as the sale is complete,
the IT vendor captures all of their value.
And all of the risk now has moved
on to that
health care provider system
that is is looking for relief for for
one or more problems.
And and really what they're end up being
sold are capabilities
rather than solutions,
and now they've assumed all the risk
for capturing the value of those capabilities.
So my my encouragement
is
look for
IT that that
solves problems
rather than just gives capabilities.
And and I think that sometimes problem solving
means going beyond
a simple
single solution
and really addressing more of an interconnected
workflow.
And that interconnected
workflow follows the patient journey.
And if a vendor is able to make
a value impact on an interconnected
workflow,
they can start to take financial accountability
for the realization of those gains.
So one of the primary things that that
I would encourage organizations to do is
understand the problem that you're trying to solve.
And as you're understanding that the problem that
you're trying to solve,
define what better is,
and then look for partners
that are willing to stand behind
better
rather than simply
deliver a capability that now all that responsibility
is on to that that physician organization
to implement,
integrate, and and ultimately change manage to success.
And I think that's been one of the
major ways in which health care IT,
for all the good it's done, has failed
to deliver up to its promise. And if
we look at at at the age of
health care IT starting
maybe in 2007,
that's a good place because because that's right
at the time of meaningful use. You see
that we spent billions of dollars
on on health care IT. We've created household
name companies,
and yet care delivery has not gotten any
better in terms of outcomes,
cost,
access,
or even job satisfaction for our physicians.
And that accountability
gap,
I think, is economically
unsustainable
and probably ethically and morally unsustainable.
So I would encourage
CIOs, CMOs,
CEOs, CFOs, the that that entire buying suite
to think about
how will this solution be accountable
to the care teams that are on the
front lines and ultimately the communities they serve.
Yeah. You mentioned the the journey piece of
this. Right? The patient journey and and certainly
that the clinician is connected to as to
that as well.
And and I know that you've talked quite
a bit about the the holistic piece of
this too. Right? Understanding organizations and patients, not
just from from a clinical perspective, which is
the main focus, but also behaviorally, financially, etcetera.
That's really, really key.
From the partnership perspective then, what you just
touched on, how can the right partnerships and
specifically technology then enable
that holistic view and essentially improve outcomes as
well?
So so, you know, if you think about
what is it that we want to do,
we want to
increase access.
We want to give our providers
time and meaning
and and insight
and and I should say clinicians rather than
providers.
And then in addition to that, we wanna
make sure that things are financially
sustainable and viable. And so you start to
think about those goals. And then you think
about
what is it that
technology and specifically,
agentic AI technology
are able to give us. I think one
of the things that agentic AI technology is
able to give us is
predictive
reactive
knowledge.
So if we start with knowledge of patients,
and we know them by by their social
determinants of health, their ZIP codes, their marital
status, how many kids they have, what their
job is. We understand,
what their,
insurance is. We understand them clinically.
We understand all of these things. We can
start to anticipate them behaviorally.
And I think understanding our patients
behaviorally
will start to inform
how we treat them, where we treat them.
But at the same time, we need to
understand our clinicians in the same way. We
need to understand what their preferences are, how
they treat.
In the same way, we need to understand
our financial partners, our payers in the same
way. And if you start to think about
these as as as almost interconnected gears, you
start to create a flywheel effect. So imagine
a
a patient that is in a a value
based contract that that we understand clinically and
financially
makes an appointment. And yet we see that
that appointment is three months away and at
3PM.
And we know that they are a single
parent and that they work a nine to
five job.
Our anticipation
of that person missing that appointment is gonna
be pretty high.
So we have to create interventions
to make sure that that that that patient
shows shows up
and or find another time. So anticipating a
propensity to keep keep an appointment.
At the same time, understanding patient responsible, their
propensity to pay. Are they able? Are they
willing? Do they have knowledge of what they
start to pay? So you start to think
about those types of work flows. Based on
what that appointment is, we can start to
anticipate
and do some pre charting for that physician
about why this person is coming. So now
now imagine that that clinical workflow
where the MA and the physician prior to
a visit
have a session where where they're doing a
huddle, and they're looking over the prechart and
they're understanding,
you know, why missus Smith is coming and
what are the likely things that we're going
to be seeing.
Maybe based on the way that physician treats,
we can even anticipate
what types of tests they would run.
Based on that, we can reach out to
the payer and understand the types of documentation
that it was going to to to improve.
All of these things are giving incremental time,
insight, and value. These interconnected
workflows of
anticipating,
is the visit going to happen? What's going
to happen in the visit? How is that
visit going to be valued and reimbursed?
What types of tasks are going to be
needed to create efficiencies
that doctors shouldn't be doing, that shouldn't be
happening in the exam room? And then safely
doing those beforehand
through the use of technology. And what's what's
incredibly
important to us is that that all of
our solutions have a human in the loop
because these technologies
are
they're prediction machines. They're betting machines
in in a very real way. And if
we don't put a high level, high discretion
human in the loop, what we're pushing is
all of that editing, auditing, and insight onto
the clinician, and the clinician should be focused
on the patient. And so it is a
both a a safety lever,
but it is also an efficiency lever
and a burden lever. So we're pulling
not only time off that physician, we're pulling
meaningless
task off that position. And what we're really
building is a trust
type and an extended team,
and yet that team is largely technology.
They start to think about the power of
that.
Now all of a sudden, you can have
a vendor contract relationship
that takes responsibility
for a large subsection of the chores. And
I define chores as things in health care
that that that doctors,
MAs shouldn't be doing, things that shouldn't be
happening at the front desk or in the
clinic. Imagine,
an entity that can take a large responsibility
for those chores,
and their commitment back to that organization is
we're going to move access by x percent.
We're going to to increase
position
engagement by y percent. We're going to increase
productivity
by by by z percent.
And finally, we're going to increase
organizational
profitability.
We're going to create $20,000,000
in EBITDA.
And and if we don't,
this is our financial,
component of this. It goes well beyond this
notion of of of SLAs
into a true shared partnership model
where your technology vendor, again, isn't
just giving you a tool.
They are walking the journey with you to
make sure that you get the value from
that. I think that is a sea change
in thinking
that will quickly
disrupt
the, you know, this
collection of mushrooms after a rain in terms
of all of these different technology companies. There's
a new one every day.
I end up doing the same thing that
someone else is doing,
and yet none of them, I think, are
standing up to, and this is how we
make your organization
better,
more joyful, and more profitable.
And that's the sea change thinking that I'm
waiting for. So the human in the loop
piece that you've mentioned, which is really, really
important, you highlighted some of the benefits of
actually following that approach and making sure that
there is a human in the loop and
you have the human expertise shared right and
what the benefits it brings.
How important is that approach then to scalability?
Right? Is it a necessary component for organization
to be able to support adoption at scale?
Think so. Because a few things. One is
our doctors
are tired of being blamed
for
the lack of value realization around health care
IT.
And many times,
the story that comes through, health care IT
is this story around
if only the doctors would do this, if
only physicians,
had better change management. And it's why do
we need physician change management? It's because we're
asking physicians
to drive different behavior
rather than finding technology that's meeting physicians where
they are. And in order for technology to
to meet physicians where they
are, I think the human in the loop
component is is absolutely critical.
Let's not make our clinicians
QA agents.
Let's not make the our our our
physicians editors and auditors and cut and pasters
and all of these other things that we
continue to do. What's interesting for me
is that before
I
tech optimize
any workflow
in my company, there's a few things that
we do.
One is we say, okay. How is this
going to be better for patients? And we
have to be able to describe that in
a sentence. It can't be
a a
a war and peace paragraph. I wanna know
really plainly. This is gonna be better for
patients because
this is gonna be better for the clinician
experience because what's interesting is aligning those two
things is not very hard. The third one
is the magic trick, and this is going
to create financial value for the organization
because
and if we can do those three things,
then we know this is something that needs
a technological
intervention
and and warrants it and and will create
value from it. The other aspect of it
is before we do a technological
intervention,
we want to understand the context.
I see a lot of health care IT
that has capability without context. And I think
clinical context,
technical context, and emotional context need to be
built into your work
flows in a caregiving
industry.
So if we can create that context within
the workflow,
then what's interesting is the human component that
is left
is highly discretionary
and highly valuable.
And so over time,
what I used to do with 10 people,
I do with half a person.
But the value of that half a person
is significantly
higher
because everything that was nondiscretionary,
everything that was rule based, everything that you
could reasonably predict and assume
has now been covered by the machine.
And it's only that most critical piece that
that human becomes an important,
component of going forward.
In the development process,
humans are critical for for for reinforced learning
through human feedback.
You want to to speed quality and value
in in any tech led system that reinforced
learning through human feedback becomes a a a
critical angle.
Yeah.
Joe,
such a great conversation. Thank you so much
for all of your insights. I I do
wanna know again because you have such a
such a great detailed and 10,000 foot overview
combination of this.
What are you what are you excited about
for 2026?
What are some of the shifts and trends
that you're seeing that leaders should really prioritize?
You meant you mentioned iGentic AI, which is
going to be critical,
but what are some of those things that
that you're thinking that are important to really
unlock the full value of AI and digital
in 2026
and and moving beyond that?
I would go back a little bit to
a couple of the concepts I I would
talk about. So
I think responsible
is
really critical.
Safety built into workflows.
The challenging thing about AI
is as much as we believe that we're
training the AI,
the AI is training users equally.
And as it gets better and that trust
height
increases,
the rate of errors is gonna go down.
But the more we trust it,
the actual ability of a catastrophic
error is going to go up. And so
how do we manage against the catastrophic
error
when we trust the self driving car so
much?
And I think that that that so so
so systems
that have responsible
checks
in them, I think, are gonna become increasingly
important. So so I would think about responsible
safety checks built into these workflows
that does that
without making
it a
a dampener on the economic
net benefit because
health care dramatically needs, an economic net benefit
from AI, which it hasn't gotten from so
many other technologies. And I think that AI
can do that. I think the second piece
to to to reiterate
a a bit
is organizations
need to demand accountability.
So I will say that
my company sees accountability
as a differentiator
and a market opportunity.
I believe that if I take greater accountability,
I will win more clients and and grow
my business. And I believe that I have
a moral obligation in serving the health care
industry to to to do this.
But it's really up to
the CIO, the CEO, the CFO, the CMO,
COO
to demand accountability
from their tool vendors
and and and stop being the system integrator
that
makes excuses
when technology doesn't deliver. Oh, it's because of
our implementation,
our change management. Oh, we bought this from
this vendor and this from this vendor, and
now they're arguing who's responsible.
Get beyond that
and create structures that demand participation
and accountability.
And if we focus on responsible
safety and we focus on accountability,
the result should be time, meaning, and money.
We should increase care delivery time
while reducing work burden.
By increasing care delivery time, we start to
solve access in a meaningful way.
Meaning,
a big part of burnout
is not just how much time we're asking
our physicians to do, but but also the
tasks that we're asking them to do. And,
you know, the the boogeyman for a long
time was clinical documentation.
And yet we've largely fixed clinical documentation.
Physician burnout has gotten much better. There are
other
meaningless tasks, whether it is inbox. AI is
a great tool around inbox. Prescription refill, clinical
documentation management,
pre charting,
all the order entry, all of these other
areas. So so let's take meaningless tasks. Let's
take things below the license of people.
And what's interesting is I'm a firm believer
that if you get time and meaning right,
you find ways to increase money.
And
there was a time that that doing the
right thing was an imperative.
Right now, doing the right thing in health
care seems to be a luxury unless we're
able to create financial value for these organizations.
So that's what I would think about in
in in '26 and hopefully '27, 2830.
I think these are timeless.
Yeah. I think that we'll all continue to
get better in how we deliver it, and
that's what I'm passionate about today. I want
to make
health care better at scale.
I want to make our patients feel known
as they come in the door. I wanna
make treatment specific
to that patient and that physician and yet
do it in a scalable, replicable way that
makes health care easier to get and more
affordable.
Yeah. That's certainly a goal, to keep in
mind beyond the 2026
as you pointed out. Very, very crucial. Joel,
thanks so much for your time and insights
today. What a fantastic conversation. Thanks for being
here. Thank you, Lucas. Enjoyed it. Great to
have you. We also want to thank our
podcast sponsor IKS Health. You can tune in
to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting
our podcast page at bekkershospitalreview.com.