This is where health care leadership comes together.
Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings more than 3,500
hospital and health system executives and nearly 800
speakers to Chicago April.
This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas
Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former president George
w Bush. For the agenda and event details,
visit beckershospitalreview.com
and click on the events tab in the
upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you
in Chicago.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast. I'm Scott King. Thrilled today to be
joined by a very special guest, Simon Nazarian,
executive vice president and chief digital and technology
officer with City of Hope. Simon, how are
you doing? Thanks so much for joining us.
I'm doing great. Thanks.
I appreciate you, inviting me and, happy holidays.
Of course. Happy holidays to you. We're just
talking. We both gotta do a little bit
of shopping we, noted before the show. So
hopefully we'll do that later. But for now,
we got a lot of kinda big trending
topics in in health care to dive into.
But even before we do that, Simon, do
you mind sharing just a little bit about
your your background and your work in health
care?
Oh,
I would love to.
Let's see. I've been in health care since,
2008,
where I joined Kaiser Permanente
as
a chief architect for one of the regions
and then grew into regional
technology officer for our care delivery.
From there,
you know, I joined McKinsey and Company,
focusing on core technology enablement,
for health care practice.
So, payer provider, pharma, biotech, etcetera,
and,
really helped,
develop the that team for,
execution.
And then I had an opportunity
to join Optum as the chief information officer
for Optum Health
and, was,
really able to,
focus on,
taking,
Optum as a holding company into more of
an operating company,
by bringing all the technology organization on the
one arm, focusing on value based care and
all the things that goes along with it.
And,
then I had the, you know, good fortune
and opportunity to join City of Hope as,
the chief, Deshauna technology officer focusing,
specifically on, you know, technology transformation,
health care transformation,
to,
really,
drive our mission here at City of Hope.
Throughout my career, I've also focused across multiple
industries,
which really helps
me in my role within health care as
well. And I'm excited to pull on those
experience and expertise in order to,
really help
our patients and providers
during this journey.
Well, thanks so much for sharing all the
details about your journey in in health care,
Simon. It sounds like it's been a great
one.
You you know, there's there's so much going
on always in health care. It's certainly not
gonna die down for the holidays, but I'm
just curious, what opportunities
and headwinds do you have your eye on
right now?
Well, I mean, you know, health care is
really, at an inflection point
as we speak. So for the first time,
you know, we have the data, the computing
power, and the tools like AI, to really
meaningfully accelerate,
you know, how discovery is turning to better
care for our patients.
And at the same time, we're dealing with,
financial pressure, workforce challenges,
and, you know, growing cyber risks.
So, the question really isn't, whether we innovate,
it's,
how do we responsibly,
how we do it responsibly and at scale.
Right?
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I've actually just talked
to some COOs of some systems,
about cybersecurity yesterday.
My question for you is, do you think
with all the use cases we're hearing about
AI, are systems maybe in terms of technology
a little maybe too concerned with AI and
kind of forgetting to invest in cybersecurity? Is
that something you're seeing or or think?
You know, most of my colleagues and everywhere,
you know, we talk to, we always take
security at heart and security first when we
wanna,
you know, approach, anything we wanna build and
develop
and deploy.
Right? PHI and PII are very important to
us, and we wanna make sure that it's
built into. So most of the organization
that I I speak to are my colleagues.
You know, we, really have it at the
center and on top of our mind.
No. I think it's a great idea. And
something else I wanted to ask you, Simon,
is how are you thinking about growth and
adding value to your organization?
You know, I I don't think about, but
when I think about growth, I don't think
about technology for technology's
sake.
You know? I think about impact.
You know? If additional investment, you know, doesn't
improve patient outcomes, expand access,
or make life better for the clinicians, you
know, we have to,
make sure we take a close look at
it, you know, and possibly take a look
at that, you know, return on opportunity.
But, our focus is really on removing friction,
and connecting systems,
you know, automating the mundane
and letting our clinicians and researchers spend more
time on patients and science.
Simon, what are some of the things you
maybe ask yourself
about
before you invest in and implement a new
technology to kind of evaluate it?
Well,
you know, there are a number of things,
that we have to take a look at.
We talked about the return on investment or
return on opportunity.
Right? You look at, you know, what does
it take to deploy,
you know, and jump start it. You know,
it's really, really important how to be on
supported on an ongoing basis.
You know, how does it integrate within our
workflows and really support our technicians
and, you know, accuracy and efficiency and how
we monitor it. And if it's AI based,
how do we govern it and, everything that
goes along with our governance.
And,
you know,
frankly, we just wanna make sure that, we're
delivering impact
with, whatever it is that we're building.
What do you think is one risk or
investment worth making this year?
One risk ahead is absolutely worth taking is
scaling AI in a thoughtful and governed way.
Right?
The bigger risk right now is standing still.
Health care is really moving quickly,
and organizations
that don't learn how to operationalize
AI responsibly,
you know, will fall behind in care quality,
research speed, and efficiency.
The key is,
you know, starting with real problems and building
trust as you go.
Where do you see the best opportunities for
growth in the future?
Great question.
The biggest opportunities,
to me,
that's ahead, you know, set up the intersection
of data, AI, and precision medicine.
Right? As we connect with all of this
clinical data with research insights,
we can deliver more personalized care and move
discoveries to patients much faster.
I also see huge,
potential in digital and virtual care models
that, really extend care beyond the hospital
innovation nationally.
And Simon, the last thing I wanna ask
you is, obviously, it takes great leadership to
help invest in and implement
AI usage and emerging tech across
systems now with with everything we're seeing. My
question for you is just how have you
evolved,
as a leader? How have you grown as
a leader?
I,
you know, being in health care,
you always put the patient at the center,
and you look at how do you support
the care teams
as well as,
the support teams outside of our four walls.
Right? And you look at the patient holistically
overall.
Also, you know, with my teams, I have
learned that,
they can achieve amazing things when you, approach
them with a problem to solve.
You know, bring your minutes that this is
what the problem we need to solve. Let's
solve it together. And,
it has done, great for me in that
manner rather than just saying go do this
or go do that.
So by just really maintaining that focus on
bringing my teams closer and the problem solving
has really helped me evolve as a leader
and I've become more of a,
people person as well.
Well, I think it's a great mindset as
we see emerging tech, continue to evolve
across health systems. And, Simon, thanks so much
for your time. Thanks for joining us on
the podcast. I thought it was a great
conversation. I look forward to working with you
again soon. Thank you so much.