- Every health system executive right now is being
- asked to do something that has no useful
- precedent,
- make durable technology decisions in an environment that
- looks meaningfully different every six months.
- The pace isn't slowing,
- the vendor landscape isn't getting simpler, and the
- cost of missteps keeps rising.
- Becker's eleventh annual IT and Revenue Cycle Conference,
- The Future of AI and Digital Health, exists
- for exactly this challenge.
- Here, you'll find more than 2,500 executive level
- attendees,
- 600 plus speakers, and four days of sessions
- built around the questions leaders are actually wrestling
- with.
- How to scale AI responsibly,
- how to protect increasingly complex systems,
- how to wring more performance out of the
- revenue cycle, and how to make tech investments
- that hold up over time.
- Join us September fourteenth through the seventeenth at
- the Hilton Chicago.
- You can register on our events page at
- beckershospitalreview.com
- by clicking on the events tab in the
- upper right.
- Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
- My name is Chanel Banger, and today I'm
- excited to speak with regular guest, doctor Molok
- Burrahed,
- chief health innovation officer at DatasX
- Digital Health Labs, who joins the podcast regularly
- to share insights into some digital health trends
- that he's keeping in. Doctor Burrahed, thank you
- as always for joining me today. Could you
- get us started out by giving a brief
- introduction
- for, listeners that may not be acquainted with
- you yet? Hey. Thanks, Chanel. And always, honor
- and pleasure to be on on the podcast.
- And, yes, sir certainly background on me. I'm
- a physician by background.
- My specialty is in brain injury and neurotrauma,
- and that's actually been a good connector between
- my digital health side as well as my
- clinical side. And I'm still clinically active, seeing
- patients, daily. And then my background on the
- administrative side is, as you said, a chief
- innovation officer on the Dactosex side, but also,
- medical director of innovation
- on the health system side. And so I
- have a unique perspective because I straddle both
- the health system and delivery of care
- with the creation and researching of care from
- the doctor's ex side. And so I've been,
- blessed of the perspective of both sides in
- this role.
- Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much for that
- introduction. And now,
- to get in the meat of the podcast
- a bit, what are you seeing right now
- in digital health, and what what kind of
- are you keeping your eye on right now?
- Yeah. Thanks, Sean. Great question.
- So I have a little bit of, I
- guess, a little bit twist on what is
- out there.
- One is, I think, I'm one excited by
- the immense increase in digital health technology that's
- out there and the quality of that technology
- that we're seeing
- with, improvements in the EMR space, and usability,
- improvements in the AI built within the EMR,
- AI tools that we all use. I won't
- name the companies, but I think we all
- know the most common ones out there.
- And and so there's a lot of
- increased prevalence of the use of these technologies
- in everyday life.
- And but one of the things that I
- noticed is,
- you know, we have this concept of human
- in the middle. But even if we have
- AI, we'll have a human in the middle
- to check things to make sure that we
- ensure
- things go well.
- But that, I think, has been one of
- the things that we need to really look
- at and understand what human in the middle
- means.
- Because although every company and everyone in their
- protocols will say we have a human in
- the middle,
- the question is, how do we use that
- human and do we respect the human when
- there's a disagreement between the AI and the
- human? And I'll give you an example that
- happens in the health care space. I'm not
- gonna name any systems, but where,
- a patient may come in, let's say, to
- the emergency room, a physician evaluates them and
- decides they need something. Now from an AI
- perspective or an algorithm perspective or protocol perspective
- that may be put into place in the
- EMR,
- that might be different recommendation. Like, they may
- may or may not recommend an e, an
- X-ray.
- Physician might recommend, hey. We need to have
- a CT scan,
- whereas the AI says no CT scan is
- indicated.
- Now in these areas, a lot of times,
- we should trust physicians. Say, hey. If we
- need this, additional study or if we need
- this test, then we should,
- allow them to have that individual freedom to
- decide because
- the patient is individual.
- And they don't fit a database. They don't
- fit certain things. A physician can can certainly
- see a patient evaluate them based on their
- experience, expertise,
- and this is gonna be true for physician,
- nurses, etcetera.
- But oftentimes,
- when there's that disconnect between
- what the physician is recommending and what the
- AI is recommending,
- a lot of times, a health system or
- an administrator
- will say, well, the AI said this. Why
- are you recommending this? And creates a a
- an inherent conflict there. And although there's a
- human in the middle with a physician there,
- what is happening is that now you're disbelieving
- the human because of that disagreement. And so
- having it simply having a human in the
- middle is one thing. Allowing and supporting the
- human in the middle and saying that, hey,
- despite the disagreement, we will support you. Unless
- there's something egregious, you know, humans make mistakes,
- but so does AI. And so I think
- we need to navigate that that disagreement a
- bit better than we are right now.
- And what's something that leaders can do to
- get ahead of this? What can they do
- right now?
- So I think the first thing is to
- be curious. Right? And I feel like I'm
- quoting Ted Lasso here with, with this statement,
- but I think be curious is the first
- thing is when there is a a disagreement
- on one side or the other, instead of
- assuming that one is right or one is
- wrong, we should at least, reach out and
- talk to the individual, have a conversation, say,
- hey. We saw this was the recommendation from
- our protocol. We saw this was what's in
- the EMR,
- and you decided something different. Help us understand
- what you're thinking, why, what was the reason,
- what's the the situation.
- And I think having that conversation
- to explore and understand,
- not to alleged wrongdoing,
- I think that's the first step in this,
- is have the open pathway, have the open
- conversation,
- assume that the person is right, and then
- find out what went on and and understand
- and and do that better rather than assuming
- that the person is wrong and they're doing
- something incorrect.
- Got it. Got it. Thank you so much
- for that actionable advice.
- And before I let you go, is there
- anything else that listeners should know?
- I think, it's great that there's such a
- proliferation of fantastic technology.
- I think we just have to be careful
- in today's world of
- trusting the technology too much. As we've seen
- in the headlines the last few days, especially,
- that as great as AI is, it does
- have its limitations.
- Whether it be from driving cars that are
- autonomous driving, to health care, to
- algorithmic trading in the stock market, all these
- different places that now you're seeing proliferation of
- AI.
- We still need to be careful about how
- the technology is used and know that there
- are limits on that, and nothing is perfect.
- Humans aren't perfect.
- Technology is not perfect, and we have to
- find a better balance and just appreciate
- the limitations that we all have.
- Absolutely. Well, that's a great note to end
- on. Doctor Perroha, I wanna thank you as
- always for joining me today and for sharing
- your insights on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. Thank
- you so much. Thanks, Chanel. Really appreciate it.