- This is Chris Oso with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr.
Zafar Chari, senior Vice President and Chief Digital
and Information Officer at Seattle Children's.
Dr. Chari, thank you so much for joining us today.
- Thanks for having me.
- Certainly our frequent guests on the Becker's podcast,
we definitely thank you for that.
But for those who may not be familiar with you,
could you please introduce yourself
and give us a bit about your background?
- Yeah, thank you. So Z Childry over at Seattle Children's.
Uh, I've been in the role of Chief Digital
and Information Officer now this is year seven
and I've been in healthcare it, it's year 39.
Wow. Time has flown by.
I'm a physician by training,
but I have been in the uh, CIO space for over 20 years
and I've worked in multiple health systems across the world.
- 39 years is certainly an impressive amount of experience
and knowledge that you bring to the field.
Dr. Chari, what would you say are your top
priorities for 2024?
- Yeah, so my top priorities for top 24, probably,
definitely top of the list would be
cost improvement programs.
As you are aware, healthcare is going
through some difficult challenges where margins have shrunk
and costs are uh, escalated.
So we're doing a lot of work on the cost improvement side
of things, but at the same time,
you can't be successful in healthcare without innovation.
So in the innovation space, the magic word is now ai.
So that is definitely on our priority list
because we're getting a lot of discussion
and request from our clinical colleagues about
what does this mean for us,
how this will impact our health system.
And then to sort of round off that top three, the third one
that's the top priority for me is going to be cybersecurity.
- I'm glad you mentioned both AI and cybersecurity.
Could you expand a little bit about
how your role will change with regard to those
elements over the next 18 months
and how it will change your team's role?
- Yeah, so I think what I'm likely to see,
certainly from a CIO
and IT team health IT team perspective is
that we are now playing a more strategic role
in the organization.
Nobody really cares anymore about infrastructure
and flashing lights and hardware and equipment.
They want the health IT teams
and the leader of those teams to have a bigger say
and be instrumental within the business itself.
The whole overall system, there's a push
to leverage technology to drive innovation
and business growth.
So that's where the sort of AI component comes in.
How do you automate, how do you streamline processes?
But at the same time, we are seeing a massive increase in
demand for services.
Uh, kids will continue to get sick
and we'll continue to need medical care.
They also want health IT groups to adapt more
to new technologies and trends in a more agile pace
than we've done in the past.
And you know, if you see the onslaught
of AI literally in months, it's gone from a non thing to,
everybody wants to be involved in that space.
But of course, whilst you're doing all these interesting
and cool things, you can never give up focus.
So there'll be a huge focus on cybersecurity data privacy.
The bad threat actors are not stopping,
they're getting worse.
Healthcare data is so valuable.
So we're seeing a lot of attacks, um,
in this healthcare space.
So we can't forget to focus on that on that
cybersecurity area.
We've gotta keep our data secure
at the same time we have to be more agile.
And I'm also finally seeing a better collaboration
with the business unit,
the clinical units within our health system,
and a closer relationship with external vendor partners
where it's more of a partnership than a sort of push pull
type of engagement.
- Your points are well taken on all those front doctor
and segwaying a little bit, uh, from those topics.
What are you excited about right now?
And it can be within AI
or data security as you mentioned, or, or something else.
- Yes, I'm definitely excited about
how we unleash innovation.
So AI is one of those components.
You've got other things like robotics
and if you look at the development in the robotics space,
it's also accelerating.
And I work in a pediatric hospitals,
I'm always gonna love little robots.
And then the other thing I'm excited about is
making better decisions
using the data that we're sitting on.
I think healthcare systems have massive amounts of data.
We don't always use it to the best of our abilities
to make better decisions, especially in the clinical space.
I'm excited about getting outta the infrastructure business.
I think health IT teams are in the patient business,
not the IT business.
And therefore I'm excited about what cloud can bring,
how we can scale into the cloud much faster than we have
done in the previous years.
- Doctor, I'm glad you mentioned
that health IT teams are in the patient business.
Last thing I wanted to ask you about is on our podcast
and another media, you've emphasized the importance
of connecting with stakeholders in healthcare.
So how would you recommend someone in your position as a CIO
to best engage these stakeholders while
keeping an eye on innovation?
- Yeah, so you're not, you're not really going
to get innovation without your stakeholders, right?
I mean, stakeholders are the ones
that have all the great ideas.
You as a person leading the health IT team are going
to be the individual who translates
those stakeholder requirements into
how do you actually execute that.
So the, the best way to sort of engage
with stakeholders is to meet them where they're at.
So I always recommend to my teams that if,
if you are spending more time in your office than actually
on the clinical floors, then something's wrong.
You have to go out there, you have to walk the floors,
you have to round with the teams, you have
to participate in different committees, you have
to attend the clinical presentations,
you've gotta do all of those things.
That's really the job that we have
because we have to go out not only educate the stakeholders,
but get their input into what they need.
This helps us keep up with how technology is changing
and how it can adapt to help clinicians
do the best job that they can.
And certainly for us provide hope, care,
and cure for the kids that we serve.
Uh, and at the same time, you are the evangelist
for technology and my team is as well.
Um, then when you're talking about security
and security risks, that is the same opportunity
to then educate those stakeholders on what risks are coming,
how people can behave in a safe manner whilst, uh,
being in the clinical space.
You know, we all, it's, it's quite interesting
'cause in healthcare, we all love to click on
that magical link that will give us millions of dollars,
but we have to educate people not to do that.
And at the same time, if you're engaging with stakeholders,
you're gonna be able to articulate what your constraints are
as a technology group,
because we're all facing budget constraints as well.
So there, there's no unlimited checkbook.
AI is great and robotics is great.
Those innovations are great, but they do come at a cost.
And so we, we are allowed to educate people in terms of
what is the art of the possible within the budget versus
what needs to be deferred to another fiscal year.
- Dr. Shari, thank you so much for being so generous
with your time and all your insights today.
We definitely cannot wait to share them with our audience
and we look forward to connecting with you soon.
- Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
- It's so important for leaders at the top of organizations
to keep learning, stay sharp, grow their networks,
help our audience better do this in a more simplified,
personalized, and meaningful way.
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