how tall are you six four yeah i'm
not i'm not that tall although my
brother's six three i'm five nine and we
look vastly different in terms of height
which is what you get on a live
stream so we're live all right uh let's
do this live from apta csm technology
isn't coming to health care people it's
already here we're doing a live stream
from a conference of course technology is
already here
Our next guest lives at the intersection
of physical therapy, data,
and digital health,
helping clinicians use technology without
losing the human side of care.
Welcome back to the show, Todd Norwood.
Todd, welcome back to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Nice to meet you in person and be
here together in person.
We're also matching our shirts.
We did seafoam green it up.
You were from California.
Are you still in California?
I'm from California.
Still in California.
I live a mile from where I grew
up.
So you were on the show a few
weeks ago.
We did like a CSM prep episode because
you're speaking tomorrow.
Yep.
There will be candy tomorrow morning.
That was my first question.
All right.
If you're going to do a presentation on
or near Valentine's Day,
you have to have a little bit of
the bribery.
Give people who might be watching the live
stream here,
because we have had people walking around
listening.
It's still crazy.
Technology.
It's like watching the game while you're
at the game.
I don't know.
We do it.
Just give people just a quick reminder of
what you're doing tomorrow.
Yeah.
We're going to be talking about how your
skills as a PT translate readily to
becoming a leader and how you can leverage
those skills to lead and have a larger
impact.
You did that, like you said,
you were in, like,
give like your sort of like,
how'd you go from a physical therapist to
what you do now?
The origin story, right?
The superhero origin story.
Right, so I was in a clinic,
I was practicing orthopedic outpatient
physical therapy.
I met a patient,
I work in Silicon Valley,
so I met a patient who was in
technology.
You're bumping into tech people.
That's right,
you can't throw a stone and hit one,
right?
So I was out there,
I met a patient,
and we started talking about technology.
He was quizzing me one night,
he'd come in during his visit, like, hey,
how'd you use technology differently?
I was up for it.
I love technology.
So we started talking and that was Phizera
ultimately.
And then we built that up,
grew a nationwide network of PTs doing
telehealth before COVID,
which is crazy when I think about it.
And we got acquired by Omada back in
twenty twenty and I'm still with Omada,
still doing the same thing and and a
few more things with what Omada does in
the chronic disease space.
I feel like every like third booth here
now has some sort of technology component
in it.
But I want to talk to something more
basic and emotion.
When you were now leaving the clinic and
going to this tech thing,
did you feel impostery or like, hey,
maybe I don't, do I belong here?
Like, did you feel that at all?
Oh my goodness, yes.
And then, all right,
so how'd you get over it?
Or did you?
How'd you get past it?
Different question.
It's so interesting because I think
there's still moments today where I'll be
in a room or I'll be in a
venue and it's like, oh,
do I belong here?
Do I have the right to be here?
And I think the thing about imposter
syndrome is it comes and goes throughout
your career.
You have moments where you're like, yes,
I earn my right to be here, right?
I am the expert in the room and
I own that.
And sometimes as you grow, right,
as you develop as a professional,
you're going to be in rooms where you
may question things
Do I belong here?
And I think for me,
it's been an opportunity to look back on
past experience.
And I had a lot of experience as
an athlete growing up and going through
different ranks.
And each time you got to that new
level, it's like, oh, I was pretty good,
right?
I was a big fish in a small
pond before,
but this is a much bigger pond.
And now am I a small fish here?
And so I had that background.
And I think that helped me a lot
going through this experience.
You're talking about that sort of at a
macro level.
You're describing a day for me.
Like, nine a.m., I am a badass.
By eleven, I'm like,
I don't know what I'm doing.
An hour later, I'm pretty okay.
By three o'clock, I'm all right again.
And hearing people say that makes me at
least feel like I'm not the only crazy
guy in the room.
No, I mean, I think that's true.
That can happen within a day, for sure.
For me as well.
Rollercoaster.
Yeah,
I'll have those days where that first
meeting, like, I am the man.
I am the guy.
And then later in the day...
You get knocked out a few pegs by
yourself.
Am I the guy?
Should I even be on the team anymore?
Let's get into some tech then.
Why is good data foundational for modern
healthcare?
But before you answer that,
explain to me what the difference is
between good and bad data is.
You gotta be able to trust your data.
So for me,
that's the difference between good and
bad.
Is it reliable?
So I think,
let's take something in PT that's common.
Range of motion.
We measure range of motion.
many of us eyeball it and then what's
the plus or minus even if we're doing
it right and if we do with a
goniometer and we write it down do we
do we write if we did a goniometer
do we write down to the degree or
do we do round to five or ten
this is where you go from having
potentially good and precise data right
having it to the degree or if you
were in a biomechanics lab right it's to
the degree it's the tenth of the degree
even two in the clinic
It's one-thirty-five, I think.
Ish?
Maybe.
You can't really put ish into a
spreadsheet.
No,
and AI is not going to like ish.
Yeah, that's true.
If AI is processing the data,
it's not going to do okay with ish.
It needs to be precise.
Well,
it'll handle the ish and you'll get
garbage on the output.
Garbage in, garbage out, right?
That's right.
That's the idea.
That's right.
So why is that so important?
So if we're moving into this world,
maybe as PTs we're moving into this world,
the world's moved there already with AI
and big data.
If the data's not accurate,
then the interpretation and the outputs
are not gonna be accurate.
And I think it's interesting from a
patient and a care perspective is like
either you get an ineffective
intervention,
an ineffective recommendation,
or potentially a harmful recommendation if
you don't have sound foundational data.
And that's my fear.
We have a lot of data in PT.
one we may not all document uniformly and
so that's a whole data cleansing issue we
got to make sure that it's all uniform
and then do we all agree that one
thirty five is one thirty five or is
your you know like your one thirty five
is one thirty two mine's one forty the
next person is one thirty
That makes it challenging.
It makes it really challenging.
Especially when you get to start,
when you start to use,
when things get larger, when, you know,
more and more clinicians and larger and
larger.
That's right.
So can you imagine if you took data
from clinician, let's go five,
fifty outpatient clinics in fifty
different states with fifty different
clinicians.
It's a lot.
It's a lot of variability, potentially.
Yeah.
So what would you say to people?
There's still a few people who, not brag,
but say,
I have not touched artificial intelligence
yet.
What would you say to that person?
This isn't going,
it's not going to infect your brain.
It's not going to change how you do
things.
What would you say to someone who's still
hesitant about leaning into,
maybe not even just AI,
but technology in a clinical setting?
Well, I mean, do you have an iPhone?
Because you've touched... Correct.
If you have a mobile device,
a smart device now,
you've interacted with AI.
It may not be the chat GPT or
the perplexity or clot or the newer models
that are out there,
but you've certainly interacted with AI in
some way, shape, or form.
So I think there's that.
I think there's this...
threat around AI.
I don't know,
there's this belief that we're gonna get
the Terminator,
and AI's gonna rule the world.
Okay, that's scary.
I think that's a low probability,
at least in the near term,
of that happening.
And then there's the,
I think it feels comfortable AI,
like our phones.
We use these devices.
Whether or not you've used them in the
clinic yet,
I don't know if we're there where I'm
thinking, gosh,
you're really behind if you haven't.
I think we have some progress.
I think all the adopters are there,
but the middle of the bell curve isn't.
Sure.
Maybe.
And I think that's maybe where we were
with telehealth, right?
Like COVID was a fire starter for that.
It was like pouring fuel on the fire
on telehealth.
So I'm not concerned if you're like,
I haven't used it.
I'm concerned if you're saying...
I'm not ever interested in using it.
I won't.
I won't use this technology.
I think the clinic owners, of course,
were the first people who were approached
by everybody who was selling a scribe two,
three years ago.
And the smart ones were being good
clinicians and saying, like, show me,
show me.
Don't give me the,
I don't want the brochure.
I want you to show me on your
screen right now.
And then show me ten people who've done
it already.
And if you were selling that three years
ago, you're like, I don't have ten people.
You're the first people I'm calling.
But now we're sort of past that.
Yep.
And I think as a business owner,
what I want to see is,
does it work?
So can I do a mock case right
now?
Don't show me the fancy demo.
That's cool.
We can polish the demo.
But let's do a mock case right now.
And let me take your subjective and your
history on a condition.
And let's see what happens.
And does it do what I expect it
to do?
Right.
I was working for a small tech company.
as sort of a consultant for a little
while, and I was gonna shock you.
When you go to conferences,
all of a sudden you wind up in
an Uber with three people you don't know
and two people you do.
And someone was like,
who are you and what do you do?
I'm like,
I'm doing this thing with a tech company.
And they're like, well,
you should give me a demo.
And I was like, great,
let's do it right now.
And they're like, well,
there's a lot of loud noise in the
Uber.
I go, great,
there's a lot of loud noise in your
clinic.
If I can't do it at the back
of the Uber with my knees in my
chest, and we did.
We did a subjective evaluation right
there, and I said,
I even threw in some curveballs.
I was like,
what was your last movie you saw or
last concert or like how old are your
kids?
And he was like,
why are you asking me this?
And when I showed him the output,
he was like, I said,
where's the thing about the Garth Brooks
concert and your nine year old in the
movie?
And he's like, oh, it's not there.
I go, right.
That's right.
Because it has to filter that out.
It's not clinically relevant.
Correct.
And it understood that.
But their clinic owners are right for
showing.
Show me.
I want you to be.
I need to beat on this thing.
Yep, absolutely.
I think that's true of any technology.
Any new technology that you're going to
adopt in your clinic,
whether it's AI based or anything else,
you've got to test it.
You've got to push through its paces.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
What are some of the things that get
people past that skeptical phase?
I mean,
this would be the million dollar question.
Just how many?
Because I'm going to get past that as
fast as possible if I'm selling some of
that stuff.
For sure.
I think you got to see it work.
That's a big piece of it.
And you've got to see it work in
that case where you as a skeptic don't
believe it's going to work.
Right.
So if you're like, oh, well,
I can't do it in a noisy clinic.
And then you show me in the middle
of the exhibit hall.
It's noisy.
I'm like, OK.
All right.
Or, you know,
it's not going to filter out if we
have chit chat about the baseball game
last week.
Right.
Oh, okay.
Although I do think it's interesting as a
clinician,
some of those things I would always jot
down somewhere, right?
Like, oh,
you have a nine-year-old daughter that
likes softball.
Ah, good point.
Because those are good social interaction
pieces for us to build that relationship
with the patient.
And so it's an interesting balance, right?
If you're letting the AI do too much
and it's filtering out too much of that.
Yeah, yeah.
Last thing I'll ask, roles.
You stepped into a technology role,
maybe not on purpose,
but one sort of appeared.
What would you tell, you said earlier,
you probably as a clinician have the
skills already.
If someone, and I'm in Facebook groups,
for better or for worse,
the comments section of Facebook groups
are interesting.
But people are asking those questions,
like, hey, I'm thinking about, or,
and it is nice to see people who've
stepped into those roles say,
I will have a phone call with you.
I will show you what I did,
I don't know if that's gonna be relevant
for you,
but what would your advice or suggestion
be for someone who's like,
I do like this, this is fast-paced,
and I can see working in technology,
instead of helping one person at a time,
I could help a thousand people at a
time.
What would your step one or two and
a half be?
I think you have to understand what the
role is that you may want to pursue
and try to understand what that looks
like.
Because I have a lot of folks reach
out, it's like, oh,
can I do customer success?
Yeah, you could.
Do you understand what customer success
means?
What's entailed in the day to day?
Sounds like customer service to me.
Well, yes and.
So do your research,
I think would be my first recommendation.
Understand what it is that you're looking
at.
mine was sort of a happened by chance
and i had the right interaction that
person was probably sizing you up though
that's right that's right and i think it's
it's so interesting that's the thing that
in retrospect i recognized at first i was
like oh gee i had i had ready
i had great fortune to meet this person
and like yes it's true there's some luck
involved right but he wouldn't have called
me back had i not answered the questions
in the right way and put the pieces
together so so
Yes, luck and.
You have to have the skill and the
knowledge.
Ask yourself,
what are your competencies from a
technical standpoint?
What do you know?
I did a prompt once yesterday.
Okay, that's good.
Keep digging.
Good start.
Also, AI is a fantastic tool.
I do it all the time now.
But ask it, right?
I'm a physical therapist with five years
of clinical experience in outpatient
orthopedics.
I'm looking to transition into a
technology role in customer success.
What skills should I develop?
What competencies may I already have?
I go one step ahead.
I download my resume from LinkedIn.
I download the job description and I go,
match me,
give me the five main skills a great
this could have and rank me from zero
to a hundred on those.
And then help me understand if I should
apply.
Yeah.
Use the tool.
That's right.
And that's the thing, I think.
AI is an incredible tool.
I think we're all still learning how to
use it best.
Pilot it, right.
You're handed an infinite information
machine.
We're not all using the same inputs.
And somehow you're like,
how did you get that great output?
Just the same as data.
I gave it a better input.
That's right.
You gave it a better prompt.
And sometimes...
you can ask it how to prompt for
something.
I think that's the hack that a lot
of newcomers don't understand or don't
see.
It knows how to get the best out
of itself, so ask it.
I use that a lot for images.
Because if I liked a way that I
accidentally got to an output, I'm like,
whoa, I like that.
I want that more.
But I don't want to have to sit
here and explain it to you.
So I'm like,
give me the prompt that will get that
type of image in the future.
And I save that in Microsoft Notes.
And then I come back to that and
I have that as my image prompt.
That's right.
That's your default.
And then you plug in the specifics of
what you want.
Yes.
Perfect.
All right.
Last thing we do want to show is
called the parting shot.
Mic drop moment, soapbox statement.
What do you got?
You know,
I think I told you on the last
time I was here,
I'm going to go with the same thing.
I think it's so important and it's Warren
Buffett quote, but he says,
invest in yourself, right?
Like if you invest in the stock market,
as he did very successful,
there's going to be some taxes you can
lose.
But if you invest in yourself,
you take courses, you learn,
you gain knowledge.
There's no tax on that and you can't
lose it.
Nobody can take that away from you.
So good.
So invest in yourself,
whether it's courses or reading,
whatever it may be.
Invest,
make yourself better than you were
yesterday.
Todd, appreciate it.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Good luck tomorrow.
Make sure you hand out the candy here
live from CSM in