Cultivating Innovation instead of Conformity

I had the opportunity to see Neal Patterson speak at the American Royal scholarship lunch. For those of you non-Kansas City people who read my blog – American Royal is a foundational aspect of Kansas City which is facing a momentous challenge….but I will close with my thoughts on that…

Neal has an interesting way of communicating, if you haven’t experienced him in a large venue you should. He speaks as if looking at a whiteboard – where he can see how everything fits nicely together yet he is searching for the next white space that he is supposed to identify and fill. As he moved into a segment on Healthcare (industry) he made several statements that have sat with me for the last few days.

Here was my take away: We as a culture/ industry have moved from innovating in healthcare to finding a way to work within the constraints the government has put on us. This has created a mantra of focusing our creative efforts towards efficiency and conformity to squeeze the turnip. Many have resigned to the idea that government provided healthcare will be our new way of life. I believe this will strangle and destroy the ability for the innovators to create a new way of being.

Gut check…..how is the product we have created and our roadmap conforming to the government constraints? Are we answering the problems of today without considering the opportunity of a future that is NOT created by Obamacare?

As a company, Sphere3 has been tagged in number of different buckets. Early on people continuously called us a “bolt on reporting software for nurse call” which always annoyed me. Their short sighted understanding of what “reporting” is and what the impact of patient generated data could be on the care delivery model….if you can’t see beyond “reporting” then you are stuck in the early 1990s and need to get your head out of the sand. Reporting is dead – it is a post mortem and if your company is still focused on reports…..then to quote my 10 year old “dude”.

Most recently, we have been tagged as a survey tool…..ugh….while our tool can gather everything from patient experience to site specific data. The FUNCTION of survey is really meaningless without a true intersection of patient behavioral and caregiver engagement information. When we try to use “feeling” to define process we lose the ability to have long lasting impact.

I believe that a product category will emerge this year that will even go beyond Alarm Fatigue. It will identify how the patient generated data produced in a useable format at the point of care beyond dashboards and beyond that of an alarm or alert. I believe the category will be AS impactful as Electronic Medical Record. This spider web of information produced BY the patient will be AS important as information produced ABOUT the patient. The information produced BY the patient must be compiled and visually produced in a useable manner as engageable digestible information…at the point of care.

Hospital Leaders, do me a favor the next time a sales person shows you their reports….ask them “How do you expect me to use that at the point of care? How do you expect me to create an environment of quality care that is actively evolving with a piece of paper?” The next time a sales person shows you their survey tool…… ask them “How do the actions of the care team compare to that patients perception?” The next time a sales person throws the word “Alarm Fatigue” make them really tell you how their tool will impact care….how will they really engage and change the behaviors of your care team other than a Pavlovian response to yet another alarm…….

I promised a close on the American Royal….so if you are not from here then the end is not for you but I welcome you to read on.

Our city has a lack of vision accompanied by a lack of appreciation for our Agrarian roots that should be seen as a strength and not a weakness. Do you not see that the American Royal is part of who we are? Or are you trying to define us by the music concerts and monster truck rallies at the Sprint center?

My personal rant which is shared in good company by Neal Patterson..…children today do not understand how food gets to our tables, but there is an uprising of individuals who believe in buying local or even producing their own food. I live in a rural area. (Across the street from cows and surrounded by farming) I desire to know where my food originates. We have an obligation to our community and region to continue to support and promote those who feed us. There is a slippery slope and danger to a community that fails to recognize where our food originates. We have an obligation to our area to encourage and enable young people to learn how to be the next generation of farmers.

Agriculture has become a growth industry again in our economy. The promise of technology and innovation as America feeds the expanding population of the world is a great opportunity. Our youth have an opportunity to cultivate promising careers in a sector of our economy undergoing great change.

My question back to the AR is how are you cultivating growth in the city which birthed you? How are you innovating beyond rural to impact the local community beyond merely brining in additional attendees to your events? How are you reaching into the schools to provide education and perspective?

Don’t you agree city leaders……or do you think that your food comes from a grocery store?

HIMSS Day 3... Day???

I have been on the road for a solid week now as most of us in the industry know kind of forgetting what my house looks like and hopeful that my boys remember my name when they see me.

Yesterday – I was able to enjoy the Cedars Sinai & Voalte presentation.  Most of you know I have an affinity towards Voalte..yes, yes, I am vendor agnostic but there are products that are disruptive, innovative, and extremely functional for nursing that shift the paradigm.  Or maybe it’s just the pink pants…..

The presentation was great – I tweeted it out and saw lots of people liking the thoughts.  Darren Dworkin is a real thought leader – I have had the pleasure of working with him and his phenomenal staff and have experienced firsthand their ability to grasp a concept and mobilize it (no pun intended).    Dworkin was humble in the revelation that Cedars has tried a number of different technologies to really find the right fits for their organization that also fit the fast changing IT infrastructure.  For communications devices they have landed on a more “consumer” type product – the iphone.    They have deployed more than 1000 devices.  I was most impressed with the statement that nursing came to him and said “we don’t want a batman belt” and IT listened to the end users and sought out a product that would not only be forward thinking but serve the nurses well.  He said that nurses don’t come up and tell you how much they love EMR but they do come up and tell you what a difference this device has made. 

My biggest disappointment yesterday was on the statements made by Epic.  I have debated whether or not to post anything (when you are a startup it’s better not to ruffle too many feathers…which I tend to do with Cerner on occasion.... ) but for the few of you who read my blog you know it’s my opinion. 

I didn’t like their statement.  I understand they got bad press because they weren’t sitting there on stage from the beginning.  I also understand that it appears that they are being strong armed into the party – twitter and speakers are brutal and love a good bit of drama and gossip..we are all grown ups and can see it.  I also understand how they could take this as a competitive movement…. 

But OH MY WORD…CAN IT JUST BE ABOUT THE PATIENT FOR ONE DAY IN HEALTH IT?! 

Why not say – we weren’t invited to the party but we think this is an idea worth exploring because we believe in patient care.   Then take a look and if it’s not a great idea – make a statement then.  The point is can't they just sit down and talk about it.....somehow they got Neal to sit next to Jonathan Bush (which was visually awkward) but they were there willing to talk. 

I don’t know Neal personally – I don’t know the other men on the stage (I met Jonathan Bush…and wow still not sure what to think of him)   I have to believe – that somewhere each of these men have some part of them is good intentioned enough to believe that CommonWell is really what it says for the Common wellness of patients…….

I am weary – weary – of going to events and seeing so little about the patient – seeing the vendors latch on to analytics because it’s the next hot topic and it will “save money” and it will “improve your efficiency” – they need something new to sell.  I just want them to know you won’t be able to really love analytics  and serve the hospital well until you step back and see the people in the numbers. 

Ok, soap box complete for Day whatever it is....

 

 

Cerner Health Conference

Living here in Kansas City everyone “knows” or more accurately claims to know something about Neal Patterson.  As the iconic entrepreneur walked by my second row seat and took the stage for his Keynote at the Cerner Health Conference,  I wasn’t sure what to expect.    I tried to brush aside all the good and bad I’ve heard and just listen to see if I could connect to him and Cerner.  

I expected a politician – slick with perfectly constructed and managed content.  A more accurate description is comfortable, confident and owning the content.   Dressed casually, he appeared more approachable than intimidating. His speech style was more conversational than choreographed.  The “picture in his head” is much more detailed than what he could share in the time frame.   He was funny and entertaining – much more than I expected.  I take time to describe him because when you read about what he said I want you to see this picture of him.   These are sound bites with my interpretation. 

“We must separate Health and Care”
Cerner, throughout the conference, delivered the next frontier of their ambitious goals: Managing health as opposed to maintaining a sick society.   The Solutions Gallery Floor was split into three areas Foundation, Organizational Excellence, and Community.  When you entered the solutions gallery floor the first thing you see is Foundation.  Many times when I have talked to people about being able to interpret data we have to step back and look at the way it’s collected and the model in which it is stored.  The Foundation is representing the “Care”.  How hospitals document and gather the information that improves the care of the patient.   Though the pods were a little fragmented and hard to see the vision of how they all played together the message was one foundational platform to collect data.

If you think about the future of care it’s built on the foundation of data.  Think of it this way – if you build your house on sand there is no way to maintain the stability of the structure.  If you build your house on a solid foundation then expansion and stability are givens.

Across from Foundation is the next frontier the “Health” what Cerner noted as Community.  I thought the visual was quite nice – the past was facing the future.   We MUST start managing the wellness the health of not only an individual but of entire populations. 

“What Steve Jobs did in regards to music – Cerner is doing with health data”

I found this statement extremely bold, but accurate. The challenge with most leaders is to be able to drive vision, growth and domination in an industry you are often seen as prideful.  While I agree with some of the pundits – a self comparison to the actions of Apple, the benchmark for transformational innovation, is not the most humble of statements – the only thing I would throw back – isn’t it pretty accurate?   Cliff and Neal took the documentation of processes and have systematically transformed it into a billable standard. And amazingly have driven such change into the industry that the government has seen the benefits of this documentation and will now subsidize their growth through mandates to their core customers.

The thing I would challenge Cerner on is this – Apple has the unique ability to take a complex idea and make it simple to use, visually appealing, and extremely easy to understand.  On the BI side - I didn’t quite see that in Cerner yet – not saying they won’t get there.   They have built a firm foundation – collection and storage of data.  The hard part is the presentation of the data in a useable manageable format. 

The center of their Solutions Gallery was the Organizational Excellence.   I stopped in to see their dashboards and examine their process.   My take away and I hope this isn’t too harsh – they are just not there yet….a little bland and canned.   My encouragement to them – the people who will be successful in the BI space are those who can take the data and do what Neal told the audience Cerner will do “We will future proof your organization” he said that in regards to how the government will change reimbursement based on the collected data.   Somehow you have to take your incredibly complex data set and deliver it to leaders in the hospital in useable fashion.   Most people are not data junkies.

I will say this as a note to the other EMR companies – my money is on Cerner to do this first and from being first they will build the standard.  If you are not all ready in the space you are all ready behind and if you are looking at only the EMR data set – you won't catch them.

The final two statements hit home for me and if you listened to what Neal Patterson was saying they were actually quite revealing to who he is as a person.  

“We are all mortal with a huge instinct to survive.”

There is an underlying ambition to extend life and improve the quality of life.  While not the most personable way to put this thought to the audience – it was a directive.   From a technical standpoint this is the push to build PHR and build it well.  Driving home the point that we must manage health creating a foundational platform like Cerner has done in the “Care” space for the “health” space.  Fixing PHR.  

 “If we know something and we know how to predict it in the future why aren’t we doing it?”

I am not sure if the crowd heard it, but I heard frustration in this statement.   When you hold great power, knowledge, data……when you can see the future and you are pulling those around you to understand it…..when your mind understands that all the pieces of the puzzle are there and all we have to do is put them together….. it’s almost excruciating.  It’s a blessing and a curse to have a vision. 

When that type of driving vision is mixed with a personal experience it intensifies in a way that many won’t understand.  Neal’s top 4 things he wanted to accomplish in this decade – one was “Save Linda’s Life”.    Linda, his sister in law, died from Sepsis.    Can you imagine being one of the most powerful people in healthcare and losing a loved one to a preventable medical error?   Knowing that the data contained in your servers holds a key to change possibly annihilate this and other preventable medical errors?   With great understanding, knowledge, and blessing comes great responsibility - great responsibility engages great pressure.

In closing - Cerner is not Disney World – not what I would describe as “friendly” place but they are knowledgeable and they are incredibly capable and powerful.  They will find answers and save lives.   I am not sold on them as an organization, but after this speech I do see that the leader has passion and purpose.