Maestro Strategies

Healthcare Innovation – New Chief Officers Are Blazing New Trails

Pam Arlotto is quoted in a May 23rd, 2023 article, by Mark Hagland, in Healthcare Innovation.
Below is an excerpt of the article.

 

Want to follow the trajectory of change around data analytics in healthcare? Just converse with Oscar Marroquin, M.D., who in September 2011 was named vice president, clinical analytics in the Health Services Division at the 40-hospital UPMC health system in Pittsburgh, and who in July 2017 was named the Health Services Division’s chief clinical analytics officer, and then who in July 2020 was then named chief healthcare data and analytics officer for the entire UPMC health system (which encompasses both the provider side of the organization, the Health Services Division, and the UPMC Health Plan).

Marroquin’s professional trajectory (and Marroquin still practices clinically 20 percent of his time, as a cardiologist) reflects the growing ascendancy of data analytics, especially clinical data analytics, in healthcare. Since he began spending a considerable proportion of his time leading data analytics work, Marroquin says, “Given that I had already overseen how we used our clinical data and had done analytics in that space, we had a pretty clear vision that this current role needed to be expanded so that I could have more oversight as to how we managed the whole stack of data.” In fact, he says, “In order to do analytics, you need to manage your data efficiently, and to govern your data efficiently.”

Marroquin notes that the data analytics journey at UPMC has evolved forward organically, with a focus in their case first on analyzing clinical data to improve clinical performance. Nevertheless, he notes, “The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. My expansion of the role began at the beginning of COVID; COVID has transformed everything. And one of the things to note is that, yes, while we are very much aligned in the direction we wanted to go when we expanded the role, there’s still a lot of change management and organizational alignment that has to happen to achieve the goals envisioned.” And he adds that “By consensus, our organization has been gravitating more and more towards this single-source-of-truth concept, displacing having multiple teams working on things. So there’s much more of an agreement on what the gold standard of truth will be. And as a result, the organization is able to function more efficiently without multiple reports, etc. And whether those resources are people or IT processes and computing power, we’re not duplicating processes. I would put that at the top.”

What’s happened at UPMC mirrors activity across the U.S. healthcare delivery system; the leaders of patient care organizations, seeking to improve the outcomes quality and cost-efficiency of care delivery, have found that they needed to create new roles to help lead their organizations forward in key areas: thus the titles chief data officer, chief analytics officer, or, in the case of UPMC, chief data and analytics officer; as well as chief digital officer, and further afield, chief innovation officer, and even chief value officer (see sidebar). What common patterns are emerging?

“What’s happening with all of these new roles is following the pattern of how the CIO and CMIO roles emerged and evolved forward decades ago,” – Pam Arlotto

Indeed, says Pam Arlotto, CEO of the Atlanta-based consulting firm Maestro Strategies, “What’s happening with all of these new roles is following the pattern of how the CIO and CMIO roles emerged and evolved forward decades ago,” as specific needs then and now have prompted the creation of new roles. Just as when the implementation of large, complex electronic health record (EHR) systems propelled forward the CMIO role, and later, the need for improved clinical performance elevated that role, these chief data and chief analytics officer roles are being summoned by the performance needs of the present moment. There is also the chief digital officer role, which as she notes, is more about the need to govern processes that will respond to increasing consumerism and consumer awareness among patients and families. (continued..)

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Hospitals buying real estate, revamping clinical space for innovation hubs

Image Credit: Allegheny Health Network via Modern Healthcare

Pam Arlotto is quoted in a May 3, 2022, article, by Jessica Kim Cohen, in Modern Healthcare. 

In February, Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network held a ribbon-cutting in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, to unveil a home for one of its newest ventures—AlphaLab Health, which the system hopes will spur innovation and improvements to community health.

The 10,000-square-foot innovation hub, a partnership with Pittsburgh-based startup incubator Innovation Works, is housed in a former hospital owned by AHN. It will serve as the home base for startups participating in AlphaLab Health, AHN’s healthcare and life sciences startup accelerator launched in fall 2020.

“It’s a demonstration of what you can do to repurpose these assets that are aged but have great bones,” said Dr. Jeff Cohen, AHN’s chief physician executive for community health and innovation.

The space gives AlphaLab Health startups access to wet and dry labs to develop products, as well as office space and areas to collaborate and meet with other startups. The startups also receive early-stage funding and opportunities to connect with clinicians and test products at AHN.

The project has involved more than two years and $5 million, including renovations and investments in startups and programing—of which AHN and its parent Highmark Health contributed $2 million.

Accelerators and other innovation centers became more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Pam Arlotto, president and CEO of healthcare consultancy Maestro Strategies. While hospitals have been setting up innovation programs for years, the efforts took on a new focus as the healthcare industry eyed consumerism and pushed to create new care models that engage patients at home and outside of the hospital.

They’re expensive projects, usually involving investments in real estate and hiring staff to run the programs.

Hospitals starting innovation centers have done everything from revamping old clinical or administrative space to building new facilities to house innovation programs, said Rob Lowe, CEO of Wellspring, a software company that sells products for innovation and research and development programs. It depends what type of work the hospital needs to do or the form of the incubator itself.

Some hospitals create accelerators to identify startups worth partnering with or venture capital arms that invest, Lowe said. Some, like AHN’s, are partially funded through local government as part of economic development efforts.

“Almost in all cases of these hospitals that we work with around the U.S., we see dedicated space,” Lowe said.

 

Download PDF of Full Article: Hospitals buying real estate, revamping clinical space for innovation hubs _ Modern Healthcare May 3 2022

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Google, HCA strike multiyear cloud partnership

Pam Arlotto is quoted in a May 26th article, by Jessica Kim Cohen, in Modern Healthcare.

HCA Healthcare has entered into a multiyear partnership with Google’s cloud arm, the for-profit hospital chain said Wednesday.

As part of the partnership, Google Cloud will build a data analytics platform for HCA designed to help the Nashville-based health system create tools that improve workflow and clinical care.

HCA declined to share financial details of the agreement.

HCA will work with Google Cloud’s office of the chief technology officer and professional services team to develop artificial intelligence and data analytics tools, such as alerts that could be sent to clinicians’ mobile devices so that they can respond to changes in a patient’s condition more quickly, as well as improvements in non-clinical areas like supply chain and human resources.

HCA will use Google Cloud tools including the company’s healthcare API, or application programming interface, and BigQuery, a cloud data warehouse.

“The cloud can be an accelerant for innovation in health,” said Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud’s CEO, in a statement.

The U.S. healthcare cloud computing market was valued at more than $29 billion in 2020, according to a report from market research firm Global Market Insights, and is expected to reach $79.3 billion by 2027, driven by growing adoption of digital tools and interest in data management tools that incorporate advanced analytics and store data securely.

HCA’s contract is just the latest example of a health system partnering with a technology company for cloud services. A growing number of organizations in recent years have moved applications and data to the cloud—to servers managed by other companies off-site—to help save costs and develop innovative technologies.

Mayo Clinic in 2019 struck a 10-year contract with Google Cloud that involves data storage and innovation projects, leading the tech giant to open an office in Rochester, Minn., earlier this year to strengthen its relationship with the health system. Johns Hopkins Medicine last year struck a five-year agreement with Microsoft Corp.’s cloud arm to support the Baltimore-based healthcare organization’s precision medicine program.

One of the most high-profile cloud deals in healthcare in recent years involved a partnership between St. Louis-based Ascension and Google. The agreement, which included a contract to move Ascension’s patient data to Google Cloud, drew public concern in 2019 over patient privacy. Ascension has since expanded a pilot of an electronic health record tool from Google that it tested as part of the partnership.

Healthcare’s shift to the cloud has encompassed two broad functions: migrating applications to the cloud, where they’re hosted on off-premise servers, or storing data in the cloud so that it can be analyzed more easily and used as part of analytics tools.

“There are two phenomena going on,” said Cynthia Burghard, a research director in value-based IT transformation strategies at IDC Health Insights, a division of market research firm International Data Corp.

While providers and payers were initially hesitant to move to the cloud in years past, citing concerns like privacy, security and reliability, over the past two years it’s become more common for organizations to move applications such as EHR systems to the cloud, Burghard said. Deals that involve data, such as HCA’s partnership with Google Cloud, have gained steam more recently.

Such partnerships have become more common over the past 12 to 18 months, according to Burghard.

Healthcare and life sciences companies had moved roughly 44% of business functions and 42% of IT systems to the cloud in 2020, up from 36% of business functions and 33% of IT systems to the cloud in 2018, according to a report from consulting and IT services firm Infosys, driven in part by the need to add more virtual care and remote work capabilities amid COVID-19.

Healthcare will likely continue to shift towards new cloud tools and deployments over the next two years, according to Jeff Kavanaugh, global head of Infosys’ research and thought leadership arm.

In the wake of public pushback to Ascension’s work with Google in 2019, healthcare experts suggested the controversy reflected a lack of trust the public had of Big Tech, which could pose challenges as tech companies moved into healthcare.

But Google and other tech giants have continued to make inroads in the industry.

“We’ll have to work through a lot of these issues, concerns (and) opportunities” that Big Tech companies bring, said Pam Arlotto, CEO of healthcare consultancy Maestro Strategies. She noted recent announcements involving tech companies have emphasized privacy and security. HCA’s news release reads, in part, “privacy and security will be guiding principles throughout this partnership.”

As hospitals and health systems continue to enter into such partnerships, “it’s really important that each organization that strikes these type of deals has very clear-cut goals (and) very distinct agreements with their partners about what you can and cannot do with your data,” Arlotto said.

 

Download PDF: Google, HCA strike multiyear cloud partnership May 26 2021

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Henry Ford Health System launches competition to tackle disparities with tech

Image via Modern Healthcare

Pam Arlotto is quoted in an April 27th, 2021 article, by Jessica Kim Cohen, in Modern Healthcare. 

 

Henry Ford Health System is seeking out new ways to address health disparities with
digital technology, including a focus on the digital divide, the Detroit-based system said
Tuesday.

The system’s Henry Ford Innovations arm on Tuesday unveiled the digital inclusion
challenge, a competition it’s hosting in partnership with Google Cloud and Novi, Mich.-
based information-technology firm Miracle Software Systems. Entrepreneurs and
engineers from across the globe are encouraged to propose ideas for how to use digital
technologies to reduce racial, gender and other health disparities.

That could include projects that make care more affordable, accessible or that make it easier for patients who don’t have access to high-speed internet access to learn about their health.

“We’re open to seeing what comes our way,” said Lisa Prasad, vice president and chief innovation officer at Henry Ford. “It’s kind of an open book.”

The challenge supports Henry Ford’s broader effort to “double-down on DEIJ,” or diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, Prasad said. Hopefully, entrepreneurs who participate in the competition will be able to help Henry Ford Innovations identify ways to better serve its patient population in Detroit and ensure patients are able to access emerging digital health and virtual care tools, she said.

The competition kicks off May 19 with submissions due June 24.

Henry Ford Innovations will reveal the top 20 finalists in July, five of whom will participate in a live pitch competition. That pitch competition will hopefully take place in-person in Detroit in August or September, Prasad said, although it will depend on COVID-19.

The winning team will receive $75,000 and will participate in a co-development program at Henry Ford Innovations, where the team can collaborate with the system’s clinical, IT and other staffers.

Ideally, depending on the project, the winning team will also be able to test their project within Henry Ford, Prasad said.

The program builds on other innovation competitions Henry Ford Innovations has launched over the past five years, many of which have been internal competitions that seek proposals from staff that work at the health system, as well as innovation challenges hosted in Israel through Henry Ford Innovations’ Global Technology Development Program.

Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Aurora Health, Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai and Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Children’s Hospital are among other health systems that have recently hosted accelerators and challenges to invite outside startups to pitch their innovations.

The American Hospital Association also hosts an annual innovation challenge, in which the industry trade group provides funding for three winners to developing projects they pitch.

It’s become increasingly common for health groups to put out calls for startups to pitch proposals for specific problems, said Pam Arlotto, president and CEO of healthcare consultancy Maestro Strategies. Startups can bring expertise that health systems don’t have, such as in advanced technology.

“Often, these partners will have complementary skills that the health system doesn’t necessarily have internally,” Arlotto said.

If a health system invests in the company or helps to commercialize the product, it can provide another revenue stream for the organization. And the startup often gets the opportunity to test its product in the clinical setting and get the recognition of being selected by the health system, which can help to raise awareness about the company and possibly help with fundraising down the line.

Arlotto said she expects to see more health systems launch competitions with partners from various industries, rather than hosting them on their own, similar to what Henry Ford Innovations is doing.

She highlighted a recent healthcare innovation challenge that Macon, Ga.-based Atrium Health Navicent hosted last year with local startup incubator Atlanta Tech Village, Georgia’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society chapter and local technology association TAG Digital Health.

Download PDF: Henry Ford, Google Cloud launch tech competition to tackle health disparities Modern Healthcare April 2021

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