Coming Together to Save Lives
The following is a post from the members of theCOVID-19 Healthcare Coalition , #C19Coalition co-chaired by Dr. Jay Schnitzer, Chief Medical and Technology Officer at MITRE @MITREcorp who directs initiatives in health/life sciences and Dr. John Halamka @jhalamka, President of Mayo Clinic Platform who leads a portfolio of platform businesses focused on transforming health.-------Pandemics thrive in confusion.Not because diseases like COVID-19 have intent, but because the lack of a focused response makes the spread of disease so much easier.Pandemics stress our healthcare delivery system. We ar...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - March 22, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Sanctuary and COVID Planning
You might think a farm sanctuary doesn ' t need cyber-liability insurance (we do because we track social security numbers associated with donations). You may not think that a Farm Sanctuary needs a comprehensive COVID plan.We need a plan for five reasons1. We are a community gathering point for over 100 volunteers and hundreds of people taking enrichment classes including Yoga, Tai Chi, Meditation, Beekeeping, and Council on Aging activities.2. We are an employer with full time and part time workers3. We are accountable for the health of more than 250 creatures. Without humans, these crea...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - March 21, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Bringing Out the Best in Us
In the upcoming week you ' ll see numerous writings about national private sector efforts to enhance COVID response, communication, and collaboration.As part of doing this work, one of my colleagues noted that the she ' s seen many recent examples of current events bringing out the best in people. There ' s a willingness to help, a eagerness to volunteer, and a sense of belonging by banding together for a common cause. Yes there are stories about hoarding toilet paper and purell, but those are minor distractions compared to the good things happening around us.Here are examples of what I ' ve se...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - March 21, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
What's a Platform Go Live?
As we plan our go-lives for the Mayo Clinic Platform, we recently discussed how best to measure what constitutes a go-live.First, let ' s review what Platform thinking (technology, policy, people and process) can do for an organization.*Facilitates collaborations and partnerships with external entities (i.e. participants on the Platform benefit from the presence of other participants)*Connects assets (data, algorithms, expertise) with customers in ethical, privacy protecting ways*Supports the development of ideas into products that may be licensed, spun out, or sold as services*Has turnkey technology and policy approaches ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - March 7, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
What is the Architecture of a Modern Platform?
Platform businesses require technology that promotes interoperability and scalability. For those who live in platform companies day-to-day, my thinking below may sound obvious, but for those who are thinking about a cloud journey, the list of technologies below may be helpful.Storage and compute functionality in the cloud enables agility via " infrastructure as code " products such asTerraform. Terraform enables virtual server spin up on demand within applications to provision and manage any cloud, infrastructure, or service. Each cloud provider has strengths. Customers like Google ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - February 25, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
The Future of Elder Care
Last weekend I moderated an amazing group of presenters for Harvard Business School ' s 17th Annual Healthcare Conference, debating the future of elder care throughout the world.Discussants wereGeoff Price - Oak Street Health, Chief Operating OfficerSusan Diamond - Humana, President of Home SolutionsNeil Wagle - Devoted Health, Chief Medical Officer We started with a statement of the problem - in many countries such as Japan, the Nordics, Germany, Italy, and the United States, societies are rapidly aging. Birth rates are declining. Costs are rising and access to clinicians is becoming more chall...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - February 14, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Innovation at Work
Over the past 40 years I ' ve worked in a variety of workplace settings, each appropriately serving its intended purpose. I did not appreciate how much a workspace influences my productivity and mood until I starting working at Mayo. My new role focuses on convening stakeholders and facilitating discussion. A supportive workspace is transformational.In my mid-teens, I worked in shared office space at TRW (a predecessor company to Raytheon) with large metal desks, filing cabinets and fluorescent tube lightingIn my late teens, I founded a company in a basement and worked at a drafting table next to a bedIn m...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - February 4, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Innovation at Home
This is the first of a two part series that describes where I live and where I work at Mayo Clinic. To me, life and work are inseparably intertwined. You cannot have a productive work life if your home life is unstable. You cannot have a balanced home life if your work life is unstable. When I decided to work at Mayo, my wife and I agreed that we would live in Massachusetts running Unity Farm Sanctuary but I would work in Rochester/Jacksonville/Scottsdale Sunday night through Thursday night. Over the past month, I ' ve organized a life in Minnesota, maximizing my well-bei...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - February 4, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Moving Complex Systems Toward a Goal
I recently told several of my Mayo colleagues that I ' m an outsider who has landed in a new environment where the degree of collaboration, dialog, and friendly debate is amazing. The following a kind of guest blog, started byDr. Michael Joyner, who is also a writer He wrote to a number of us"Great paper written by chairman of bank of England in middle of financial crisis. Pertinent to anyone interested in nudging complex systems towards a goal. " Below are the responses:Let ’s move away from risk prediction a bit and apply these concepts to our world. The world of innovating ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 30, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Advice for Aspiring CMIOs
Recently, my colleague Steve Peters, chief medical information officer, Mayo Clinic, and I discussed our life experiences as CMIOs. We talked about how the role has evolved along with changing technology and the transition to nearly universal adoption of electronic health records by large health centers. I asked Steve to share his insights on ' what makes a great CMIO in 2020 ' and captured his thoughts for you." I have thought about the ' post-EHR ' CMIO as most large centers and hospitals have moved on from the initial implementation. Here are a few thoughts:1. Serves as the ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 22, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
A New Model for Sharing Insights While Protecting Privacy
Last week at JP Morgan, Mayo Clinic announced a new collaboration withnference that I would describe as " Cloud-hosted, de-identified, federated learning in which the tools are brought to the data instead of sending data to the tools " ThisHealthleaders article describes it well. Here ' s a broad overview. Let ' s start with 3 containers. The first container is controlled by Mayo Clinic, holds identified data, and has one purpose - the development and optimization of de-identification algorithms. Selected data scientists, who are accountable to Mayo Clinic, are asked to help with algorithms via time li...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 21, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Dispatch from JP Morgan
Although I ' ve been attending healthcare and technology conferences for more than 40 years (yes, I attended Comdex in 1979), but until this week had never attended the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. The conference gathers 60,000 investors, innovators, and providers for four days to plan the next year ’s path for healthcare and building relationships that will foster future innovation. I have extensive experience attending HIMSS , which has similar numbers, but only a small fraction actually attend the main the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. My Mayo colleagues and I pres...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 16, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
How Does a Platform Reduce Barriers to Innovation?
One of our Mayo Clinic Platform team, Emily Wampfler, recently forwarded me an overview ofMIT ' s Platform conferenceRead the Barclay ' s piece. It notes that 55,000 people changed focus from product support to a platform service line orientation, remarkably enhancing business opportunities.Few organizations in healthcare have created a Platform which connects data producers and consumers, standardizing security, enhancing reliability and accelerating agility. What is the urgency to embrace a Platform approach to healthcare? I believe a Platform strategy is the best way to reduc...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 10, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Week One
My new role as president of the Mayo Clinic Platform began officially on January 1, 2020. I was selected for the role in late November and volunteered time in December to better understand the technology, people and processes of Mayo Clinic. What will I do in my first weeks at Mayo? Listen to my colleagues, customers, and staff. I learned a valuable lesson in 1998 when I first became a CIO. I was seeing patients on a 2pm-2am Emergency Department shift when my Motorola flip phone rang at midnight. The conversation went something like this &...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 4, 2020 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
A Look Back at 2019
I ' ve always been an optimist. I believe humans are basically good and that the nice guy will win eventually.After traveling 400,000 miles to 40 countries in 2019, helping government, academia, and industry, my view of the world has not changed.Despite our focus on the negative 24x7 news cycle, 2019 has been thebest year for humanity in history.My best memories, looking back at 2019:*Serving the Gates Foundation in South Africa and Northern India. Experiencing the rollout of technology enabled platforms that reduced HIV disease burden and improved diagnosis/treatment of tuberculosis.*Working with mayors a...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 31, 2019 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
