How to Plan for AI ROI in Clinical + Operational Transformation Programs
by: Brian Yam, Somnology COO, Karen Jaw-Madson, Trustworthy Technology Consortium Head of Talent, Matt Partridge, Trustworthy Technology Advisory Board Secretary, & Sherri Douville, Medigram CEO | Series Editor, Trustworthy Technology for Taylor & Francis | IEEE/UL P2933 Trust SG Co-Chair
As leading market turnaround CIO, Chuck Podesta mentioned in a recent Trustworthy Technology advisory board meeting that: “AI implementation success will be driven by cross functional multidisciplinary working groups.” This would have to include several types of technical roles including cybersecurity, clinical roles, regulatory and privacy, procurement, operational staff, and other types of team members.
Another inspiration and contributor to this topic is Advanced Health Technology and academic medical education leader, Dr. Felix Ankel who wisely explains with his coauthor in a recent blog [3] that good governance is essential for wellbeing and ties back to the historic phrase “Nothing About Us Without Us” [1, 2, 3]
But how do you operationalize “Nothing About Us Without Us”
Answer: through WORKING GROUPS
That’s why we’ve been running working groups in this book series patterned after our experience with world leading IEEE technical standards development processes. A large part of what makes them world leading is their ANSI accreditation quality which is only achieved through the working group model. This reflects the goal to build the credibility, legitimacy, and authority required to be adopted by both top CIOs and physician executives. These seemingly divergent constituencies can be aligned through exceptional governance that’s reminiscent of the most prestigious accreditation schemes that both medical societies and esteemed technical standards rely upon, ACCME and ANSI respectively. This is required to drive adoption and move past AI hype to implementation while benefiting complementing and other more advanced technologies such as cybersecurity and mobility.
“Industry leaders in healthcare are done with hype and we see that in the lack of support for and interest in hype. They demand clinical and business results which require extraordinary operations and that’s why I’m thrilled to help build the operating capabilities and mastery for this consortium.” –Matt Partridge, Secretary Trustworthy Technology & Innovation Advisory Board Secretary
After successfully launching a series of consortium working groups under the leadership of the Medigram team; it became time to identify and prepare additional working group chairs. In this effort, we launched a training series initially focused on the CMIO and CMO. In this effort, we leaned on Karen Jaw Madson, Head of Talent for the Consortium who focuses on leadership development as well as Head of Operations and Secretary for the advisory board, Matt Partridge who is a process engineer and industrial operations enthusiast. The training series has two themes:
- Vertical leadership representing strategic and design thinking skills by the orange vertical arrow.
- Horizontal leadership representing process improvement and LEAN 6 Sigma methods pictured by the yellow arrow.
This summary focuses on theme 2 horizontal leadership while there will be a future blog featuring the Consortium’s Head of Talent to reflect on theme 1, vertical development.
Leadership definition evolution:
With the explosion of operations required by AI and cybersecurity governance requirements; we recognize that leadership has to transcend away from the singular star model to more of a team based identity of leadership, and ideally one that is designed as a system. This is required to provide the leadership required to drive results and make the individuals in the system effective and successful as they continually learn and evolve individually and together.
Participants’ Feedback
“I am excited for the opportunity to have a space to be generative with leaders in the field who have the ability to think prospectively, both vertically and horizontally. Training to work as a leadership team in real time will measurably improve my performance, and allow me to explore new ways to develop the capacities of my team.” –Dr. Laura Davies, experienced CMO
Quote for Board Ops Review Training:
“In a clinical setting, physicians thrive on structure and clear orders and expectations. In the boardroom there are many “unwritten rules” and the consortium’s approach to reverse engineering best practices, and creating standards to reliably replicate success is something I am excited to learn more about!” -Matthew Sakumoto, MD Sutter Virtualist | CMIO West Bay Region | UCSF Clinical Informatics, CI-DS Asst Course Director
Consortium Values:
The core values of the consortium emphasize teamwork, integrity, and the collaborative nature of the group’s efforts.
History of Consortium & Parallel Universes:
A review of the consortium’s history is given, along with an explanation of the ‘parallel universes’ concept, which describes the coexistence of various operational levels within the organization as well as its coexistence and shared yet informally linked leadership with the leadership team of the IEEE/UL P2933 full stack international technical standard.
Why Do We Do Things This Way & What Is This Consortium:
The consortium has standardized on unique evidence based methodologies and operational practices, which is what sets the consortium apart from other entities.
“As a world class clinical operator and strategist, I am deeply passionate about the need for innovation. At the same time, we have to face the fact that innovation demands exponentially greater operating discipline, not less in healthcare.” –Jeffrey M. Lewis, MBOE, BSN, RN, LSSBB, Medigram Advisor
What Working Group Chairs Do Operationally:
The chairpersons have significant operational roles and responsibilities. Their operational competence and contributions determine the consortium’s success.
What the Team Puzzle Needs to Look Like:
Discussion on the ideal composition of the consortium team considers various roles and expertise needed to complete the ‘team puzzle” and balance covering subject expertise, strategic, and operating acumen.
Setting Up Our Consortium WG Chairs for Success:
Strategies and steps were presented to our chairs-elect to ensure the new working group (WG) chairs are equipped for success, focusing on leadership development, strategic competence, and operational excellence.
Key Discussion Points From the Training:
- Systems Thinking: Emphasis on viewing leadership not as a singular role but as a system encompassing vision, operations, and collaboration.
- Reverse Engineering Success: Analyzing successful teams and processes in the past and using these insights to construct effective working groups within the consortium.
- Dual Focus on Vertical and Horizontal Development:
A) Vertical Development: Adopting a design thinking approach for strategic, innovative, and visionary progress.
B) Horizontal Development: Implementing LEAN and Six Sigma methodologies for efficiency and process improvement.
- Integration of Multidisciplinary Perspectives: Combining expertise from various fields, including technology, healthcare operations, medicine, and regulatory; to ensure viable solutions with relevant, legitimate governance models.
- Operational Excellence: Defining clear roles and responsibilities for chairpersons and working group members to ensure the consortium operates at a high level of efficiency and effectiveness.
- Consensus-Building: Recognizing the importance of achieving consensus in every healthcare technology program to ensure alignment and commitment to shared goals. That the only mechanism to do so is a well run working group.
- Accreditation and Quality Focus: Following principles and processes akin to accredited medical education and IEEE standards development to maintain high-quality outputs.
- Working Group Structure: Establishing a consistent meeting cadence and operations, ensuring that even new members can contribute meaningfully.
- Ethics and Norms Compliance: Maintaining a strict code of ethics and conduct to ensure the integrity and trustworthiness of the consortium’s work.
- Shared Language and Understanding: Promoting a shared understanding across disciplines to build trust and drive adoption of the consortium’s standards and recommendations.
How we’re moving forward with additional, newly trained working group chairs
- New chairs review the consortium’s history and values.
- WG chairs create a schedule for regular meetings and adopt the established board operations protocol for consistency.
- WG chairs to collaborate on setting strategic directions for their respective groups with the best SMEs in the market.
- Chairs and vice-chairs ensure they are familiar with the consortium’s operational guidelines and drive to execute them with confidence and competence.
In summary, it’s critical to build and deploy the capabilities that only well run working groups can deliver to drive value from AI and advanced technologies in healthcare. This is the only way to orchestrate and leverage gifts of a diverse constituency in order to create value from the technology. This is how we drive success and transform medicine with technology.
If this seems daunting and you want to know where to begin. To learn what skills and competencies are needed as a baseline to get started; we invite you to check out the series editor’s prior post featured by SCU faculty news about the subject of modern teamwork here.
[1] Szemere, Bertalan (1860). Hungary, from 1848 to 1860. London: Richard Bentley. p. 173.
[2] “Nothing about us without us” Latin: {Nihil de nobis, sine nobis) the idea that policy cannot be adopted without the full and direct participation of members of the group(s) affected by that policy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_about_us_without_us
[3] https://icenet.blog/2024/01/23/futureofmeded-governance-as-wellbeing/
About the Trustworthy Technology & Innovation Book Series:
Commissioned by: Taylor & Francis, headquartered in Abingdon, U.K. the Trustworthy Technology and Innovation in Healthcare book series supports preeminent full stack technical standards along with esteemed accredited continuing medical education. The work is aligned with medical ethics, a pillar of modern medical practice. This book series is designed by Sherri Douville, CEO at Medigram, the Mobile Medicine company driving safety, efficiency, and profitability. Medigram is a leader in technical standards and certifications, and corporate boards cybersecurity University curriculum. Per medical education norms, content is educational, non promotional, and evidence based everywhere possible given the maturity of the AI, healthcare cybersecurity and IT industries. Our books are read by industry leaders, policymakers, and investors as prior books both enduring best-sellers on Kindle, Mobile Medicine https://lnkd.in/gAZF5K6n and Advanced Health Technology https://lnkd.in/gQhfd-Fe. The books are built by a team of multidisciplinary teams representing many of the top minds from the intersecting industries including health systems, legal, medical device, and healthcare IT sectors including clinicians, engineers, process and systems engineers, clinical operations experts, healthcare IT leaders and staff, informatics, cybersecurity, implementation, and regulatory experts, and a community network of 100+ co authors, reviewers, and advisors. The current projects are the AI and Cybersecurity Handbook for Healthcare Boards forthcoming in 2024 as well as the Venture Capital book for medical grade software and clinical IoT.
