Becker's Hospital Review

39 CIO / HEALTH IT How Renown Health's Dr. Patrick Woodard ensures hospital technology improves human relationships By Jackie Drees P atrick Woodard, MD, associate chief medical officer for IT at Reno, Nev.-based Renown Health, discusses the growing need for physician involvement in system planning and strategy, and why human relationships are critical to healthcare. Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length. Question: How has your role as CMIO evolved over the past two to three years? How have your responsibilities changed since you took on the role? Dr. Patrick Woodard: Before I took this role, my organization did not have a clinician or physician in any similar role. As such, when assuming initial responsibilities a few years ago, the role had a much narrower scope. ere was a focus on 'fixing' things in the medical record, whether it was workflow complaints, broken orders or doc- umentation enhancements. is core work will always remain in the CMIO's portfolio as a workflow expert and lean practitioner, but there is a growing need for physician involvement in system planning and strategy. My role has a unique view of both clinical and nonclinical aspects of the health system that has engendered a high level of respect from system leaders. Q: What do you consider your No. 1 priority as CMIO? How do you ensure you're successful? PW: Building positive, human relationships will always be critical to health. e question, as algorithms and artificial intelligence improve, will be how to best ensure the "human touch" can reach our patients, wherever they are. In that way, technology works as an adjunct to human interaction to support the Quadruple Aim. To support that, my top priority is to ensure that our implementation of technology supports that — to be sure we provide value, improve human relation- ships and support health. Making sure we create happiness and reduce anxiety in the process is important, too. Q: Which apps and technologies do you find most help- ful, and which do you think will be passing fads? PW: Seamless application at the point of care is the most important element for all clinical applications. I have seen several vendors pro- moting their "platform as a service" applications that overlay the EMR. I don't think that's the answer. Instead, apps that work within existing, previously implemented soware, such as Epic's App Orchard and Cerner's App Gallery, may have much more utility. Accordingly, the most helpful applications are directly integrated, in- cluding patient-facing portals and integrated clinical communications tools. On the patient-facing side, virtual care will be instrumental in reaching patients where they are and will be critical in reaching pop- ulation health goals. Here at Renown, we are also working through the Healthy Nevada Project to personalize medicine and treatment plans for patients by better understanding their genetics. Q: How do you feel about the use of voice recognition technology, such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant, in healthcare? Is there a place for its use within the EHR? PW: is is such an exciting time. Voice recognition will definitely make its way into the EHR, as it should, but not until it is consistently more accurate. A good 10 percent of the time, my bathroom lights turn on when I want my bedroom lights to. at's fine in my house, but not fine when we need to know the difference between Inderal, a blood pressure medication, and Adderall. As the technology matures, voice recognition will ultimately be able to make great strides in pro- vider satisfaction with the EMR and greatly improve convenience and clinician-patient relationships. n Duke launches Woo Center for Big Data and Precision Health By Anuja Vaidya D urham, N.C.-based Duke University established the Sherry and John Woo Center for Big Data and Precision Health, which will support research, education and entrepreneurship opportunities for Duke faculty and students. The center was opened at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering with more than $3 million in funding over three years from John Woo, a biotech industry ex- ecutive and philanthropist. Duke faculty and students will be able work with health- care industry stakeholders, such as hospitals, govern- ment agencies and biotech companies, to further da- ta-driven health research. The center will award pilot grants up to $150,000 each to Duke researchers to develop ideas for collaborative research projects in big data and health. Additionally, the center will organize an annual symposium. "Big data and precision medicine have the potential to vastly improve human health, and Duke has a special role to play with its unique combination of strengths in data science and machine learning, biomedical engi- neering and medicine — our faculty are world leaders in each of these areas," said Larry Carin, vice provost for research at Duke. n

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