Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1444560
35 INNOVATION have with our data, enabling us to be a de- cision-making organization, is the critical fulcrum of whether you are effective and ag- ile or tending too digital. It's incumbent on leaders to identify the people and processes who turn information into intelligence, then ultimately deliver insight from the "ones and zeros" in which we are awash. Nick Patel, MD. Chief Digital Officer at Prisma Health (Columbia, S.C.): Balancing the need to be innovative and disruptive with- out disrupting provider or patient experience is a tough one. Some key signs that should alert you of a digital asset gone wrong, is if it causes segmentation of your patient or team member population. You have to consider the social determinates of health when deploying a new digital tool. You don't want to increase the digital divide of those populations that you are trying to reach. Access to hardware (mobile/desktop), tech literacy and access to broadband may make your tool inaccessible to some. Technology should augment the hu- man interaction of healthcare delivery. Some other common unintended conse- quences that should make you pause and rethink your strategy would be poor user adoption, more disgruntled team members, increasing costs or limiting access. e last twelve years have shown the negative dis- ruption an EHR can make in provider pro- ductivity, satisfaction and accessibility for patients if you don't deploy it correctly. You have to be very prescriptive on the use of technology so that it adds efficiency and improves satisfaction instead of being anoth- er layer of nuisance. Proper understanding of the use cases and key performance indicators need to be fleshed out prior to introduc- ing any new technology. As Steve Jobs said, "You've got to start with the customer experi- ence and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to sell it." Tom Andriola. Vice Chancellor of IT and Data at University of California Irvine: No one would describe Amazon, a digital compa- ny that can provide you with almost anything, as being too digital. What they have done is fo- cus on meeting people's needs and using tech- nology as an enabler to make things simple and efficient. at's key: simple and efficient. e place where sometimes organizations can get off track is when they lose sight that the purpose of technology is to be the enabler in solving problems in better ways than they have been addressed before. You can keep the definition that simple. When technology is implemented in such a way that it doesn't re- spect the actors within the process, what the desired outcome is, and leverage user-centric design to make it simple, you can end up in the "complex and fragmented" category — which I would equate to the term "too digi- tal." Most organizations are far too complex. Focusing on how to simplify work and how it connects into the way people work — that's a repeatable formula for success. n Fitness trackers can give early warning of COVID-19, study finds By Georgina Gonzalez A n algorithm that is fed data from wearable fitness track- ers can alert people of COVID-19 infection or stress before the onset of symptoms, according to a study published Nov. 29, 2021, in Nature. The study followed more than 3,000 participants with smart watches that measure physiological and activity signals such as heart rates and step counts. The health information was synced through an app, sent to the cloud and analyzed in real time. The analysis of the data used an algorithm that can use de- tected physiological changes to alert users of new infections, including COVID-19. If the system detected a change, it would send the participant a real-time alert about a difference, anno- tating the alert as red. It also sent alerts when no change was detected. A green alert signaled everything was normal. Par- ticipants were then asked to supplement the alert with a survey of their symptoms. The researchers found that the system could detect COVID-19 on or before the onset of symptoms in 80 percent of cases where a participant tested positive. It also gave alerts for as- ymptomatic cases, although the number of true asymptomatic cases is unknown due to a lack of testing. The median alert time was three days before the onset of symptoms. Many of the other alerts given to participants were attributable to abnormal events, such as excessive alcohol consumption, stress or poor sleep. Seventy-three percent of participants found the frequency of the alerts acceptable, suggesting a potential commercial future. n Cedars-Sinai rolls out twin robots to reduce nurses' workload By Jackie Drees L os Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai implemented new technology to reduce nurses' daily work- load: twin clinical assistant robots named Moxi, the health system said in a Nov. 29, 2021, blog post. The robots use artificial intelligence, machine learn- ing technology and social engineering to interact with clinicians and patients; they have been rolled out as part of a pilot program in Cedars-Sinai's neurology, orthopedic and surgical units. The Moxi robots, which feature heart-shaped eyes that light up and make beeping noises when waving hello, assist nurses by performing tasks like delivering lab samples and collecting medicine from the pharmacy. Nurses use hospital-issued phones to call or text Moxi for assistance. Once the robot gets a request, it responds within five minutes with a status update and estimated time of arrival. Since kicking off the pilot in September 2021, the robots have saved clin- ical teams nearly 300 miles of walking, according to the report. Diligent Robotics, a graduate of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, designed and created the Moxi robots. The accelerator is a three-month program that of- fers funding, mentorship and access to investors for health tech startups. n