Becker's Hospital Review

83 CIO / HEALTH IT "It looks like Amazon is following a rigorous innovation process where they test a hypothesis, experiment, learn and pivot," said Dr. Neinstein. Amazon's statement about Amazon Care's closing noted the compa- ny deepened its understanding of the healthcare industry and what is needed to deliver meaningful healthcare solutions in the long run. Amazon Care wasn't able to deliver services for the large enterprise customers the company was targeting, a gap One Medical could fill. "Every healthcare leader in the country says [telehealth] is an import- ant part of the future transformation strategy, but despite that, people are still reticent to over-invest in it because it's not being paid for," said Rick Shumway, president and CEO of Stanford Health Care-Valley- Care in Pleasanton, Calif. "It's a disparate pay structure. But you look at this deal between Amazon and One Medical, that's going to push the payment models and payment providers in a different direction. Payers are going to have to rethink their current strategies. Delivery systems are going to have to change the way they do business and force these partnerships with potentially previous opponents to remain competitive." Tony Ambrozie, senior vice president and chief digital and informa- tion officer for Coral Gables-based Baptist Health South Florida, said the moves make sense because One Medical "seems like a broader and stronger brand than Amazon Care." "It is not impossible that the acquisition was triggered by how Amazon Care was performing — or not — against the strategy," Mr. Ambrozie said. "It is therefore logical that they would want to consolidate the brands to eliminate consumer confusion, through the right position- ing and messaging. I can only suspect that behind the scenes they will also consolidate and enhance the technologies supporting the brand." "What we need to see next is if and how they are going to expand and deepen the offering in ways that are meaningful to more consumers," Mr. Ambrozie added. n Dr. Michael Pfeffer on how healthcare will change in the next 5 years By Noah Schwartz H ealth CIOs need to be on the cutting edge of in- novation and be able to project what technology is going to change the healthcare market. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care CIO and Associate Dean at the Stanford University School of Medicine Michael Pfeffer, MD, stopped by the "Becker's Hospital Review" podcast to discuss changing technology. Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full podcast here. Question: How do you see healthcare delivery changing in the next five years? What technologies are most essen - tial to support that shift? Dr. Michael Pfeffer: I think if you ask five people you get 10 different answers. So I kind of think about this shift of value and that has been talked about, but I am looking at it in a little bit of a different light over the next five years in that the value that people or patients or providers get out of healthcare delivery and working in healthcare, I think is more personal and requires personal preference and per- sonal choices in ways that we are getting better and better at providing. It is kind of an individual value proposition to patients, to clinicians and to society in general. So how do we do that with technology while we really need to get our technology smarter in order to better support cli- nicians and patients? So, you know, a lot of the buzzwords — AI, precision health wearables, all of these things — but being more customized to the patient's needs and easier to use and integrate for our clinicians. So it is really focusing on those that are receiving the care and those that are pro- viding the care. I would also say that I think we are getting better with big data and analytics, and this is going to have to become more and more useful for both providers and patients. I think that is going to happen by a little bit more focus on what I call small data, which is the kind of individ- ualized data that is collected and aggregated into big data. As smaller data gets more accurate [and] easier to collect, we are going to get better insights as we bring all that data together. So I think that is going to be really important and some- thing that our technologists and data scientists are gonna play a huge role in. I mentioned health equity. I think this is absolutely critical. We need to weave it into the fabric of allour technologies that we are using in healthcare. And then finally, clinician wellbeing is really, I think, front and center now. It is absolutely critical to how we think about the user experience, how we design and implement tech- nologies and how we look toward improving upon auto- mation opportunities to help reduce some of the burden around technology and administrative tasks. n "e value that people or patients or providers get out of healthcare is more personal and requires personal preference and choices in ways that we are getting better and better at providing."

• Cover