Welcome everyone to today's webinar innovation
and technology help transform imagings,
workforce challenges and revenue. I'm
Molly Gamble, Becker's health Care. Thank you for joining
us. Before we begin, I'm gonna walk
through a few quick housekeeping instructions.
First, you can submit any questions you have
throughout the webinar today by typing them into the Q
and A box. You see on your screen answers
will be provided via email following the
webinar.
Second, today's session is being recorded
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also submit any technical questions you might have into
that same Q and A box. We are here to help
with that. I am pleased to welcome today's
panelists.
We have Doctor Will Morris, who is physician
executive in health care and Life Sciences at Google
Cloud and serves as a subject matter,
expert author and frequent industry speaker
on the topics of A I and ML
in interoperability and innovation in the health
care Space.
We have Doctor Richard Bruce, Vice Chair
of Informatics with the Department of Radiology
at University of Wisconsin Madison. He
is dedicated to A I clinical integration across
the entire spectrum of clinical workflows.
And finally, we have Doctor Sonia Gupta, Chief
Medical Officer of Enterprise Imaging for Change
Health Care. She also works for Radiology
Associates of Florida, which is part
of radiology partners. So, panelists
welcome. Thank you so much for being with me today
and I'm looking forward to this discussion before
we dive in, I thought I would share just a bit of context
with our attendees for the topic we're exploring
today. Access and efficiency
are two of the most important topics in health care.
Right now, health care leaders are constantly
looking for ways to streamline workflows,
eliminate patient access challenges in all
areas of care including medical
imaging.
And many health care organizations are doubling down
on the cloud to streamline imaging by
giving providers easier access
to shareable and secure data.
Today, a panel of experts will engage in a dynamic
discussion on use of cloud technology
in medical imaging that can boost
it strategies reduce clinical care
burnout and increase cost saving efficiencies.
So will Richard Sonia, this
new digital transformation age really
raises the need for health care leaders to
constantly look for ways to better streamline
their workflows, eliminate access
challenges. Can you talk to us
a little bit about the challenges health care leaders
are facing? Right? Now. Well,
I'll turn to you first for your thoughts here.
Yeah, thank you, Molly and thank you to
Beckers for hosting this webinar.
I think you kind of led the witness
in your preamble. You mentioned the word workflow,
workflow is absolutely essential.
So technology needs to be done with
you, not at you.
And so I think that is something that you're going to hear
kind of throughout the next 40 minutes
or so that
um you know, it is the judicious application
of technology to enable processes
that drive value and value is a couple
of things. I think for, for
providers who are busy, we
know we're getting reimbursed less
to do more. And so that's how
do I actually deliver what I need
to do at the right time, at the right cost at the right
um
uh at the right value and, and
I think enabling technologies
um that support those things will be important
for payers as they get into the value
based care space. How
do we surface information that allows
patients or members to exceed,
you know, the best health for, for
uh themselves um at a cost
that's affordable and accessible.
Um So thank you very much for
the opportunity to kind of share.
Thanks will Sonia. What would you add
to? What will just shared?
I think there is a lot of excitement about
applying technology to improve health
care.
But uh there's been a little bit of a struggle
to identify the best way to do that. And
I think that goes along with what will said that
technology is being thrown at you and
it's not always built for you
as the end user. I think
that for our patients,
you know, they're able to schedule
a hair appointment on an app and
they can't always do that with a doctor's appointment
or an imaging appointment. For example,
you know, let's say they know they need to get an MRI.
And normally if you're scheduling
a hair appointment or something simple like
that, you might have a list of locations that come
up, you know, time slots that pop up.
We don't have that in a lot of organizations
and health systems right now. And
it's just some really basic
usability that our customers who
are patients want that we're not always able
to provide. So I'm really interested
in kind of going back to the basics and seeing how we can
apply technology for some
of uh the use cases that
might not be as exciting,
Richard. We're talking about challenges in this new
digital age as leaders are looking to
eliminate access challenges, better, streamline
workflows, your your co panel so far raised
a couple, you know, a lack of autonomy
with workflow changes happening to you.
Um Basic usability problems like
Sonia just illustrated. What else would you
add to this running list?
Yeah, I think the the the challenges
certainly facing the provider side
are, are equal or greater
than what they have have ever been. And
that really filters its way up, you
know, to the leadership within an organization.
So, you know, we're seeing uh very
high demand for health care
services across the board and I think that
is, felt very acutely, uh within
the radiology space. You know, I think
if you, uh, look out across
sort of the, the radiology landscape,
there's, there's lots of discussion about
workforce and that, that, that comes
from uh people talking about,
you know, burnout among physicians, about the
aging uh radiologist population.
Uh about the, the fact
that uh technology, while it
improves our ability to deliver care
also brings with it uh at times
increased complexity and much, much
higher uh image volume
and exam volume.
And the downside of being able to
sort of do work from anywhere is
that you're expected to do work from
just about anywhere. And so,
you know, some of those challenges uh
were really brought into
into stark contrast, uh you know,
in, at the beginnings of COVID and
we saw rapid changes
in in workflow and rapid
changes in the way that we adopt
technology. And a lot of attitudes
uh shifted uh quite dramatically.
And I think that the,
that, you know, that, that really expresses
itself for leaders
in that and that they see a very different
and dynamic uh health care delivery
space just today than what it
uh existed just a few years ago.
I'm gonna stand on that point and idea
Richard and I, I'm curious to hear we talked
about some of the macro challenges industry
wide. Um But let's narrow
down to how these are affecting medical imaging
at large. And then specifically
when it comes to burnout, like you mentioned,
Richard efficiencies, costs
Sonia. Can you give us kind of the broad view
and then also zoom in on some
of those specific issues as it relates to
medical imaging?
Yeah, we are having a challenge
with staffing,
you know, a lot of our sites and
you know, we focus a lot on the physicians, the radiologists
and imaging, but also our radiology, technologists.
Um we're seeing staff shortages there as
well and
you know, it's uh it's a combination
of factors and it's difficult to solve, you
know, there's burnout involved. We
are having uh a higher volume of
imaging exams and the higher
volume of imaging exams is more complex.
So over the years, you know, as our technology
has advanced with CT scanners and MRI scanners
and even ultrasound, each exam
actually contains more images than it previously
did, which requires, you know, more
time to evaluate those images
and to make a diagnosis.
And so, you know, our exams are
more complex than they previously were
at a time when we're having challenges with staffing
and dealing with burnout, which is
hovering around about 50%. Now
for radiologists specifically
and you know, to personalize the example,
I am previously an academic physician
and I like mentoring medical students and residents
and fellows. And what I've noticed that's
been somewhat alarming is some
of my mentees that have only been working for
2 to 3 years are already thinking
about how they can go part time or
potentially even retire. And by retiring,
they just want to leave the field of radiology due
to that burnout.
So what I want to do
is to focus on using technology
in innovative ways so that we can actually
retain, you know, our current workforce.
Because right now, our imaging volume
is growing at a pace where we just don't have
enough of a radiologist workforce to cover
everything that we're gonna see, you know, in
the next 10 to 15 years,
I might actually double click on that.
So, so we have two radiologists and a hospitalist.
So I'm a hospitalist. So I am uh either
your best friend or your worst enemy.
And it too is getting um
you, you mentioned this kind of culture
of expectation, right? Because before I had
to go down to the uh you know, reading
room and you know, if it was,
I won't date myself, but pull the jacket,
look at the film if I wanted to. But now I get this
experience where actually I can pull it up on my,
on my phone, but I want
that same speed and experience
with also the report. So there's this psychologic
expectation with technology that
says, hey,
um I can see the, I can see the dico
image. I also want the report, hey,
with that report, I want to automatically
triage. So I don't have to go into the record
and find out those incidental findings
or what else do I need to do but have it magically
surface and drive my workflow. So we have this
fascinating
paradox of,
you know, we have these beginning experience
that are digitally enabled, but we also have
kind of the old, old way of kind
of experiencing health care. And, and
again, I'm optimistic that we can
work collaboratively with
technology to, you know, at
the end of the day, get the right information to the right
person, whether it be the radiologist or the
ordering pediatrician or hospitalist or
even the patient.
Um
and, and to your point
um and how do we take this massive,
you know, data set that we're creating all of this exhaust
and make it actionable, make it
a utility, make it helpful
um to all all all members
of the care team
Richard. Are you gonna say something as well? Well, iii I
think that's where, you know, that's
where the promise A I you,
you can't go to any radiology or any
really event in, in medicine at all
without uh you know A I being
everywhere that you turn to. But that in part
is, is part of the allure of,
of what people are looking for from
A I is, how does that improve
our efficiency? How does that translate
downstream? So, you know, how does something
that we use and implement within
radiology? Uh make
sure that, that, that those
uh results and findings are communicated
to the right person downstream because
that's where value is really added uh to
the health system and to the patient's experience
overall is when you
impact workflows throughout the organization
and not just within the limited
silo of a given specialty.
Uh And, and you know, we've had integration
challenges, but you know, I I would
venture to say that the, that the concept
of sort of building an individual
technology piece today, uh
You cannot do that without
a more holistic view and, and how
that technology is going to connect and interact
and integrate and, and
provide some form of seamless experience
in either the way that that data moves
through it or, or in the experience
of the users themselves.
And so I want to look back to something you have said
it's not only that the volume of imaging
is increasing but also the complexity of
it. Any sense of what's driving that is
that there's more sophisticated options
for imaging available now or, or patients sicker
or any, anything to that story.
I think that comes from the, the
definitely comes from a lot of different
uh areas that the exams
in some ways we're our own worst enemies. As you develop
new uh novel ways to,
to do imaging, the imaging becomes
far more useful. And that's one of the
challenges when people can consider
medical imaging volume today versus some
time in the past and say, oh, you
know, we used to not have to
use all of this imaging. Well, the imaging
uh tells a much, a much
deeper story today. You can diagnose a lot
more. Uh it's used for prognostication,
it's used for staging there. There's
probably no uh cancer
therapy that doesn't leverage imaging
as as one of the primary markers
for the decision making. And so from
that standpoint, you know, as
as the indications for imaging grow
and as you know, we create better
and better imaging modalities, imaging technology
and all of these add on,
you know, layering on tools. Uh you
know, the the complexity really does grow,
but that's also represents the the opportunity
for technology because how can we take
that and take something that is
complex or large or high volume
and really distill it down to
information that's actionable.
Hm, thank you, Richard.
Um I want to move on a little bit. We've talked
about some of the the macro challenges at large.
We talked specifically about imaging. Where
do we need to go from here? Let's talk about the
path forward and how innovation
technology can really be a gateway
to transform some of these workforce challenges
we talked about and revenue, you know,
Sonia, I find the example that you share about your mentee is
so helpful and vivid. It really
puts so much into, into context.
Um What do you see as
next steps forward? I'm gonna turn to you first.
Yeah, I mean, I think another part of that example
is it costs approximately
$500,000 to replace the physician
that leaves the workforce and most organizations.
And so, you know that there is
actually a cost to burn out.
And I think searching before the return
on investment is the newest challenge.
You know, we know that in imaging and in medical
A I, you know, there are over 400
vendors out there that have FT A clearance
now and that just that number just increases,
you know, pretty much weekly
and
that maturity in the market, you know, trying
to figure out what actually is the return
on investment if we're being asked to spend
money on adopting a product that
promises some sort of artificial
intelligence that we can put into our workflow
or put into patient care, you
know, is there gonna be a health insurance reimbursement
to that?
You know, and are we gonna be able to
adopt it uh seamlessly, will it
become part of our workflow or is it actually going to be
something where it causes more effort,
more hassle, you know, people do
not react positively to
upgrades generally or changes in their
daily work flow, you know, there's
a learning curve to all of that and there's
a cost to that.
So figuring out, you know, is there gonna be a
decrease in productivity or an increase in productivity?
Is this actually gonna affect burnout? And
are we able to demonstrate any type of return
on investment for what we're being asked to
buy uh and implement
in the hospital? You know, how does the it
staff feel about this? You know,
our it leadership, do they have
uh the bandwidth, you know, to assist
with this type of adoption and implementation
as well? There's a lot of different factors
to consider that are economic
and seeing that maturity in the
field is really uh the
direction that we're, you know, starting to go in now.
Well, I'm seeing a lot of emphatic
head nods and
um no, II, I think I would
uh plus 10,000
to uh what what
Sonia had mentioned,
you know, from a technology company, I think
what we're seeing is the power
of collaboration and partnership. I don't think
there is, there's not going to be one Magic
app or vendor that, that, that
solves them all, but it's really a coalition
of technology
uh forward, you know, thinking
uh vendors who understand the space and then those
who provide the care because at the end of the day,
it's got to, you know, implement
and be integrated in a workflow.
Um you know, where we're seeing, you know,
a lot of uptake is how do you invest
in technology? That is future proof.
That is something that is a platform, not a one off
solution that builds a capability
but not just solves a specific problem.
Because I don't think we, we
know we don't know what we don't know. The
world has changed a lot now, everyone seems
to be, you know, a computer scientist
and understands kind of the transformer
and large language models. But look, look
at what's happened in the past, you know, six months,
imagine what happens in six years.
It's tough to understand but having
a platform of approach where
we take the best of scale global
technology, plus the best
of those who are practicing
in, in the weeds, if you will
um who can help surface
problems, not solutions, looking for problems
and then finding really, really skilled
um you know, software partners
like change health care that can help
kind of integrate, implement
at scale. I think those three things are
absolutely paramount.
So Richard so far hearing when it comes
to technology innovation decisions,
you know, a couple of things raised so far, a
calculating Roy, how difficult
that can be with A I at times making
best that the technology is future proof
tech that's relatively consistent and doesn't
require numerous upgrades, changes
and then also like will said is
scalable. What, what would you add
to this in terms of when you're looking at
technology and innovative solutions
to really help
reduce some of the pain and friction,
these workforce challenges can impose and also
look to show up revenue, what else is important
that's worth mentioning.
Yeah, I think uh well, within,
within our organization, uh
you know, I would say, I mean, the last four or
five years, we've seen dramatic
changes really in the attitude
towards how we look at and
evaluate different technologies.
And you know, and so the some of
the factors that that
uh well, to address
the those attitudes first, the
several years ago,
the
putting forth a solution as a cloud
based solution uh would have met
with a lot of internal resistance
for a whole variety of reasons. And
that has transformed completely
the other direction where the questions being asked
today are really what would
stop us or why should we not be
choosing something that's really cloud
native? And, and the
the reasoning behind that is
that as we have looked internally
and matured and, and
had more understanding of,
of really our own internal processes,
uh It's helped us to really appreciate
some of the internal costs. So,
you know, the difficulties that we face
with, with collaborating
and working with our partners, you know, remote
access challenges, security challenges,
the mundane, you know, how do we
update uh patch, uh
you know, upgrade all of those,
you know, types of day to day challenges
with, with internal systems and
So, you know, it's a, it's a very,
you know, we look intrinsically
as we alluded to much more at the functionalities
that something is, is given and,
and evaluated as, as
you know, what can this deliver uh and,
and provide in a way that we're not doing
it uh that we're not doing it
today. And so I, you know, I'll
give an example uh of, of my own,
you know, uh until, you know, probably,
you know, two years ago, I would have put myself
very firmly in the
uh non belie
camp for delivering medical imaging
from the cloud. And, and part of
that was based on, you know, on premise,
uh you know, we encounter our own internal
performance issues. And so the
thought of moving something
further away, you know, how is that
possibly going to improve performance,
you know, the the best performance that we can get,
uh why would we not be able to deliver
that when it's internal to our own
network? Uh And the transition
for me really
came from, from seeing
some examples of
the same type of medical imaging technology
but delivered built cloud natively
on top of cloud native solutions
and realizing that the perception
of performance in terms of the interactivity
with the user and how that could be delivered
uh actually results in a much higher
performance uh from the user interaction
standpoint and from the capabilities that
they're able to take advantage of.
I'm so glad you shared your story because when you had set it up
until recently, I was thinking five years
within the past 10 years, two years
for, for you to make this transition
to go from non-believer to believer, are, are
there any other points of resistance that your colleagues
shared that they also confronted, that
differ from what you had just expressed?
Uh Well, I've, I've a long
time been a believer in cloud technology
as a whole. The challenge as one of my
colleagues once described, it is medical imaging
uh is the uh is
the dump truck version of
of data movement. You need to move
lots and lots of data, you know, over
sometimes, you know, relatively short distances.
And so and so that, you know, how
do you uh how do you marry
the benefits of, of,
you know, uh the
control plane and optimization of how
you deliver solutions in the cloud
with the needs of moving very, very large
amounts of, of data back and forth.
And, and so that to me was the final
hurdle of we can potentially
have the best of, of both
worlds. I would say where we see
people who, who, you know, my colleagues
who still wonder about it. Um A lot
of the questions that they're asking are really shaped
from the perspective of how we deliver
solutions on premise today.
You know how you know what happens when
you know, when we need to support this
or, or when this is based on services
which we have no underlying control
over. Um, and sometimes
that's in the same breath as when they,
you know, they recognize that
the services that they're dependent on
are oftentimes delivered from the cloud
and are more reliable than,
than what we deliver uh internally
Sonia. If, if that was the, the thought
process of why you name it, change
health care because it is around change
management as, as much as it is is uh technology.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think another
big misconception that comes up around
these changes is uh related
to cybersecurity. You know, there's a common
misconception that our data is
safer if it's kept on prem.
Uh but actually, you know, it's more cure
in the cloud. And again,
there's a cost to these data breaches.
Uh the average cost is $9.3
million for a data breach
in the hospital system.
So, you know, there is a cost
to that misconception and
you know, our physicians don't enjoy downtime
procedures and kind of losing connectivity
or access to uh software
that we need to take care of patients and
to switch to another method for the period
of time that's required to do an update. And
so, you know, when we think about all
the cloud that's in our lives in different ways, if
you're using an iphone or Netflix, I mean, it's,
you're using the cloud in some capacity.
And when you think about how you don't really have
a lot of downtime or problems, you
know, you just turn on Netflix, play a, you know, play
a movie and it works. But unfortunately,
that's not always the case in the hospital.
And with some of the software that we're using,
it doesn't just work. And, uh,
we can't really take that for granted and that's
what, you know, these changes are about.
Well, I'm gonna turn to you for your thoughts
on this next question. You know, we're talking about
attitudes which can be an early hurdle
in, in overcoming those when implementing
the cloud and, and moving to the cloud.
But few things in health care really move
in a straight line. What are some other hurdles
to adopting this technology and what
best practices have you seen that
have really worked? And that can help organizations
clear those hurdles? Yeah,
I mean, I, I think that let me start off
with, you know, where technology goes
wrong thinking that it's, you know, technical
solutions is the, the Magic
F seven cure all. Um,
oftentimes we may deploy technology
over a broken process or workflow and,
and you know what I'd say is you just get
broken faster and more expensive.
You haven't, you haven't done anything to
achieve value, you've just added more expense
through a different lens.
Um So I think it's really, really
incumbent on all of us and again, all
of us being everyone who's around the table
to be thinking about the people processing technology,
because the worst thing that we can do is to
automate something that A doesn't need
to be automated or B
that we do it through, you
know, blinders that we don't actually enable
a workflow or process redesign
or optimization. I think the
physician in basket is the perfect example
of that where all great information
goes to die. And so with
the resolution of information only
going up exponentially. And
yet we don't think about the
unintended consequence of, you know, where
that goes to, you know, to be deposited,
bad things happen.
Um So, you know, for those who are
listening, you know, I think to me
the best kind of conversation is one
where we think about, you know, what
is the core problem statement and then
dissect out very carefully.
You know, is there a process issue? Is there
a a people issue? How do we actually get
top of licensure? How do we delight
them? Um And then only
then do you kind of figure out how technology
can find the right application
and enabling something that achieves
better value?
Mhm.
Well, is that essentially boiled down to asking
like 10 more questions to really probe
and dissect a problem at hand versus just
thinking it, go ahead. Yeah,
I I'd say 55 questions. 10,
10 is a lot. I think we can get there in five.
But but yeah, it is a dialogue.
It is a journey. Um anyone who's
not, who's saying no, we've got a solution
and it'll, you know, cure all. I, I think
you run for the hills.
It is about kind of really understanding
the problem and working judiciously. It's
hard work because it's hard work.
These are nuanced clinical work
flows,
you know, there's a lot of things that you don't
know, you don't know. And so it really is incumbent
on all of us to um you know, be
at the table
um to speak up, you know, to
voice uh opinions. Um
I am 1000% optimistic
that there is uh you know, there is
positive that it will come and the momentum
and, and the tremendous things that we've seen is
just the beginning.
Um but this is a marathon and that requires
a lot of kind of patients
uh focus and intention
richard what other hurdles do we need to
make mention of?
Yeah, I think some of them uh the
uh is just the
uh uh the number of applications
uh you know, within a health system,
you know, so, so outside of our medical
record system, there's probably, you know, many
hundreds of of applications
that are supported that, that directly touch the
clinical workflow
in one way or another. And
you know, taking uh a a
look at uh at, at how,
you know, why do those applications exist?
How are we using those, how do we
reduce complexity where possible
uh is is a useful exercise,
you know, oftentimes those applications exist
for very good reasons. Uh But
you know, the the, you know that
when we, you know, when we look at the medical
imaging arena, it's very parallel to,
you know, do we need separate uh systems
to handle, you know, very similar functions?
So can we utilize, you know, a single
imaging platform as the archive
or as the the workflow
engine if you will for, you know, for
all the different specialties? And so,
you know, looking, you know, looking
for things that are tangible
first steps that, that, that you can,
that you can take and evaluate sort of the enterprise
imaging uh strategy
and, and you know, as, as we said, you know,
looking at it from a workflow perspective,
looking at it from a people perspective,
uh you know, II I think those are
really the the the fundamentals of the
approach that uh that, that results
in the most benefit oftentimes
any anything in terms of best practices
or other hurdles that our attendees
should be mindful of or on the lookout for.
I think it helps to speak to their colleagues
at other organizations that might be going
through similar transformations
of technology uh to hear,
you know, what best practices worked for them.
What challenges did they have
a lot of our uh customers and partners
are at different parts of this cloud adoption journey.
So
you know, comparing notes can be actually very, very
helpful.
Well, let's talk about the financial
piece of all of this. Uh the CFO has come up
a couple of times so far, they find themselves
in a quite a difficult spot these days
and having to defend um various
budget choices and also look looking for opportunities
to reduce costs more and more.
We are also seeing the need to report on a total
cost of ownership with CFO S need
to report to their CEO if the technology and
innovation they've chosen is
hitting on the organization's long
term goals. Where
what are your thoughts on the total cost
of ownership approach? Um I
would, I would just like to start there and get a, a general
take from each of you and your unique perspectives
on this approach. Will, can I turn
to you first?
Yeah, I mean, so Cloud in general
and I think this is, this stands true for
beyond imaging, you know, it is
a it fundamental mind shift and financial
mind shift out of out of a capital
Capex kind of expenditure to
one of operations. It's an Opex spend
with cloud, it's consumption based.
So
again, I'll beat my partnership
drum is, is,
you know, as much as this is a technology
uh uh you know, conversation and clinical
one. It is also one of finance
and having um you know, financial
um cloud
uh modernization, I think is absolutely
essential. Now, with
that, how do you actually
manage that? What's the governance model?
How do you think about um
you know, turning on these services, ultimately,
it has to drive, you know, revenue
and decrease your expense.
Um And so having really, really clear,
OK, RS or objectives
in key metrics, I think is absolutely
essential. So not only do you hit your
objectives and you can report back to the CEO
and the board of the success,
the financial success
or the operational or the clinical benefit.
Um But you have agreed upon metrics
that achieves those outputs.
So, you know, it's the worst G
word is governance but having that kind of
upfront um is, is really,
really successful. Um when
thinking about a cloud migration strategy.
Mhm Thanks will.
So, so what would you add when we're talking about
total cost of ownership approach?
Yeah, what we're seeing is a cost savings
of approximately 20% when
organizations move to cloud native.
And you know, it depends on the organization
in speaking to some of my colleagues,
you know that sometimes there is an upfront cost
and because of that upfront cost,
uh certain organizations are not able
to, you know, think about the
long term cost of ownership. And so
sometimes that's been a little bit of a hurdle
uh with cloud adoption that
we've seen. But you know, when everything
goes the way it's supposed to, ultimately,
there is supposed to be a cost saving
and, you know, we've seen again about 20%
with some of our organizations and partners
savings of up to 20%
richer. What would you add? That hasn't been said so
far about this approach.
Yeah, I'll, and, um, I'll,
I'll, I'll use an analogy. Uh, so if we go
way back in time to when we were making the
transition from the
analog film days to the digital
age, you know, one of the ways that our organization
uh looked at and evaluated the cost
of switching to packs was by doing an
analysis where at the time, whenever a patient
had a clinic visit their physical
radiology jacket with all of their
physical, you know, images would follow
them to clinic. And so over
a period of time, they tracked how many
film jackets were sent out and came
back with the seal still over
the top of it. So in other words,
uh the film jacket had made the round trip
without anyone ever opening it or taking anything
out. And they figured out that they were spending
several million dollars per year just
transporting around film jackets that no one
actually ever opened.
Uh And that's uh I I use
that analogy because in many ways,
you know, the the transformation that we're
seeing from a fundamental technology
shift today is probably of
equal importance to the transition
between analog film to
packs. And so we're at the threshold
of the way that people think about this being
completely different. And so
when we've looked at our internal metrics
again, it, it made us
uh in a value,
you know what it would look like for us to
uh move our archive, move our medical
imaging to the cloud. It made us much
more aware of what we are currently spending
today internal on storage,
on compute resources on the personnel
that are required to support that infrastructure
on disaster recovery, uh on
cyber security. Uh All of those,
all of those types of things and some
of the things that we're doing today, you know, we
also it also such as that total cost
of ownership. So we still have a very
large volume of patients who
bring in physical C DS.
And that's part of the total cost of ownership
from a medical imaging, uh
you know, solution business.
And our estimates on that is for every CD
that comes through the door based
off of the number of pe people who have to
touch it, interact with it and are involved
in some way with a workflow. It's a minimum of
about $15 per
CD.
And when you add that up, that's a, that's
a, that, that's a meaningful amount
of money to the organization. And so
uh all of those, all of those are
just facets of when we look at this holistically
and you know, what, what tools does this
give us that will allow us to completely
change and transform some of these workflows.
Uh you know, so far in
in our journey, uh the
the the the ro I comes out in favor
of the cloud solution
and Richard, I'll stay with you as I wind
down. This is my final question and we'll, we'll check in with
so Sonia as well. But what would you recommend
as one step a clinician administrator
or a leader can take when
utilizing technology to help
imaging better address workforce
challenges and some of the revenue bottlenecks
and challenges that health systems and hospitals are seeing
right now. Yeah.
Uh So, um
I, I think that uh I mean, we're
an amazingly transformative time,
you know, there's all kinds of new technologies,
but I think, you know, bringing things closer
to home, you know, really uh looking
at what you can uh take advantage
of today. So, one of the things I touched on
was, you know, evaluating your, your
internal enterprise imaging strategy,
looking at things very much from a,
you know, a process, uh
you know, standpoint, how you can holistically
uh you know, look for areas where there
are are synergy and
when bombarded with all of the sort
of, you know A I solutions out
there, you know, I think really uh looking
at those uh and connecting them
to the organization as a whole. So
how does this result in improved
patient care and when we improve
patient care oftentimes those
result in a cost savings or
a reimbursement benefit uh to the
organization as a whole.
Thank you so much. And Sonia let me turn to
you one step, one action item that you would like
to equip our attendees with in closing.
Yeah, I mean, I think attending a webinar, like this is
a great step, but also just again,
uh emphasizing connecting with colleagues
about, you know, where they're at and
organizations that are different from yours and how
they're handling the same challenges. I think there
are a lot of learnings there. And
I also just really enjoy case studies,
you know, hearing what another organization
did and these are published
out there. Um You know, what their experiences were
pitfalls, you know, that's always very, very
helpful uh to kind of figure out
a blueprint for yourself.
Terrific. Well, that brings us to the conclusion of
our conversation. I want to thank Will
Richard Sonia for an excellent discussion. I'd
also like to thank change healthcare for sponsoring
today's webinar to learn more about
the content I was present and discussed today.
Please check out that resources section
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you for joining us. We hope you have a wonderful
rest of your afternoon.