Ashish Atreja on Platforms for Innovation

Bill Russell: 00:04 welcome to this week health events where we amplify great thinking with interviews from the floor. My name is bill Russell, healthcare CIO, coach and creator of This Week in Health IT. A set of podcasts and videos dedicated is developing the next generation of health leaders. We want to thank our founding channel sponsors who make this content possible. Health lyrics and VMware. If you want to be a part of our mission to develop health leaders, go to this week, health.com/sponsor for more information. Uh, if you want to support the fastest growing podcasts and the health it space, uh, here are a few ways you can do that. You can share it with a peer, a signup for insights and staff meeting, which are services designed to help you in your career on the website. You can interact with our social media content on Twitter and a LinkedIn post or repost our content is always helpful and I appreciate that.

Bill Russell: 00:50 Um, but the most important thing you can do for me is send me feedback [email protected] Uh, your insights continue to shape the channel. And I really appreciate all the feedback that you guys have given me, uh, to date. So, uh, this is the final of our interview series from the chime fall forum. This is with, uh, dr Ashish Atreja from Mount Sinai in New York. Uh, Mount Sinai has a strong innovation program and I, I grabbed Ashish, uh, following his presentation, uh, where they highlighted a platform that several health systems are using, uh, around innovation, uh, systems including rush and Mount Sinai have adopted it to deliver their digital front door. Uh, have a listen and I hope you enjoy. All right. So who were are from the, uh, chime fall forum and I’m joined with, Ashish Atreja who is a physician by trade and, uh, but also an innovator. So you’re at Mount Sinai. Why don’t you, uh, remind us of your role, what you’re doing

Ashish Atreja: 01:51 happy to, and I call this role as my third and the fourth career journey. Uh, my first, uh, career phase was as a physician. Um, and then my second was as an informaticist, uh, where I did EMR implementation at Cleveland clinic health system. Um, my third was mostly innovation and this is great because as a physician, we’re never trained how to be creators. So we use digital health to create, and the fourth, which I’m so proud of right now is more transformation role. How do we take things which have been innovated and transform the entire health systems with that. So that’s my control in that.

Bill Russell: 02:25 Yeah. So, uh, you and Shafiq just presented and uh, it’s always entertaining to have Shafiq there, but he’s a huge fan of the platform. And you were talking about the digital front door and uh, so talk to us a little bit about that platform and, and what you’ve been able to do at Mount Sinai.

Ashish Atreja: 02:43 Absolutely. So it came as a, there was a lot of features we built initially at Mount Sinai that got licensed out. Um, the platform is supported by a neutral third party vendor called is RX health, which has been off from Sinai. Um, and uh, and I think the goal is to create a glue between different health systems. Um, and uh, it started off with a simple vision that can doctors prescribe apps very much like they can prescribe medication, right? Kind of simplify the process because we were seeing so much fragmentation in digital health space. Um, and the goal was we’ll never be able to take that stuff in inside a health system if we can’tunify it. And that was three years ago, featured in NPR and now it has around eight health systems partners with the goal is can each health system go transform with other health system by going beyond just apps analytics by stitching together different digital assets.

Bill Russell: 03:31 So you have a, you have a platform that sits above all the clinical data stores and use just the right technology, different technologies with the right technology for the right use case. That is correct. It moves the data back and forth. But what you’re able to do then is regardless of what the EHR is, I’m able to create an app that works at rush and then an app that works in that app within working. Now I don’t have to re do the app.

Ashish Atreja: 03:55 exactly, exactly. We call it a shared use case where you can plug and transplant the same technology but the same implementation science to achieve a repeatable, replicated results and within 90 days.

Bill Russell: 04:10 Wow. So where, um, where is it in use and what problems are people solving?

Ashish Atreja: 04:15 Yeah, so we have around more than 200, 300 pathways created for patients so far.

Ashish Atreja: 04:23 Um, and uh, I think the most common cause which we have seen, uh, is um, um, I would say that five or 10 top cases. So one is we have an entire perioperative very surgical, uh, peritransitions of care toolkits we call it. Um, so no matter what surgery is, what procedure, what transition of care it is, it can support them because there’s a lot of, uh, hidden revenue leak that happening there. Um, but some of the things, the hospitals I shared in with Shafiq’s talk is very interesting. Like, Hey, can you prescribe patient portal app and in, can you prescribe to all the patients that need it and can you do it in a much more scalable manner than ever was possible before. Uh, and that is fascinating to learn from each other.

Bill Russell: 05:01 Yeah. So Shafiq shared some stuff. Oh, so what’s rush doing with it today?

Ashish Atreja: 05:06 Yeah, so Rush’s actually just started a process. So I think part of it is we, we start the school transformation kind of umbrella and then we start on this journey. So one of the things which, uh, Rush’s is exemplary is, uh, uh, they have actually a very good, um, integration fibers integration point with Epic EMR. So they can activate faster, any digital assets faster and earlier than any other health system in the country. So one of our stuff is the things we have validated, can they activate that much more earlier? Um, and the tier four use cases we are discussing, but we haven’t finalized the use case right now.

Bill Russell: 05:41 Wow. So what’s the, um, what are you finding out there as you go into the market? I mean, what’s the, as you talk to clients, I used to talk to potential clients for this solution. I assume you’re doing, are you representing this solution at this point?

Ashish Atreja: 05:55 Uh, kind of. I mean, it’s, it’s, uh,

Bill Russell: 05:56 until you find a CEO, your summit,

Ashish Atreja: 06:00 we are looking for, you know, as, as the growth happens, expanding the team and uh, um, yeah, so I think the goal is you, you want to take the, you want to put your DNA of creating a bigger value, uh, and at least create that success strategy from an innovation investment that has happened. Um, and then there are bigger and better people who can just take it from there.

Bill Russell: 06:20 How, um, so talk about the implementation. So I’m a CIO, I’m sitting here going, Hey, I’d like to jumpstart our innovation that we’re doing at our health system. And I, I, uh, procured the solution, put it in place. Is there like, can I acquire this stuff that maybe Mount Sinai is doing stuff that’s rush is doing as well. So those individual applications are available to,

Ashish Atreja: 06:44 that’s correct. We call them as digital assets. So some digital assets come pre-baked with the platform and some you can license it. And those are all orchestrations we are doing on the platform itself. So there’s a health education platform, brief variables, uh, telemedicine. Um, so many of those digital assets are already there and you can choose, it’s kind of a menu. You can choose, Hey, my first thing is to actually do Peri procedural care are I want to really engage every patient with electronic health education, uh, or I want to turn on remote patient monitoring in that space. So you based on your problems and your strategic priority areas, we said these are the best fit use cases which are already validated, you know, the health system and you can just turn on, or maybe this one is currently being developed and not validated, but actually could completely fit your need. So you might be the earlier adopter, or the third adopter or maybe the 10th adopter in that regard.

Bill Russell: 07:34 So how, um, what’s the, I think it’s, it’s obvious, but what’s the value proposition for developers? And do you have a developer community starting to form around this?

Ashish Atreja: 07:44 We, we have started a, in an API base, we have, I think it’s the only, it’s very recent. So I wouldn’t say the developer community is very mature, but it’s a complete API driven platform. So when we go to a health system, we actually say if you have workmen team, we can open those APIs for you. Um, and so, so we become kind of a distribution and kind of engagement, uh, and stitch that digital asset with other digital assets to make it whole. So for example, if you’re creating a mini app, but that requires telemedicine as a backup, we can stitch that with the telemedicine in the background.

Bill Russell: 08:13 So you’ve mentioned telemedicine, I mean, so if I was developing for this, are there like components I can pull in and that is correct. Just, just blocks so I can drop telemedicine in and that’s correct. And some sort of routing and communication. I can shoot off texts, I can. So really it’s a, it’s an orchestration platform on top of a lot of disparate.

Ashish Atreja: 08:38 That’s correct. So it’s a whole, we call it RX stitch engine where you can stitch things together. Uh, and then we bake with the implementation science that case the recipe. So think of the stitching together as the raw food or the raw vegetable and then the, the TA, the implementation science as what cooks it and bakes it so you can actually make it patentable.

Bill Russell: 08:57 So do you have a, uh, uh, an API that you publish that’s out there?

Ashish Atreja: 09:00 Yeah, we published some of the API we haven’t published completely, but I think that’s the journey we want to take more and more.

Bill Russell: 09:05 That’s great. So what would you tell CIOs health systems that are out there? You’re in a pretty big crowd actually.

Ashish Atreja: 09:11 This is great. I think great engagement. Uh, the credit goes to Shafiq. Um, and I think, uh, and Shafiq said the word which I would actually resonate. The most exciting phase for a CIO is actually now. Ah, but what makes it exciting is not that what we learned can be done. What we have not learned can be done is what makes it most exciting.

Bill Russell: 09:32 Yeah, it is exciting. And I think it was pretty rousing for the, for the group that was in there. Ashish thank you very much. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Bill Russell: 09:41 I really want to thank, Ashish and everyone who sat down with me at the Chime fall forum. Uh, it was a great time for me. I learned a ton. I hope you learned a ton from those conversations. Uh, I think it’s interesting to ask them all the same eight questions and see how they’re looking at what their lens of the world is going to be going into 2020, and how they’re going to address the challenges that they have and hopefully you learn something from it and something that you can apply at your health system. Uh, for those who are going to the spring chime forum around the, uh, HIMSS event, uh, I’ll be doing something very similar. I’ll announce that, uh, sometime after the first of the year. Uh, but if you’d like to sit down with me, just, just let me know.

Bill Russell: 10:20 Drop me a line, drop me an email, uh, you know, uh, ping me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Um, and, uh, you know, let’s, let’s get you on the show. Uh, with this episode. We now go back to our normal schedule of Friday interviews with influencers and Tuesday news day, uh, where we look at the news, which is impacting health. It, uh, this show is a production of this week in health it for more great content. You check out the website this week, health.com or the YouTube channel as well. Special thanks to our sponsors, VMware and health lyrics for choosing to invest in developing the next generation of health leaders. Thanks for listening. That’s all for now.