HEALTHTECH: When it comes to deploying new technologies or adopting new processes, what’s your advice on getting user buy-in? How can you improve communication and expectations between the clinical and IT sides of a project?
GARDENHIRE: Encourage your team members’ imaginations. People are always thinking of their own solutions to problems. They know how things could be better. So, first and foremost, we need to ask them how they think a process can be improved. We’ve been in situations where we know we’re not necessarily introducing the best technical solution, or it’s coming down in a way that’s more regulatory driven, like Meaningful Use with EHRs. And we find value in it, but we didn’t necessarily start with the value that a clinician or someone else could get from it.
I think we have an opportunity in this instance with AI, which is why I think adoption is taking off so fast. We don’t have, at least just yet, regulatory or other imperatives, so it has to be all about the value that people can get out of it, whether that’s workflow efficiency, decision support efficiency, or just giving people the opportunity to not do tasks that don’t make the highest and best use of human creativity and interaction.
As we move this forward, we need to take the time to understand what nursing needs and what would make the process and the workflow better. And then, we also need to ask our partners, our colleagues, to not become married to a solution, because this tech is moving so fast. There are no clear winners yet. We see the Gartner maps, the KLAS surveys — they are updating rapidly because the technology is moving so fast. I think we also have to be prepared for staying with whoever is leading at the moment and getting our environment to a point where we’re almost plug and play, which is something that we’ve been talking about at Ardent Health.
We want to make sure that as this technology continues to evolve, we’re prepared to take advantage of what’s best in the moment, and we don’t get stuck or become stagnant, which can happen in healthcare.
HEALTHTECH: How are you evaluating new AI solutions that you’re interested in using at your organization? What helps you sift through the buzz?
GARDENHIRE: We are doing a couple of things. We have a chief data and AI officer. He is amazing, and he continues to work with the organization to make sure that we understand the business case, the jobs to be done and the problems that we’re trying to solve. We work that through a governance process, and then we try and pinpoint solutions for those problems.
There’s a risk of developing a bit of a “shiny object syndrome,” and I would tell you that I’m not fully opposed to that because I do think people sometimes bring creative solutions, and there are sometimes problems out there that we didn’t know we could solve or haven’t even yet recognized as a problem. With that said, I do think you still have to circle back and recognize what the problem is, ask yourself if it’s a problem that your organization wants to solve, and whether or not you want to solve it right now. Then, make sure you have a deep partnership with business leaders so that we all agree that it is a problem, and that we all agree we’re going to solve it right now.
There are times when we are evaluating solutions and we really understand the problem, and it’s super clear. And there are times, when it comes to our work around innovation and impact, that we’re actively working to hear what things people are trying to solve so we can understand whether or not there’s a problem we haven’t yet recognized.
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HEALTHTECH: What do you think will be the next big topic at conferences such as ViVE? Do you think AI will continue to dominate conversations, and if so, how?
GARDENHIRE: AI is going to continue to dominate conversations for a good long while. As I watch what’s happening, I’m also trying to be honest about what is going to get us to a place where we can democratize these tools, because the reality is, we don’t get to maximum impact until we can better democratize the tools.
We like to talk about what I call the app layer — the layer that fully interacts with humans, or the data layer that is providing more insights. And I think those things are really important. I hope that we get to a place where we start to maybe give infrastructure and the back end of technology a bit more visibility. We have a lot of work to do to ensure that our infrastructure can handle what’s happening at the app layer. We have to make sure that we can manage compute. We need to be having more conversations about computing impact on utilities. Can we get to the right place with utilities to power all these things?
We have to have more conversations about the digital divide. We have to have more conversations about whether or not, realistically, we’re preparing humans to keep up with what’s changing and what’s different in training and adoption and the things that are going to ensure that, again, these tools will have maximum impact.
I think this will continue to be the center of the conversation. I do think that the surrounding topics of really making it work and having impact are going to have more prominence in the conversation in order to make it real for the highest number of people.
