This Week in Health Tech

Vik Patel and Guests

This Week in Health Tech podcast is a health technology podcast. Podcast features Vik Patel, a health technology veteran and CEO of Tido Inc. (A Trusted Tech Partner for Healthcare Organizations) and industry experts. Our shows provide commentary, news, and perspective on the latest trends in health tech and features seasoned experienced industry experts. All of our shows are free. TWIHT is supported by advertising. We limit the number of ads on each show, and we only accept advertising from companies whose products or services benefit our audience.

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65 episodes
Updated Dec 10, 2025

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Jan 18, 2022 · 46 min
Hybrid Healthcare and Consumer Driven Healthcare with Jared Johnson
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, first episode of 2022, Vik and Jimmy welcome Jared Johnson, from Healthcare Podcast Rap. Vik and Jimmy discuss hybrid healthcare or consumer first healthcare in this episode. Jared starts with explaining discussing what hybrid healthcare is with an example of 23 and me. He also mentions examples of Best Buy buying healthcare companies or even Walmart. How do you adapt as a CEO / CIO / CMIO of a traditional healthcare organization? Jared mentions that the margins are already lower in healthcare and how do you part w/ the little margin and partner w/ consumer brands. The group then discusses digital transformation and impact on consumer driven healthcare. Jared indicates that this is still the very beginning of consumer brands in healthcare. But as a healthcare executive, empathy will help understand the change of consumer driven healthcare. Vik then says that consumers are getting used to on-demand with example of uber and banking apps, so why not in healthcare. This is where asynchronous telehealth could also benefit consumers. The group then discusses machine learning and AI, and how it is becoming more accessible, and this allows more entrants or developers in healthcare. Plus w/ FHIR APIs, it allows app developers access to their own data. Jared mentions that partnerships w/ consumer brands in healthcare is still slow but it is happening. Vik mentions the example of the meditation app Calm and how it could be part of person's healthcare. Also Apple Health is connected with thousands of healthcare organizations and collects daily health information through apple watch. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Guest Information: Linkedin: Jared Johnson Health Care Rap Podcast on Apple Podcast Mentions: Calm App Apple Health Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Dec 23, 2021 · 26 min
Emergency Pod! Oracle Buys Cerner.
Send us Fan Mail In this emergency episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy discuss the big news of Oracle buying Cerner. The biggest purchase Oracle, Big Tech, has ever done for $28.3 billion dollars. Vik and Jimmy first talk a little background of Oracle and Cerner. Vik talks about Oracle products: cloud infrastructure, integration, oracle dbms, developer network, and more. Jimmy said this sends a huge signal that there is massive potential in healthcare. Stock price has dropped initially because people are still trying to make sense of it. Plus there have been massive failures in the past like Microsoft HealthVault and Google HealthCloud. Vik thinks there will be growing pains in the beginning but over time once they figure out the best way to integrate Oracle and Cerner products. Vik thinks that one of the big opportunity is analytics and AI. Oracle will obviously use their cloud but the hidden opportunity is making sense of Big Data and use AI to make processes for health systems efficient and realize significant ROI. This could present a good opportunity to Cerner clients. Also sends a signal to Epic EHR, the EHR with biggest market in healthcare. The other thing is Oracle knows how to make products available to a developer network. Jimmy brings up the point that Cerner CEO is quite new and has been CEO only since Aug 2021. Maybe he was the right person to complete the deal. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Nov 23, 2021 · 50 min
The two types of Telemedicine: Synchronous vs Asynchronous with Dr. Purdy
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy invite Dr. Laura Purdy, CEO and CoFounder of MD Integrations, All in One Telehealth solutions company. Dr. Purdy is a 15 year army veteran and started her career in military medical school and as a hospitalist in military. She realized early on that telehealth will be the future of healthcare for simple things such as poison ivy or pink eye. In the old days of telehealth, there were a lot of challenges from technical challenge to scheduling patients. Jimmy asks about asynchronous use of telehealth. Asynchronous is offline dialog and not real-time communication. Direct to consumer telehealth companies are at different stages of development. All of these companies have to deal with the same technical challenges including the portal and integration. This is where MD Integrations has an API which is designed for asynchronous telehealth. One of the biggest pain points of telehealth is EMR. Today's EMRs are not designed for telehealth service, they are still designed for core brick and mortar services. Jimmy asks the question if asynchronous telehealth will increase over synchronous visits because patients do not prefer face to face visit if possible similar to other industries. Dr. Purdy explains the differences between the two and does think that asynchronous visits will continue to increase over face to face telehealth visits. The numbers are showing decrease in synchronous or real-time telehealth visits. On-demand healthcare is the future and asynchronous is able to assist w/ the same. Dr. Purdy provides examples of asynchronous use and why face to face call does not always make sense. Vik then asks why there are so many niche telehealth companies springing up when there are telehealth giants such as Teledoc and Livingo. Dr. Purdy explains in detail the reason behind need for niche telehealth companies and why this market does not need to depend only on the telehealth giants. The group then jumps in the integration challenges related to Telehealth and how to overcome challenge of access to data from health system, clinic, telehealth portals. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Guest Information: LinkedIn: Dr. Laura Purdy Website: https://mdintegrations.com/ Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Nov 9, 2021 · 49 min
How to deal with Expectations for Digital Apps and increase access to On-Demand Care
Send us Fan Mail In this Halloween special of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy discuss digital transformation and AI with guest Shelby Sanderford, CEO of Docpace. Shelby shares her story of how she got started in healthcare IT working in a hospital. They are on a mission to eliminate wait times for patients and eliminate need for waiting rooms. The group dives into the conversation w/ impact of the pandemic on digital transformation in healthcare. Shelby notes that last few years healthcare organizations have been switching to electronic health records and applications, but in the last couple of years, it has been the acceptance of those applications. All these applications have almost become a necessity instead of a luxury. Vik agrees and adds that there is also an increased expectation from patients to use digital apps for personal healthcare. This is why Tido Inc.'s digital team is increasingly working w/ healthcare organizations on app strategy and management. Jimmy asks the question what kept Shelby going with all the challenges of pandemic. Shelby answers that the main reason is the justification that the problem exists so even with all the challenges, it helped to know that Docpace could solve some of those issues with wait times. Vik adds that some of these expectations are related to "On Demand" expectation of consumers. Shelby adds that healthcare is shifting to more proactive care instead of reactive care. Pre COVID, most consumers and healthcare organizations were okay with status quo but Post COVID, healthcare organizations are realizing that they need to meet the new expectations from consumers. Vik notes that executives are now realizing that they need to be prepared for this coming onslaught of apps because the basic patient portal is not enough and does not provide a customized experience for consumers. Shelby adds that the seamless integration will definitely be the key for healthcare organizations to take advantage of the innovation and new applications. Vik agrees that with FHIR interoperability, it will enable on demand healthcare with easy and secure pull of the patient information. The fragmentation in healthcare is gradually going away and FHIR APIs will play a crucial role in reducing fragmentation in healthcare. The group then moves to discussing AI in healthcare. Shelby explains the difference in automation and AI. Vik notes that lot of times the details about underlying algorithm, comparison data used etc. is unknown. As Dr. Oliver, CMIO, Baptist, said in the past episodes, lot of times the AI functionality is a black box and could affect the trust factor of an application. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim LinkedIn: Shelby Sanderford Support the show (http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com/) Support the show (http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com/) Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Oct 12, 2021 · 47 min
How to Improve Patient Safety with End to End (E2E) Systems Monitoring
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy discuss healthcare systems monitoring and integration. In today's healthcare, we are still dependant on users to identify and report system issues. This is a big patient safety issue. Vik explains the issue in detail using an example. Patient arrives in emergency department, and based on the patient state, physician orders few different tests. In this case, physician orders lab, cardiology, and radiology tests. Lab and Cardio tests are processed successfully, and are visible to the users in those respective departments. PACS system however is experiencing some issue, and even though the order messages were received successfully through the interface, the orders still did not show up in the PACS system. So after close to an hour, the emergency department calls up radiology to find out the status of the tests and when the procedure will be done. This is when PACS admin or user realizes that there might be an issue and they will contact IT department or open a task using online task reporting system. This is when the IT help desk contact integration analyst to look into the issue, but this example show the reliance on manual intervention to find system issues is very risky and could lead to adverse patient events. This is where end to end systems monitoring comes into place. If the health system did have end to end systems monitoring in place, the active monitoring would have detected the exact location of the fault and cut down time to find and diagnose system issues. Plus it prevents reliance on users to report issue. With digital transformation number of systems and applications will continue to increase, and CIOs-CMIOS should really consider active monitoring to improve patient safety and prevent unscheduled downtimes. It is about being active instead of being reactive when dealing w/ system issues. Also, with Tido's Systems end to end monitoring, it does not stop at flagging and diagnosing the issue, but there is also well defined notifications mechanism to alert the appropriate staff members of a system issue. Jimmy asks the question, why health systems have not considered this until now? Vik explains that EHR and more electronic systems have been implemented everywhere only in the last 10-15 years. Plus applications have matured and reliance on electronic systems in health systems has increased and it will continue to increase. So it is the right timing now to implement active end to end systems monitoring. Vik then explains the end to end systems monitoring architecture and software: how it works with interface engine and EHR and downstream systems. There is also significant ROI from using automated end to end systems monitoring. All the time saved by staff members not spending their time dealing with system issues and instead of focusing on patient care is huge savings for a health system. Plus it improves patient outcomes. Tido has a deal for 6 months free end to end systems monitoring for health systems. Claim this deal by visiting tidoinc.com: https://tidoinc.com/contact-tido-inc/ and include E2E in your message. Tido's solution uses Microsoft Azure cloud for end to end systems monitoring. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Sep 21, 2021 · 49 min
Telehealth, eVisits, and Digital Transformation with Dr. Brett Oliver
Send us Fan Mail In this jam-packed episode of This Week in Health Tech, we welcome Dr. Brett Oliver (Chief Medical Information Officer, Baptist Health) to dive into several fascinating topics, such as the future of telehealth, digital transformation, interoperability, cultural change across the industry, and much more. To kick it off, we discuss the latest COVID situation in Kentucky and the strain that it’s putting on healthcare. Jimmy asks Brett about remote monitoring and remote visits with patients. Brett indicates that Baptist is improving remote visits, with multi-specialty appointments now possible with better technology. Baptist has also been able to expand clinical content and recommendations that are provided to patient. Patients are ready for this cultural shift to eVisits and online healthcare experiences—so healthcare organizations need to adapt fast, and the culture change discussions have to happen now. Yet this new technology also needs to be user-friendly for patients. If not rolled out properly, the industry could go from a very basic experience to a very overwhelming experience—where patients have to choose from hundreds of different digital options. This would defeat the purpose of digital transformation: to make things better and more simple for patients. Additionally, the challenge of data silos is where interoperability is still one of the biggest challenges in healthcare. Patients own their healthcare data; however, it is still not easy for patients to access and share their data with new providers or health systems. CMS / ONC are pushing for better interoperability, which will definitely help overcome these data silos in healthcare. Vik and Brett then close the podcast by discussing how conversations with executive or physician teams are essential for effective digital transformations, as well as some final thoughts about the status of artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Linkedin: Dr. Brett Oliver Tido's Integration Packages Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Aug 18, 2021 · 37 min
HIMSS Conference 2021 Post Conference Review
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of TWIHT, Vik and Jimmy comment on HIMSS 2021 Conference that just ended Aug 12. This year the conference was in person in Las Vegas and was also available digitally online. Number of participants was low this year because of the pandemic, and it seemed like instead of the usual 50 to 60 thousand registrants, 2021 conference only had about 18000 registrants. Many of them attended digitally. Vik explains the importance of this conference and what it means for the healthcare information technology conference. Vik mentions that he attended the conference digitally this year and experience of attending digitally did not compare well to in person. Jimmy asks about the digital experience, and Vik explains that even though the app tried to facilitate the communication through the app, the experience could have been much better. Number of digital sessions were limited and there were fewer opportunities to connect in digital sessions. There was a way to view the directory of participants and reach out to people, however, that is probably not the best way to connect with people. Vik then answers Jimmy question about which topics were really the hot topics in this year's conference. Vik comments that the biggest topic was interoperability because of digital transformation in healthcare. The president of HIMSS indicated that with value based care and personalized care, it made sense for organizations to invest in the right strategies and technologies to enable integration between EHR, hospitals, and innovative applications to provide the best experience for patients. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Tido's Integration Packages Support the show (http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com/) Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Jul 15, 2021 · 37 min
How To Accelerate Healthcare Digital Transformation with APIs
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Digital Transformation acceleration with APIs, Vik and Jimmy discuss the basics of API and its impact on digital transformation in health systems. The biggest factor for talking about APIs in healthcare is digital transformation. COVID has accelerated digital transformation in healthcare, it started with telehealth, but it is way beyond just telehealth: increased use AI and machine learning, patient or provider facing mobile apps, analytics, and remote monitoring. As a CIO or CEO of a health system, you need to be ready for digital transformation. Healthcare has been working on digital transformation however COVID has expedited and pushed health systems to make changes, plus the government is also pushing digital transformation with CURES Act. Vik and Jimmy use examples from other industries to show user experiences are way better compared to healthcare. From a CIO standpoint, it starts with strategy, to enable digital transformation, you need to make it easier for data sharing for AI, Machine Learning, mobile apps, remote monitoring. And API is the way to go compared to the traditional way of integration. Vik and Jimmy then dive into specifics about strategy and use a practical example to explain how APIs need to be implemented. APIs also help realize significant ROI (return of investment) over traditional integration because of reduced resource time for implementation. Vik and Jimmy then dive into on-premise vs cloud for API implementations. Vik explains using FHIR specification for healthcare APIs. Vik explains the competitive advantage of having APIs to enable better user experiences. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Jun 22, 2021 · 43 min
Prevent Hospital System Issues Using Active Monitoring and Test Automation
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of TWIHT, we discuss how to actively monitor hospital systems data integrity. It is a big challenge to monitor hundreds of systems in a health system to ensure workflows and data are working as expected. This prevents having to rely on users to report issues and prevent extensive downtime. Vik describes a typical scenario in how most issues are dealt with today in a health system. He uses an example of an ED system. A user in emergency department places a lab order and if there is an issue with getting the result back, after waiting for 20-30min, the user then will report the issue to information technology help desk. Help desk will then message the integration team so they can check if the issue is with the result interfaces. Integration engineer will check the interfaces and then determine if there is an issue or not. By this time it is already 45-60min. Once integration team determines it is not an issue with interfaces, then they will open a task with the ED system vendor because at this point it is clear that there is some other issue with displaying the result in the ED system. This example shows that in health systems today, there is no automated process to prevent system issues and prevent long unscheduled downtimes which affect patient care. With an automated hospital systems data monitoring, within a min, an issue can be identified, and process of notifying the right parties can start immediately. This way a fix can be in place as soon as possible to minimize system downtime and avoid adverse patient events because of system issues. This problem of avoiding system issues has been in place for a long time, and it is challenging to actively monitor workflows and data integrity within 100s of hospital systems, however, our team at Tido Inc. has developed an active monitoring application to help identify issues instantly. Relying on users to report issues in all electronic systems is a very frustrating issue for care providers and instead of focusing on patient care, they are having to deal with system issues. Vik provides another example where because of a workflow change in the EMR system, how it can affect downstream systems. EMR and hospital systems test automation can help avoid these issues (check last episode for more details), however, even test automation cannot guarantee avoidance of issues in live environment. This is where active systems integrity monitoring can catch issues before they turn into longer downtimes or affect patient care because of missing critical data. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Tido Inc. The Trusted Tech Partner for Healthcare. We use technology to deliver better outcomes. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
May 26, 2021 · 43 min
How To Implement Test Automation in Health Care || Part 2: EMR and Hospital Systems
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of TWIHT, Vik and Jimmy continue the series about testing and test automation in healthcare, specifically EMR and health systems test automation. We start out with the difference between web test automation that we discussed in the last episode versus EMR and health systems test automation. Vik explains that the biggest difference would be that web applications may or may not have patient health information however EMR and all hospital systems all have patient health information (PHI). So the impact of system errors with EMR and hospitals systems (PACS, Pharmacy, Laboratory, Cardiology, ambulatory, etc). is way higher as it could lead to critical adverse events. Vik explains that with EMR and other hospital systems, changes are being made in those systems based on the feedback from clinical staff for workflows and then there are also application updates that are also happening continuously. Vik then explains the traditional approach for testing of changes in healthcare organization. In most cases it is a manual testing. He explains the traditional manual approach in detail using an example. But it is definitely a challenge because all the staff members involved in this testing already have competing deadlines and testing of the EMR and other hospital changes becomes secondary. Jimmy shares a testing story from video game industry and Vik mentions Apple's Mythic Quest show and how there are only 2 testers for a very complex video game. Just shows that testing is not always a priority. But the impact of software issues in a video game versus EMR or other hospital systems is very different. It is actually a life or death difference in hospital systems. Jimmy and Vik then discuss what can be done better for testing in healthcare. Vik indicates that to cover all the testing required for continuous changes happening in hospital systems, on average, it will probably take about 50,000 hours to cover all the testing required. And if we average out the hourly rate of staff members to $50/hour, that means it will take $2.5 million dollars per year to do all testing using manual testing. The way around this is to use the right technologies to automate the testing. Vik indicates that depending on whether the system is web or desktop, selenium or appium framework can be used for test automation scripts. The other thing to consider is that there are lots of different devices used in a hospital environment i.e. desktop, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. This is where using a real device cloud in automated testing to ensure the system works as intended on all devices is very important. Vik explains the process used by test team at Tido Inc. for test automation. Initially once assessment is done to capture all the different workflows and downstream systems used, the team then develops test scripts. They also use integration framework since all the information to downstream systems going through the interfaces can be used to cross check information between EMR and downstream systems. Once the test scripts are developed they can be run continuously or on-demand for regression tes Tido Inc. The Trusted Tech Partner for Healthcare. We use technology to deliver better outcomes. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
May 11, 2021 · 42 min
How To Implement Test Automation in Health Care || Part 1: Website Testing
Send us Fan Mail For month of May, Vik and Jimmy are focusing on Healthcare Web, Mobile, EHR Testing and Test Automation. In this part 1 episode, they focus on healthcare web properties testing and test automation strategies and implementation. Vik starts with the basics and defining testing and test automation and testing reality in healthcare. Testing is underrated and not something organizations think about but it should be a top priority especially in these times when more and more online applications are used by patients and providers. Typically regression testing is missing because there are never enough test / qa resources in an organization. So there is limited testing in reality. Performance testing is usually not done and could be a potential user satisfaction issue if the website cannot handle web traffic, for example a COVID scheduling or registration web application. Jimmy asks who is involved in website management at a healthcare organization. Vik explains that it is a combination of marketing and IT departments. Sometimes the roles are clear but usually IT provides development resources, either in-house or outsourced. Marketing team in many cases is expected to do testing and user acceptance testing. Vik then explains the different categories of testing: Continuous, Automated, and Live Testing. Continuous testing is where testing is utilized at every stage of development. When test script development is complete, then those scripts can be used for automated testing against hundreds of combinations of devices and browsers. Live testing is used by QA staff to test websites on real devices which are running in the cloud. Vik and Jimmy then use a real life example of COVID registration web application to discuss the different types of web application testing. Vik explains how selenium test framework is utilized for test automation. Test scripts are written in any of the major programming languages: Java, Python, C#, Ruby, Kotlin, etc. He also explains how this automation works with a real device cloud to test the scripts against hundreds of combinations of devices and browsers. Jimmy and Vik then talk about types of testing: Functional, Compatibility, and Performance testing. They go into briefly about upcoming mobile and EHR testing in the next episodes of This Week in Health Tech. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Support the show (http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com/) Tido Inc. The Trusted Tech Partner for Healthcare. We use technology to deliver better outcomes. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
May 4, 2021 · 53 min
Mobile Apps Management for Health Systems with Wayne Che || Encore Presentation
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech we welcome our very own and close friend Wayne Che to talk about Health System and Mobile Apps - Management, Resources, Build vs Buy, Testing, Infrastructure, Security, Privacy, and more! This episode aligns well with the new digital product offering of Tido Inc. for the management of mobile and web apps for health systems. Wayne Che works in multiple roles, primarily as CTO of Sowingo Inc., and has tons of experience with the implementation of mobile apps. We get right into mobile development by starting the discussion on build vs buy. Vik comments that health systems main focus is improving patient outcomes and it does not make sense to assemble a development team in-house. Wayne agrees that you gain speed of execution and plus allows you to focus on the primary job of using IT for providing better care of patients. Jimmy asks what to look for in the development shop and Wayne thinks that you need to have a partner that understands requirements and helps to define requirements. Also, the shop should not only have development skills but it is also more important to have management skills to keep the app updated and continuously test to provide the best user experience. Vik comments that Tido Inc. launched a new digital package to help health systems manage apps and includes custom development of apps. It also includes test automation and maintenance. Wayne indicates that testing and maintenance is a key component otherwise with iOS or android updates app may stop working. Vik and Jimmy then dive into test automation and the importance of testing on actual real devices. This is where real device testing comes into play. Both Vik and Wayne recommend the selenium framework with real device cloud providers like Sauce Labs or BrowserStack. Testing helps provide the best user experience and it is so crucial for patients who may be already going through a lot and a frustrating app experience just adds to negative patient satisfaction. The group then discusses infrastructure for apps. There are many cloud providers and what is the best approach for health systems. Wayne comments that cloud providers do several things well including staying compliant with HIPAA and PHIPA. Vik comments that using the cloud has another benefit which is to reduce traffic from mobile devices directly into the health system network. The group then talks about using APIs for data sharing for mobile apps. Also with ONC's Cures Act, it is required that there are no more data silos, but most health systems should go beyond Cures Act for bidirectional data flow securely. Wayne comments that this is where health systems should look into hiring the expertise for API development and management and ensure security. Jimmy asks the question of why this urgency of APIs and mobile development now? Wayne and Vik respond that not only Cures Act but from providing the best user experience, health systems have to provide APIs and app support. Group then talks about the hybrid approach for mobile app development where you have some expertise in-house, maybe a product owner or architect but use an outside development company. Website: http://www.thi Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Mar 30, 2021 · 47 min
Digital strategy, telehealth, and cloud adoption with Mark
Send us Fan Mail On this episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy welcome Mark Brookman, CIO, Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We jump right into tele-health and adoption with Mark. Mark indicated that even though they had started on tele-health path about 3-4 years ago, adoption was scarce. Providers were hesitant because there could be liability issues if they missed anything however things changed with COVID-19. Government changed their stance and they started reimbursing for telehealth visits. At commonwealth telehealth was now used even in emergency health where patient information about a patient being transferred to the hospital emergency department was provided to a ER physician, and this help ER department to prepare equipment and room according to the incoming patient needs. Jimmy poses question to Mark if provider mentality has changed and if they have adjusted to telehealth and if they will continue with telehealth post COVID-19. Mark thinks it is still quite early to tell however they are proceeding with plans to expand telehealth services over next few years. Mark then discusses remote monitoring and even in hospital monitoring for COVID patients where patients could be monitored without going inside the room. The conversation then flows into cloud versus on-prem and hybrid infrastructure setup for healthcare organizations. Mark indicates that he has a very cautious slow approach to cloud adoption. He does not like giving up control by hosting everything in the cloud. Industry is clearly moving in the direction of subscription or cloud hosted solutions. Vik indicates that it could be a hybrid approach, and gives an example for integration. Hybrid approach would help separate external system connections to the cloud and not have them connected directly to the same on premise servers. Vik, Jimmy, and Mark then discuss remote working and how healthcare staff has adopted to working remotely and if there has been a culture change. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Support the show (http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com/) Associated Links: https://www.mulesoft.com/resources/api/leveraging-digital-transformation-right Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Mar 9, 2021 · 37 min
Accelerate healthcare digital transformation with APIs
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Digital Transformation acceleration with APIs, Vik and Jimmy discuss the basics of API and its impact on digital transformation in health systems. The biggest factor for talking about APIs in healthcare is digital transformation. COVID has accelerated digital transformation in healthcare, it started with telehealth, but it is way beyond just telehealth: increased use AI and machine learning, patient or provider facing mobile apps, analytics, and remote monitoring. As a CIO or CEO of a health system, you need to be ready for digital transformation. Healthcare has been working on digital transformation however COVID has expedited and pushed health systems to make changes, plus the government is also pushing digital transformation with CURES Act. Vik and Jimmy use examples from other industries to show user experiences are way better compared to healthcare. From a CIO standpoint, it starts with strategy, to enable digital transformation, you need to make it easier for data sharing for AI, Machine Learning, mobile apps, remote monitoring. And API is the way to go compared to the traditional way of integration. Vik and Jimmy then dive into specifics about strategy and use a practical example to explain how APIs need to be implemented. APIs also help realize significant ROI (return of investment) over traditional integration because of reduced resource time for implementation. Vik and Jimmy then dive into on-premise vs cloud for API implementations. Vik explains using FHIR specification for healthcare APIs. Vik explains the competitive advantage of having APIs to enable better user experiences. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Support the show (http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com/) Associated Links: https://www.mulesoft.com/resources/api/leveraging-digital-transformation-right Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Feb 1, 2021 · 37 min
Top 3 ways to setup online COVID-19 vaccine scheduling and avoid clogged phone lines
Send us Fan Mail In this week of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy tackle a very timely topic about COVID vaccine scheduling for health systems. Vaccines are here, Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca. The phone is ringing off the hook at health systems, which is creating operations issues for health systems. Clogged up phone lines does not help with patient care because more critical issues might not get the attention they deserve. Vaccine protocols are changing and currently, healthcare staff members, long term care facilities, and elderly people are prioritized over the general population. Now the number of vaccine shots are limited and health systems need to figure out a way to provide vaccine to people in the community. Roll out of vaccines is definitely a logistics issue. Jimmy and Vik dive into different ways to set up online scheduling for vaccines that could be useful for health systems. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Support the show (http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com/) Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Dec 31, 2020 · 38 min
Best of 2020 and Technology Trends for 2021
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, Jimmy and Vik recap the 2020 episodes of This Week in Health Tech and chat about the best of 2020 topics, guests, and more. Vik and Jimmy start out by reminiscing about 2020 and how it all started. It is also the one-year anniversary of the TWIHT podcast. Vik concedes that it was not easy to start the podcast and staying on track. But over time it has definitely gotten easier, it no longer feels like work. They start out talking about the very first 2 episodes and how they really dived into it with security in healthcare. Throughout 2020, we actually talked about security in pretty much every episode, especially with the growing number of healthcare apps and data. Vik and Jimmy comment that on the surface it may seem that lots of apps like Gmail zoom etc may seem free however data they collect is priceless. Big tech influence in healthcare is continuing to grow and they talked about big tech in the episode with Unmesh. AI and machine learning were also topics that came up in a lot of episodes in 2020. COVID has also accelerated AI and machine learning influence in healthcare. Vik and Jimmy comment on how digital strategy has become very crucial now more than ever. They also talked about how COVID forced work from home in all industries including healthcare and the use of different technologies to work securely from home. Jimmy also comments on how he had to switch his corporate fitness programs to virtual programs to survive. Jimmy learned a lot from this and actually provided great tips for improving the telehealth experience in an episode in mid-2020. They also talk about how all the guests of TWIHT were very positive and contributed in different ways using their experience and expertise in dealing with the tough situation of COVID personally and professionally. Vik then reminds listeners of the human resources episode with Tony Welch which was emotional and raw. They also talk about the Alan Shoebridge episode where competing organizations came together to fight COVID. Vik mentions the episode with Laura O'Toole and being future prepared with technology. How do you deploy more applications quickly but securely and making sure all apps provide the best user experience. Test automation is the way to go to ensure the best user experience. They also talk about the mobile development episode and geeking out on the episode with Wayne Che. Vik then comments about the future 2021 trend. He suggests that because of the ONC Cures Act and the increased influence of AI, Machine Learning, and Big Tech, and based on the conversations that they are having with CIOs, managers are that there will be a spur in the healthcare app economy. Organizations will need to be ready with a hybrid architecture that will allow them to deploy apps, not just in-house but also external patient-provider facing apps. Vik also thinks that test automation and digital app management will play a huge role especially with the increase in healthcare apps. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Dec 8, 2020 · 52 min
Mobile Apps Management for Health Systems with Wayne Che
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech we welcome our very own and close friend Wayne Che to talk about Health System and Mobile Apps - Management, Resources, Build vs Buy, Testing, Infrastructure, Security, Privacy, and more! This episode aligns well with the new digital product offering of Tido Inc. for the management of mobile and web apps for health systems. Wayne Che works in multiple roles, primarily as CTO of Sowingo Inc., and has tons of experience with the implementation of mobile apps. We get right into mobile development by starting the discussion on build vs buy. Vik comments that health systems main focus is improving patient outcomes and it does not make sense to assemble a development team in-house. Wayne agrees that you gain speed of execution and plus allows you to focus on the primary job of using IT for providing better care of patients. Jimmy asks what to look for in the development shop and Wayne thinks that you need to have a partner that understands requirements and helps to define requirements. Also, the shop should not only have development skills but it is also more important to have management skills to keep the app updated and continuously test to provide the best user experience. Vik comments that Tido Inc. launched a new digital package to help health systems manage apps and includes custom development of apps. It also includes test automation and maintenance. Wayne indicates that testing and maintenance is a key component otherwise with iOS or android updates app may stop working. Vik and Jimmy then dive into test automation and the importance of testing on actual real devices. This is where real device testing comes into play. Both Vik and Wayne recommend the selenium framework with real device cloud providers like Sauce Labs or BrowserStack. Testing helps provide the best user experience and it is so crucial for patients who may be already going through a lot and a frustrating app experience just adds to negative patient satisfaction. The group then discusses infrastructure for apps. There are many cloud providers and what is the best approach for health systems. Wayne comments that cloud providers do several things well including staying compliant with HIPAA and PHIPA. Vik comments that using the cloud has another benefit which is to reduce traffic from mobile devices directly into the health system network. The group then talks about using APIs for data sharing for mobile apps. Also with ONC's Cures Act, it is required that there are no more data silos, but most health systems should go beyond Cures Act for bidirectional data flow securely. Wayne comments that this is where health systems should look into hiring the expertise for API development and management and ensure security. Jimmy asks the question of why this urgency of APIs and mobile development now? Wayne and Vik respond that not only Cures Act but from providing the best user experience, health systems have to provide APIs and app support. Group then talks about the hybrid approach for mobile app development where you have some expertise in-house, maybe a product owner or architect but use an outside development company. Website: Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Dec 1, 2020 · 53 min
Inpatient digital experience and smart hospital rooms with Jeff Fallon
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy invite Jeff Fallon with eVideon to talk about the hospital inpatient experience. It is the first time we are talking about changing inpatient experience with digital transformation in healthcare. We start out with the traditional/existing setup in most hospital rooms. Jeff explains that patient rooms have not changed a whole lot since 1970s. There is still the nurse call button in the room maybe with a hardwired phone and a tube tv which is controlled by up and down buttons on the bedside remote control. Vik mentions that the good thing is that digital transformation is in the works at most of the health systems. It starts with an infrastructure upgrade to support digital transformation. Jeff agrees that infrastructure is the backbone for digital changes but it is easier to do in newer buildings than in really old hospital buildings. It becomes inherently expensive to upgrade wiring for example in buildings with concrete walls and increases barriers for entry. Vik indicates that maybe we could get around the issue of physical wiring with advancements in wireless technology, especially with wifi 6. Jimmy stated that there must be a reason for the change now with the inpatient experience and Jeff comments that value-based care is a big driver for this. Patient satisfaction scores are used for value-based compliance and providing a better inpatient hospital experience will help drive up patient satisfaction scores and hence patient outcomes. Jeff also commented that pandemic also accelerated the transformation and the drive to use technology to provide a better experience but more importantly reduce contagious viruses. Vik comments that in COVID times, when caregivers are wearing masks it is difficult to make that connection with patients. But maybe a smart room will display the caregiver's photo on the screen and badge information so you can make a better connection even through a mask. Jeff also mentions that it is critical to give patients control of their experience and using technology we will be able to provide that experience. Vik thinks using a smart speaker could also be useful in the hospital room which can announce the schedule for the day or announce the person entering the room etc. Vik thinks in future patient could be given a tablet with all hospital approved apps to give the patient control on what apps / information they would like to make use of. Jeff thinks it needs to be balanced because some users could get overwhelmed and may need more hand holding. Either way, we all agree that digital transformation will drive inpatient experience and improve all patient satisfaction. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Jeff Fallon: Jeff Fallon eVideon Healthcare: https://www.evideon.com/ Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Nov 10, 2020 · 43 min
Using wearables for preventative patient care with Dr. Michael Farmer
Send us Fan Mail We have our first physician on This Week in Health Tech. Dr. Michael Farmer, Cardiologist and founder of Corverix to talk about wearables. Michael got into wearables because he found current healthcare very reactive and not enough on prevention. It became frustrating and Michael found that patients had access to smartwatches and all the indicators captured on these devices going wasted. Patients used to fax ECG from apple watch to his clinic. Vik agrees that it is absolutely after the fact medicine but we should be getting to more active caring of patients. Value-based care will incentivize prevention and wearables and value-based care align quite well. Michael indicated that there is a huge return on investment for organizations that recommend wearables for employees. For example, 50% of the US population suffers from high blood pressure and if even lowered blood pressure for 10% of the population using wearables would be a huge benefit. Vik brings up the point that there are massive amounts of data collected by wearables so how do you go about deciphering so much data and presenting it to the provider where it is actually useful. Michael indicated in a perfect world, it would very useful to have a link in the EMR that would present him with all the data points from wearables. For example sleep time, exercise time, etc. Because a lot of times the information you get from patients is not accurate so from a provider perspective it just helps to see actual data points collected in the last few months to make informed decisions. Michael, Vik, and Jimmy then dig into more details about wearable data points like heart rate variability and how they help a physician. Next, they talk about the limitations of EHR and how the data presented in a standard EHR is not easy to use and there is usually way too much going on instead of presenting crucial data points in a visual manner. The other huge advantage of wearables is provided personalized care for patients. Vik then mentions the strategy they use for digital apps integration. Instead of traditional pushing data and duplicating data, it will be on-demand. Also, because of the Cures Act, it will open up data using APIs. Having FHIR APIs in the cloud, it will allow apps to access EHR data in real-time. Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com Twitter: @TWIHT1 Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/ Guest Linkedin: Dr. Michael Farmer Coverix Website: https://corverix.com/pages/wearables Music Provided by Soundstripe.com Linkedin: Vik Patel Linkedin: Jimmy Kim Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Oct 27, 2020 · 52 min
There's never enough testing - Test Automation with Ryan Neaves and Laura O'Toole
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, we welcome Ryan Neaves, VP, Care Applications from Novant Health, and Laura O'Tool, President, Santa Rosa Consulting. We focus on test automation for Electronic Health Record systems and also for digital testing of mobile and web applications. As some wise person noted, there is never enough testing to provide the best user experience and satisfaction. Tido Inc. has test automation packages which help end to end testing of all workflows for EHR and also for the growing number of mobile and web applications with digital transformation in healthcare. Laura comments that we are always scrambling to do testing or cover all the workflows. Testing is required for multiple reasons including whenever we are upgrading EHR or health systems. And we need to do enough rigorous testing because we care about patients and providing the best healthcare. So it is important all the scenario testing, integrated testing are covered in an automated fashion. This also frees up resources to actually focus on patient care. Especially in these difficult pandemic times, it is crucial to allow key resources to have confidence in health systems and not be bogged down by testing or incorrect workflows. Ryan comments that it has been a great journey for Novant health and implementing test automation. There were also some unintended consequences of the test automation strategy. He also indicates that test automation has been used in other industries forever. While in healthcare we do testing with getting people in a room and running through workflows once. Laura indicates that we have increased innovation in healthcare and Ryan agrees that we search for opportunities, and as the industry changes, there are a lot of tools available. Vik agrees with Ryan that he has been part of those testing calls that Ryan mentioned where resources get together in a room. But a lot of times, there was no documentation of scenarios, it was mainly just relying on clinical personnel remembering workflows. Ryan comments that traditionally you are relying on the key 3 or 4 personnel, and even when you do the testing manually once, it is still only done once! Laura provides an example of how many different data elements or workflows that have to be considered so testing once is definitely not enough. The other issue Ryan highlights are that key resources don't enjoy testing as it takes away from more important tasks at hand. Vik asks Ryan what were some of the challenges with test automation implementation. Ryan indicated that culture shift or change of mentality was one of the main challenges. It was wrestling that control and providing confidence to staff that test automation will test applications thoroughly and intended as it needs to be tested. Vik comments that with the COVID situation, digital transformation is happening rapidly, so from a digital strategy, there will be an increasing number of mobile and web apps. Ryan indicates that Novant is looking at everything including machine learning and AI. Ryan provides the example of telehealth and how they went from a few hundred users to 30000 users and it highlighted issues that were not known below. Laura comments that because of COVID through health systems into the frying pan and really highlighted the skills of healthcare staff and forced us to be more innovative and utilize automation. Website: Support the show Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes Vik Patel - LinkedIn Tido Inc. - Website Tido Inc. - LinkedIn