As CIO of Cleveland Clinic, Matthew Kull has led the health system's evolving digital transformation strategy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic since March.
In a recent interview with Microsoft's global healthcare vice president Tom McGuinness, Mr. Kull shared Cleveland Clinic's top digital transformation priorities as well as how his own insights on innovation have grown during the pandemic. Cleveland Clinic has used Microsoft's Cloud for Healthcare, which the tech giant will make generally available Oct. 30.
Here are five quotes from Mr. Kull on digital transformation:
1. On Cleveland Clinic's digital transformation management: "From a digital perspective, honing in our telemedicine and telehealth especially as it's becoming more accepted as a care pathway is job No. 1. We have to transform our business behind that easy-to-use technology to make sure that we're meeting patients where they want to be met via the channel they want to be met and we can do it in a safe way."
2. On his advice for tech leaders: "Don't underestimate the amount of research that your physicians and your other administrators and even your nursing staff are doing into some of these advanced technologies. When I get a call from a physician out of the blue that says, 'Hey Matt, I want to talk to you about this deep data mining technology, when can we sit down and have that conversation?' Three years ago I would have never have thought of that happening. It just was not common."
3. On new avenues for innovation: "Technology is ubiquitous everywhere, and I think you're going to start seeing a lot of innovation occurring much closer to the edge. And being in a position with a robust environment to support that kind of innovation is critical."
4. On organizing cloud capabilities: "I think defining your cloud strategy and providing a curated list of services is really a good way to tighten that [innovation] framework so that when great ideas happen out on the edge, they become interoperable with things that are also happening in potentially other divisions or other institutes across your environment."
5. On staying mindful of financial pressures that COVID-19 will continue having on healthcare organizations: "It's going to be very important to find ways that technology can reduce the administrative burden throughout the organization [and] reduce cost of care, but also strengthen the relationships between prime and core partners to really develop on already acquired assets [and] extend and rationalize those technologies into better solutions that will continue to propel digital transformation across our hospitals."
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