Cerner CEO Brent Shafer said the company is "moving from being an EHR-centric company to a platform organization," the Politico Morning eHealth newsletter reports.
The remarks were part of Mr. Shafer's Jan. 8 presentation at the 37th Annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, during which he debuted the "Cerner Operating Model" that he said will "move innovation to scale," according to Politico.
Mr. Shafer described the new model as a way for Cerner to "accelerate the environment for third-party development" on its EHR, for example by enabling artificial intelligence to improve data collection.
The presentation was one of Mr. Shafer's first public appearances since joining Cerner nearly 11 months ago, according to the Kansas City Business Journal. He emphasized three areas he plans to shift Cerner's focus to: strong execution and delivery on commitments, predictability, and growth creation.
Four quotes from Mr. Shafer's presentation, as reported by the Kansas City Business Journal:
1. "Coming to Cerner, I think the next big opportunity is to really build on our current businesses and deliver on the next."
2. "Populations are changing, and the government increasingly has more influence in how healthcare is delivered, and we have more and more technology at our fingertips day by day. If we think about the opportunity and the problem that presents to solve, these economics and demographics are accentuated because the population is getting older."
3. The aging population "creates an increased incidence of chronic conditions and rising costs to deliver on those," adding that "one-third of the global population has a chronic condition, which creates a huge impact on cost of care delivery and efficiencies."
4. "We love to build things, and frankly we love to build them ourselves. It's part of our DNA … We need to be very thoughtful about the things we build ourselves, how we prioritize our resources and how we want to strategically partner to move forward faster. The need is strong. Doing it all ourselves is not always the best answer."