Conrad Band, CIO of Children's Hospital Los Angeles, told Becker's he is laser-focused on investing in technology that has the opportunity to consolidate, simplify and automate processes, especially during a time where hospitals and health systems are dealing with financial headwinds.
Mr. Band, appointed CIO of the organization on March 20, spoke to Becker's about his new role, challenges healthcare chief information officers face and what technology pain points he is looking to solve at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
Question: How did your role as interim CIO of Children's Hospital Los Angeles prepare you to take on the CIO role?
Conrad Band: It's funny, the first thing our president and CEO, Paul Viviano, told me when I accepted the role was, "There is nothing more difficult, and longer lasting than an interim role at an academic medical center," and boy was he right, given I spent almost two years in the interim role!
That said, it was a wonderful opportunity to spend the time in the interim role to engage with the executive team, hospital leaders, department chairs and clinicians to understand their needs and where we can make the most significant impact to CHLA.
Prior to the interim CIO role, I served as the chief information security officer at CHLA, which provided me with a significant amount of exposure and insights to critical capabilities and needs of the organization related to technology.
Q: What are some of the top technology solutions that Children's Hospital Los Angeles has implemented?
CB: Some of the most impactful implementations we completed came as the pandemic began and we needed to quickly change the way that we provided care and interacted internally and with patients.
Deployment of our telehealth solution happened almost overnight, as fortunately we had spent months preparing to launch pre-pandemic and were able to execute so quickly and accurately to meet the needs of our patients, resulting in over 117,000 virtual visits in a few short months all while supporting the massive expansion in a remote workforce of over 900 percent in just a few short weeks.
Additionally, we have developed multiple chatbots, communication platforms, mobile applications and integrating wonderful services such as wayfinding for our patients and families who need extra help navigating through our hallways.
Similar to other institutions, we are also keenly focused on standardizing, consolidating and streamlining many of our systems, which enable more user-friendly systems and will create capacity for much of the other strategic investments we will need to make in the coming years.
Q: What are the top pain points at Children's Hospital Los Angeles that you believe technology can help with?
CB: Throughout my time as interim, the IS leadership team spent a lot of time engaging with team members across the organization to better understand where we could make an impact, and it showed up in several key areas: data, user experience, digital transformation and operational excellence.
Although some of the main pain points aren't technology-specific, our role as technologists and digital evangelists is to find a way to use the tools and systems at our disposal to reduce friction and improve the experience of our patients, families and team members.
There is a lot of efficiency to be gained through simplification of systems and processes, training and education, and close collaboration with our clinicians and researchers.
Q: What new technologies would you like to see introduced at your organization?
CB: We have a wide array of technologies across our organization and have spent the past handful of years investing and growing our security, infrastructure, cloud presence and applications.
With the ongoing financial headwinds being experienced across healthcare, we are focused on technologies that will help us consolidate, simplify and automate processes to help our team members be more efficient and have a better experience anytime they interact with technologies.
We are evaluating different AI models, neural networks and other opportunities where it makes sense for us, as well as putting a large focus on improving the technologies we have supporting our massive data needs in both the research and clinical spaces.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you see as a CIO?
CB: The ongoing balance of all the cybersecurity threats and the need for hospital operations and research is a continuing challenge.
The continued need to support data-driven decisions, investing in sustainable technology and improving the experience of our patients, families and team members, while being a key partner in providing new avenues for growth, are all excellent challenges that we look forward to tackling.