Ash Goel, MD, chief medical information officer and senior vice president of information technology at Bronson Healthcare in Kalamazoo, Mich., discusses the evolution of his role as CMIO and his top priority to improve user experience.
Responses are lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How has your role as CMIO evolved over the past 2-3 years? How have your responsibilities changed since you took on the role?
Dr. Ash Goel: The role has changed in that the work is now primarily shifted to leveraging technology to improve and drive more value out of the systems. It has evolved into being more deeply embedded into strategy planning and coordinating innovation in the use of technology.
Q: What do you consider your No. 1 priority as CMIO? How do you ensure you're successful?
AG: The top priority would be to focus on driving more value out of the investments by continued standardizing of care pathways, cleaning up user interfaces — making the user interaction appropriate to the context — and improving user experience.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you're facing as CMIO? What keeps you up at night?
AG: The number of resources, clinical and provider, needed to execute the work and create an opportunity to coordinate the work with technology vendors is escalating. As more data flows into the systems, how do we curate the data in a way that provides the right information to the right people without overwhelming them?
Q: Which apps and technologies do you find most helpful, and which do you think will be passing fads?
AG: The mobile platforms to push information to clinicians and patients are very important to leverage. The predictive models are getting better. Artificial intelligence and self-learning models need to mature. The integration of voice-based interactions, such as Amazon's "Alexa" and Google Assistant, is important for the future.
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