Many advancements in healthcare directly affect healthcare workers and patients, mostly for the better.
Chris Carmody is the chief technology officer at Pittsburgh-based UPMC.
Mr. Carmody will serve on the panel "The Next Evolution of CIOs and CTOs in Healthcare" at Becker's 7th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Annual Meeting: The Future of Business and Clinical Technologies. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place Oct. 4-7 in Chicago.
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Question: What are you most excited about right now?
Chris Carmody: I'm most excited about the advancements and future opportunities for leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies for garnering insights into all the digital data we have generated since the inception of EHRs. We've only begun to scratch the surface of the potential impact of improving how care is delivered.
Q: What challenges do you anticipate over the next two years?
CC: Growing and retaining talent is our most critical challenge. We as healthcare leaders need to be engaged and attentive to our staff and leaders' needs and be open and creative in offering new and challenging opportunities.
Q: Where are the best opportunities for disruption in healthcare today?
CC: COVID-19 created many challenges and opportunities for healthcare to change for the better. One of the positive opportunities was to reframe our thinking around a patient's digital experiences, engagement and health tools and to develop a proactive approach to enhance patient access, increase patient and provider satisfaction, build trust and relationships, and drive revenue by aligning to a consumer-first strategy that engages and optimizes toward frictionless experiences.
Q: How is your role as a CIO evolving? How are IT teams changing?
CC: Over the course of my two-plus decades of healthcare IT career at UPMC, I have never been more excited about the engagement and relationships forged in leveraging technology to solve some of healthcare’s most challenging problems. The collaboration among the various aspects of our business continues to drive and sustain positive change. We IT professionals must continually improve our communication and teaming skills to offer the best of our technical expertise and experiences.