This Just In Radio: HIMSS26 with John Henderson and Hal Wolf

Speaker A: Welcome to this Justin the show, bringing you the latest advancements in healthcare strategy, innovation and public policy. And now, for the fastest voice in healthcare, here's your host, Justin Barnes.

Speaker B: Welcome back to this Justin Radio show, broadcasting live from HIMSS 26 in sunny Las Vegas. Very excited to introduce my next guest and new friend of the show, John Henderson, vice versa. Vice president, Chief information and digital officer from Rady's Children's Health. Welcome to the show, my friend.

Speaker C: My pleasure to be here.

Speaker B: Excellent to have you. Um, so your name came up in several different organization meetings and so we had to have you on air. A lot of great thought leadership. We know you're doing a lot of great things at Rady. Um, before we dive into the questions, tell, um, us a bit about Rady's Children's Health, because it's a newer conglomerate in a way, so talk about that a little bit.

Speaker C: Right, so just over a year ago, January 25th, uh, Rady Children's Hospital San Diego merged with Children's Hospital of Orange county in, uh, Southern California to combine what we now call Rady children's health, uh, three inpatient hospital system, uh, approximately 100 primary care locations, subspecialties. All of the different things that you would expect from a, ah, large pediatric health system. Uh, and so we're just over a year into that merger, um, have a tremendous amount of integrations, unifying platforms, EHRs, ERPs, all of the things bringing two cultures together, two wonderful organizations to really drive, uh, pediatric healthcare in Southern California and beyond.

Speaker B: Love it. So I have a near and dear to my heart is Children's health, not only from a public policy standpoint, but also Donna Hyland, the president, CEO of, uh, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Choa. Um, and so Donna, I, we served on a board together 20 years ago, became fast friends, and, um, I love what, you know, she does for our community, but also a little bit on the national side, but certainly for the Southeast. JOA is fantastic. So I have a soft spot for children's healthcare, so I love it. Congrats. How long have you been with Radies?

Speaker C: Nine years, uh, last month.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Yes, yes. Uh, time has flown by.

Speaker B: And where'd you come from?

Speaker C: Uh, originally from Houston, Texas. I was at Texas Children's Hospital. There you go. For many, many, many years. And, uh, moved out to some Southern California to lead Children's Hospital Orange county. And now Rady Children's Health.

Speaker B: Love it. So you have a unique perspective in the industry. Where do you think leaders must get right now? Um, a lot of moving parts in healthcare and digital health and certainly AI, but what are some of the things that leaders must be ready to navigate now and be ready for?

Speaker C: You know, I think right now, um, and this is going to sound like table steps, but it's really important in health care. I think right now we have to really be focused on shrinking the initiatives that we're asking our organization to run at the same time. Uh, and the reason I say that is lots of headwinds in healthcare, particularly pediatrics, from federal regulations, the market pressures, uh, to drive cost out. And if we don't strategically look at what we're asking our organization to do and shrink that focus on doing the right things really, really well, uh, that's where I think we have to really focus. Not just from a rady children's health perspective, but just healthcare in general. Um, for me, if you talk to really any CIO in the organ in the business, they're gonna tell you their portfolio. And the appetite in healthcare systems to do many, many things at once is pretty insatiable. And I think that's not a sustainable model for the types of, uh, headwinds we're facing right now.

Speaker B: That's a great perspective. And I completely. I have not heard that yet. So again, I knew your perspective would be unique and I totally agree with that. I love it. Where are you seeing so from maybe obviously your organization, but also wherever. Where are you seeing tangible ROI from digital health or maybe AI, um, again, in your organization beyond pilots, but really

Speaker C: at scale, I think probably there's really a couple areas. Um, so our patient access center, we centralize that focus on improving access decentralized before not really able to manage and understand our metrics, how we're performing. Uh, so we implemented a call center platform that allowed us to really get to best practice for patient access. Call center. In addition, adding the virtual agents into the mix, allowing us to take more calls, not increasing the number of agents taking those calls, but leveraging that technology, real tangible benefits with our performance. I think the other area, ambient, we've deployed ambient to a couple of hundred physicians, and our focus is not on getting our physicians to see more patients. It's really about the quality of the engagement and giving them quality, quality time with our patients, but also reducing the amount of time they're spending after hours they call pajama time. So we're seeing real benefits there. It varies by specialty because, you know, uh, different specialties have a different, uh, documentation experience. But we're seeing tangible benefits in reducing the after hours Documentation time. Uh, and just a better experience with EHR because they're more focused on the patient and that experience.

Speaker B: Yep. Love that. Um, we want to be uncomfortably close. There we go. Perfect. Um, what do you. Before I go to the next question, what do you hope to achieve here? First of all, what are some of your goals for HIMSS 26? But then also, what do you hope to achieve over here?

Speaker C: Primary goals for this conference is really meeting with some of my key technology partners face to face. We do a lot of virtual, but really spending some time focus on things that we have to do for this merger. We have a big Microsoft, uh, work stream right now to integrate those platforms. So spending time there, spending time with Epic, we're unifying our EHRs on that platform. So spending some more time with them and really trying to understand, uh, what other vendors here are doing some interesting things with AI that maybe I haven't, uh, heard of before. And seeing how that may fit into the portfolio that we're looking for.

Speaker B: Do you have a speaking engagement here? Did I see you on the stage here?

Speaker C: I am tomorrow at 11, uh, with the AWS panel. I'm talking about data and our platform and how we're approaching that and what it means for our health system and for research and how we deliver care.

Speaker B: Excellent. Yeah, I remember seeing that. So that's why I want to make sure we got you on air. Uh, for sure. So I guess following up a little bit in this direction. I love this question. It is a hard one. But now I'm starting to see a theme, and I'm sure you'll hit this theme as well. How do we keep healthcare human in an AI world?

Speaker C: I love this question. I think we keep it human by not falling into the trap. That AI is going to replace all human activity and the workforce. I think it's a tool to augment and to elevate how our workforce performs the necessary roles that we need them to perform. I think if you look at it from a. I like movies, so I'm gonna throw in Minority Report, aging myself and iRobot.

Speaker D: Yep.

Speaker C: Those movies were really particularly Minority Report. It was kind of a precursor to everything we're seeing now. And it, Even though it's a movie. Right. I think it teaches us a valuable lesson. Machines are important. Technology is super important for enablement. But we can't allow technology to be the end all story. Humans create it because they have expertise. And I think we have to keep that at the forefront of what we're doing when we're Enabling AI, uh, it is a compliment, it is a tool. And we need to continue to leverage the expertise because they're not perfect.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: Math is rarely wrong. And so it's never going to be perfect. It's always learning and evolving. And as long as you think about it in that context, you need that human judgment and decision making in the process.

Speaker B: So we have an extra second before we dive into the last question. And I love that perspective on how to keep, um, healthcare, um, human in the AI world. What is your talk specifically beyond Tomorrow, and what are some of the high key points that you're gonna talk about from stage tomorrow here at HIMSS 26?

Speaker C: Uh, so tomorrow we focused on thinking about data platforms in a different manner than what we would typically see in healthcare. But also how do you focus that on serving the various audiences? So there's the research component, there is hospital operations, there is the hospital data science. And how do you leverage those human beings with that tremendous amount of capacity and talent to really improve care at the bedside? It integrated at the point of care. So really talking about how that platform can help serve all of those audiences. Because historically, data platforms are solely focused on hospital operations. Right. But for my health system, we need to serve all three of those really well.

Speaker B: Yeah. Love it. What, is there a best practice in there? Or say, I know it's a big topic, but what's the best practice? My show is heavily focused on best practice and key strategies to thrive or successfully navigate the future of healthcare. From that perspective and that lens, what would you say? Um, a way for someone to address that or engage that successfully. Is there a best practice there?

Speaker C: Um, I think really the best. I, uh, would say the key best practice is your architecture is super important. But beyond that, it's really the data governance and the engagement. There you go with clinicians and operations. Because if you don't understand what they have to answer and what their needs are.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Then you're gonna build something that no one is gonna come to.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And Jake's probably smiling. I've been pulling governance out of everybody. It's not a sexy topic, but it's so critically important, um, in a multitude of levels. So as we move to the last question here, what must we get right over the next three years in healthcare?

Speaker C: So I think two fundamental things. I think continuing to invest in our people and upskilling. Excellent. Technology is evolving.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: I think the second thing, particularly as it relates to technologies, is scalable, resilient architecture. If you don't have it, you have to Move towards it.

Speaker D: Yes.

Speaker C: The health systems are going to need you to be flexible and things are going, you're going to get things coming your way, uh, whether it's regulations, regulatory, whether it's, the market is shifting and if you don't have the right platforms to address the business needs and the clinical needs that are coming, then you're not going to be able to serve that health system effectively to help drive them forward.

Speaker B: That's fantastic. I do want to kind of take a step back to your point because you're only the second guest uh, today, um, to bring up kind of the, uh, the upscaling and adding to education and really understand, you know, those kinds of investments in your people and upscaling your people. And I mentioned previously I just graduated Stanford last year and this is what this degree and class that I took was all about bring upskilling your employees and the importance of um, understanding truly what AI is about at the fundamental level. Not just what are the strategy and how can I deploy it or whatever, but where, what's the architecture, the fundamental around digital health, healthcare in general and then AI and all the foundations and layers underneath it. So when you do make a decision and AI and your team around, you can understand what you're talking. Everybody's kind of growing together and educating themselves together. So you're the only second guest to bring it up. I didn't bring it up in any of my talks, so I'm glad that you did because it's really important. Upskilling your knowledge and learning and learning the fundamentals and the foundations.

Speaker C: Right? No, completely agree. You know, I think if you think about EHRs, traditionally these, your teams are focused on how do I traditionally support an application. I know the mods, I understand how it functions, I know workflows, but they're not thinking about how am I do I need to understand these tools and how can those tools help me do my job better and not only focus on how can I enable m them for the clinicians, for our patients, you also have to think about for yourself.

Speaker B: Absolutely. John Henderson, thank you so much.

Speaker D: Truly.

Speaker B: M appreciate you joining us today.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker B: Awesome. Excellent. Welcome back to this Justin radio show broadcasting live from HIMSS 26 in sunny Las Vegas. Very excited to introduce my next guest and good friend of the show, Hal Wolf, President CEO of himss. Welcome back to the show, my good friend.

Speaker D: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be back.

Speaker B: It's great to have you. So first of all, um, how long have you been in town? How when you.

Speaker D: How you start prepping Saturday morning.

Speaker B: Okay. Excellent. And so tell us about the conference. Um, what's. What's new in the energy here's going on. I've already bragged a lot on a previous broadcast this morning, um, about what's here. So I'm gonna talk about that in a second. But first, will you tell us from your perspective what's new and all the good stuff happening?

Speaker D: Well, first of all, amazingly packed feel because finally we're on one campus versus two. Because all the construction's done.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker D: So you're feeling the full force of 25,000 people. Yes. That are just buzzing from one end to the other. I mean, the hallways are jammed, all the booths are really active, and the sessions are going incredibly well.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker D: I got here Saturday morning, been working since Saturday morning, and all day Sunday, all day Monday, a whole bunch of sessions going on. So it's just a hub of activity.

Speaker B: It is. And so my, um, topic for, uh, the previous show that I just did was there are tens of thousands of leaders here, and I've been able. This is my 26th hymns in a row. It's my or not in a row. 26 hymns out of 30 years. But this is my 12th year broadcasting the radio show live from hims. Even the off year that we did with COVID you joined us remotely. A lot of other guests. So that was fantastic. But my point there is HIMSS is what you make it. This is always wildly successful. I actually make my numbers for the year usually by April or May because of himss Annual conference. Whatever you want to, whatever your goals are, you can accomplish them because of what HIMS brings to us as an industry. All the people, the tens of thousands of thought leaders here, the. The doers that are here. You can absolutely achieve your goals. And if you don't achieve your goals, that's on you. So that's one thing, you know, I would bring up. I love this conference, and it affords me so much opportunity.

Speaker D: Well, Justin, I mean, when you. Where you're hitting on is exactly right. It's like almost anything in life, though. You get out of it what you put into it. Yeah. And having attended hymns for many years prior to taking on this position eight years ago, we would come in with a game plan. What is it we need? We would divide up into teams, go out. Each team would have to solve the same problem. And they would come back and say, what did you pick? I think we talked about this once before. Um, that's what makes this spectacular. You have Over a thousand vendors here market suppliers with every single facet of the ecosystem. So there are answers to find.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker D: It's just a question of what's the problem you're trying to solve.

Speaker B: Great point, great point. So obviously a lot going on. What's new this year? I know we only have a 12 minute show and there's lots of new stuff, but what are the main highlights here?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think from my standpoint, it's impossible to talk anything about with a little bit of AI jumped into it. What's different is not AI. What's different is what we're talking about. So we've gone from it's a concept. Next year a couple people have deployed it. By the way, let's go back to the first year. It's a concept, but we probably shouldn't do anything with it. There you go.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: Next year a couple people deployed it. Uh, third year, 5% of the ecosystem at the highest levels deployed it. This year it's frigging everywhere. That's right. So what's happened is I think we're seeing the tools being maturing.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker D: I think we're seeing the results of the activities being documented. So people are fundamentally now, um, documenting outcomes, what's working, what's not. And so the maturity level is improved dramatically.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing that with all of our guests. And what's being deployed out there? Some pilot sites, but also just large scale implementations on the clinical side, the financial side, administrative side, with real tangible ROI. These are case studies.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the ROIs are being measured appropriately. So let me come back to that. We're trying to accomplish two things. We're trying to bend the cost curve.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker D: You're not gonna walk in the door and spend a million dollars today, deploy AI and you're spending 800,000 the next. It doesn't work that way. But if you're spending a million and you're about ready to spend 1.2, you might come in at 1.1 or 1.15, you know something.05. So what we're trying to do is to supplement to reduce capital cost of building facilities and make up for significant workforce shortages and improve predictive modeling on prevention both at primary and secondary levels.

Speaker B: Yeah, you hit on a great point. And my listeners, uh, heard this earlier from Aneesh even. We had a great. Anish Chopra and I had a great conversation on this. Working towards deflationary costs in healthcare. This is really what we expect from AI. It's gonna take us as implementers us as innovators, government programs, care models all coming together. But uh, creating a real deflationary model because we don't, we can't continue to have inflation. But to your point, it will for the short run. But our main goal success in five to 10 years from now is can we actually create a deflationary curve here through the use of technology?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean I um, I'm focusing a little bit too much probably on the word inflation.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: But increased costs versus how much that increase is going to be.

Speaker B: Correct. Yes.

Speaker D: As opposed to the pure inflation we're probably going to get as a country.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: Because we got a few things going on right now. They're going to impact inflation.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker D: But uh, fundamentally. Absolutely correct. Yeah, absolutely too technical. Sorry about that.

Speaker B: I love it. What are you most excited about happening m in health care today?

Speaker D: The sharing and the communication globally. Um, there is no one center like the United States that has any kind of a lock on how the global app ecosystem is contributing. What we're seeing is it's coming from all around the globe. And the reason it's coming around the globe is that before when you had to go through translation of software, get to a system proprietary, it was hard to translate.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker D: We have tools now that do it very quickly. The second thing that I'm really excited about is the division between the medical model and the health model.

Speaker B: So that's great.

Speaker D: And this is going to be counterintuitive.

Speaker B: Love it.

Speaker D: So bear with me. We always thought that the health model would develop which is really the consumer driven device, care from home and it would be absorbed by the medical model and they would share with each other. Hasn't happened. Right. Medical model for all the reasons it always does. A little bit slow, little defensive, doesn't want to go through change that radically. Meanwhile, because of AI, machine learning, et cetera, the health model's taken off and the consumer element in the health model has accelerated. And so I think it's time for the medical model just to recognize that play off of it. Let the health model run with primary and secondary prevention and let's take those precious resources back into the medical model for higher, um, for higher cases, higher ah, acuity.

Speaker B: No, I love that perspective. So kind of building on that, what advice would you give to leaders where they must focus today to best navigate and position their organization for tomorrow? What are some of the best practices there that you'd share?

Speaker D: Readiness, education. Don't go into something you're not prepared for and Be ready to change your business practices to adopt to the new technology, not to adopt the new technology to your current business practice.

Speaker B: Bring things faster.

Speaker D: Right? NT plus OO equals coo. Uh, new technology plus old organization equals costly old organization. This is a time to change scope of practice. This is a time to redesign what you're doing to maximize your return, your output and take advantage of the tools around you.

Speaker B: I love it. So kind of in that you maybe think back to. I heard you use that analogy. Um, late last year you talked about the growth of HIMSS over the past year or so. Any greater than that, can you hit some of those numbers again? You got up on stage at the Georgia HIMSS Annual conference and just crushed it with some phenomenal growth in numbers and opportunity for what HIMS is experiencing. Can you talk about that for a second?

Speaker D: Yeah, happy to. So I'll go back and just reiterate. You know, eight years ago we were a little under 75,000 members globally. Um, today we're well over 130. Yeah. And it's even much higher than that. But we'd like to keep the number lower because it's just growing. So we're 130,000 plus two out of five HIMSS members are now outside of North America. North America is about 85,000.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: So we continue to grow in North America. We are very well saturated. Our chapters are growing, our communities are growing inside North America and communities outside North America, which can be both by discipline and region. And the growth has been absolutely in the Middle east. The growth has been in Europe, the growth has been in Asia, pac. A, uh, lot of work at the government level has driven part of this.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker D: So whether we're in Taiwan, Korea, um, Indonesia, Australia, where we're doing government wide programs of measuring their prowess and development in digital health, or in Europe where we've done Italy, Germany, Portugal, we, uh, believe is next, uh, Romania, we finished this year. All of those countries are fundamentally investing and using the recognized international standard of the HIMSS maturity models to measure their growth.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. And I'll even, um, make a point because Sepi emailed me a couple days ago, actually a couple weeks ago, and said, Justin, when you do your live show, let me remind you where you know you, where you came from and all the chapters that helped you in your time, not only nationally, but you also invested locally. So please make a note of that. And I absolutely will. So the HIMS we are, I mean hims again, what I said earlier in this morning, HIMSS affords you every opportunity that you want to grow your career professionally and personally, and you could get out of it, whatever you put into it. But also engage the local chapters because that's where a lot of this work is done and all that local collaboration. So it's great that we come here once a year. But think about that local chapter now, those chapters globally, but certainly here in the US is near and dear to my heart. We get some of the Georgia people in the, in the uh, group here in front of us. So we love the Georgia chapter, one of the best chapters of all time. However, a lot of great chapters around the country, but invest locally and get active because that's where a lot of the change happens.

Speaker D: So it is. Now you mentioned Sepi's first name. Yeah. We're talking about Seppi Brown. That's right. And Seppi has taken on a new role as communications chair.

Speaker B: I'm not sure.

Speaker D: No, so, so at hims, Sepi has taken on the responsibility of coordinating the chapters, the communities. Uh, we couldn't be more thrilled. There isn't anyone better qualified we could think of. Massive enthusiasm, always looking for the angles and yes, from the Georgia chapter.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Now Sepi is absolutely amazing. I agree. Um, in closing here, what are some of the events coming up? Hymns you talked about the international expansion and growth. What's one of the next shows? What are the next couple of shows coming up either here in the US or globally that you want to bring?

Speaker D: Yeah. So of course here, very important coming up, there's going to be an AI forum in the United States that's going to be very important. We have chapter leader events coming up that'll be very important globally. We have HIMS Europe coming up in May, that's going to be in Copenhagen on the 18th and 19th of May. And that is already, you know, busting at the brim. This is going to be the biggest one ever, which is saying a lot because we grew a lot last year we were in Paris. So Denmark is supporting us and it's really important. Um, and then we're going to be in Singapore this year for Asia PAC in September. So uh, those are our big events.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: Uh, we'll be redoing, uh, Eurasia, of course, in Istanbul. And we continue to work with Informa, who's our partner here with uh, WHX Tech, which is out of Dubai. And so we'll be looking forward to those areas, we hope, calming down. I know there's a lot of activity going on there right now, but you know, himss is a global entity. We'll move the events around as we need to. Um, but that's part of our growth.

Speaker C: Love it.

Speaker B: Congratulations on all the success. How it's great to have you back on air. You walk up anytime and have a great rest of your conference.

Speaker D: Thank you, Jeff. Really appreciate it.

Speaker B: You got it. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.