Becker's Speaker Series: 4 questions with Lahey Health Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, David Reis, PhD

David W. Reis, PhD, serves as senior vice president and chief information officer for Lahey Health

On Friday, Sepember 22, Dr. Reis will give a presentation at Becker's Hospital Review 3rd Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place September 21 through September 23 in Chicago.

To learn more about the conference and Dr. Reis's sessions, click here.

Question: Looking at your IT budget, what is one item or expense that has surprised you in terms of ROI? How so?reis

Dr. David Reis: Generally speaking, ROI for many IT-related items generates passionate discussions. There are many reasons IT ROI generates such discussions, and we could probably best cover them in a session at an upcoming Becker's conference! That said, IT budgets and the value they create for organizations is a very real area of importance. Certainly within the healthcare industry, as profit margins continue to be under pressure, CIOs have a responsibility to think carefully about how they apply organizational resources to IT systems. With developments in EHR, ERP and BI adoption, one area that I've focused on is the value of office productivity applications. When I look at the annual cost of the traditional office productivity applications, and how that cost continues to increase, I fundamentally believe a rethink is required. CIOs and other senior leaders need to ask the questions that challenge long-held norms about traditional office productivity applications and carefully consider if the new breed of cloud-only applications can provide the necessary features for most users. If so, we could be at the dawn of a new era of office productivity suites, which are considerably less expensive to acquire and maintain than the traditional office productivity suite commonly used today.

Q: Finding top tech talent is always a challenge. Say a CIO called you up today to ask for an interview question that would distinguish the best candidates from the mid- to low-performers. What question do you suggest he or she ask?

DR: This is a great question. During interviews, I find the following question truly generates some interesting responses and helps me find the candidate that not only has top tech skills, but even more important, is mission-driven and understands the responsibility of being a Health IT worker in a now digitized healthcare environment: "Tell me why you would want to work in an industry that is at the center of a national debate about healthcare costs and is facing significant pressure on profit margins on what is already a tight profit margin compared to other industries, like technology and financial services." This lone question assumes that candidates have already been screened for tech talent, and we are looking now at the intangible qualities that cannot be taught.

Q: We spend a lot of timing talking about the exciting innovation modernizing healthcare. It's also helpful to acknowledge what we've let go of. What is one form of technology, one process or one idea that once seemed routine to you but is now endangered, if not extinct? What existed in your organization two to five years ago but not anymore?

DRBlackBerry smarphones. But to answer your question seriously, it is the idea that building your own technology was equivalent or perhaps even superior to off-the-shelf technology. If we look across the healthcare industry today, I think it is relatively agreed upon that, generally speaking, off-the-shelf technology — like ERP, EHR, BI, routers, firewalls, email systems, point-of-sale systems, CRM and most other technology — is more interoperable, more scalable and more supportable than a build-your-own equivalent. As healthcare delivery continues to shift out of the hospital toward high quality, low cost retail and digital care offering 24-7 access, true interoperability where patient or financial data is physically moved through secure, real-time connections into systems used to treat patients, manage populations, treat chronic conditions or purchase supplies is needed and, at this point, best enabled by off-the-shelf technology. If we look at other industries that have already gone through the digitization or consumerization of their industry, the one thing we see, regardless of if it is financial services, higher education, defense or manufacturing is that build-your-own technology has largely been replaced by off-the-shelf technology.

Q: Tell us about the last time you were truly, wildly amazed by technology. What did you see?

DR: Language-based interaction with smart applications. One example is Google Allo. This is an application that can be installed on an Android or iOS device and is used for texting. The novel aspect of Allo is that Google is interpreting the message thread and suggesting context appropriate responses that are specific to the thread and also specific to the text in the thread. These are not saved "favorite responses," these are actual dependent responses that are meaningful. A second example is Amazon Alexa. My wife and I have been going to Disney World for decades and the final scene in the Carousel of Progress is the future. It is a scene where most appliance and environmental features of the house are voice-controlled. For me, that scene always seemed tantalizingly close but never quite in reach. Well, Christmas 2015 I got my first Amazon Alexa and within months I was asking Alexa to turn lights on and off, change the color of lights, interact with my TV, play music, get me a ride to the airport, order pizza, how to spell words and to answer the age old question: "what came first the chicken or the egg?" With Alexa, we have finally reached the last scene in Disney's Carousel of Progress. I look forward to being part of what comes next.

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