Renton, Wash.-based Providence recently promoted Mark Premo to chief data officer and group vice president.
Becker's reached out to Mr. Premo to discuss his new role and how data affects healthcare.
Question: How is the role of chief data officer unique from other IT leadership positions?
Mark Premo: The chief data officer role combines direct IT accountability and strategy ownership for the domain of data management, analytics and data science, plus a coordination or facilitation role across the data community in the company. Enterprise wide data is generated in the business areas, it is owned by the business, and it is used to advance business goals. Each area of the business has their goals and challenges where data is concerned, and the CDO role drives alignment across all areas for mutual benefit.
Q: What does Providence do to protect from a data breach?
MP: Maximizing data security is a joint effort across all parts of the enterprise generally and IT specifically. Our chief information security officer, Adam Zoller, owns our overall strategy for cyber defense, and has made significant investments to protect our environment and respond effectively when incidents occur. Within that framework, our data team strives to secure our analytic assets while enabling appropriate use and innovation with data.
Q: What projects are you excited about working on in your new role?
MP: We have spent the last few years modernizing our data estate by moving to the cloud, enabling data science at scale, and sunsetting deprecated systems. Our next steps are value realization from those investments. These include operational improvements with [artificial intelligence/machine learning], process simplification, automation, and data-intensive product development.
Q: How does data affect the quality of care patients receive?
MP: From the patient perspective, currently data helps with evidence-based decision-making and to measure the general quality of care. As we look forward, thanks to modern data management capabilities, it is easier to use deidentified data at scale to support clinical trials and research, which leads to better practices and outcomes. Machine learning and natural language processing can also improve caregiver efficiency through automation and simplification of the EHR. This will reduce the amount of time the provider spends on the computer and increase the amount of time the provider can spend with patients.
Q: Any advice for early career health IT professionals?
MP: My advice to new healthcare IT data professionals is at some point you may need to decide on becoming a subject-matter expert to continue growing in your career. You may need to be a data management expert, focusing on technology and delivery, or a domain/subject area expert, focusing on a specific area of the business. Early in my career, I focused on both areas and that worked for a time. But as you move into more senior roles, you may need to decide what type of expert you want to be. In my experience, expertise is needed to fill leadership and more senior roles.