The five I's: AI product to patients
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA
President and CEO, Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, another lousy golfer, terrible cook, friction fixer
Hospital systems and other health service organization executives are overwhelmed with startup digital health, virtual health and AI product and service pitches. For some, innovation fatigue is a reality in the midst of getting things back on track as the COVID pandemic stabilizes. To handle the load, hospitals have created innovation centers, venture studios, incubators and other organizations to vet the proposals. Some have been successful, and others have not , functioning instead as high tech suggestion boxes.
The process is further complicated by the fact that the sales cycle is long, there are complex regulatory and IT security concerns and that the decision making and buying group often involves multiple members of the operations, finance, IT and clinical executive teams, all with different personas and appetites for change for product introduction and substitution.
What's more, some hospital executives will not do pilot projects because they lack the infrastructure, they have other strategic priorities or they do not want to be just a transactional contributor of data or images for startups seeking them for training sets with little if any guarantee that the results will be valuable to them.
Consequently, the process of getting an AI product or service to patients is fraught with difficulty and potential roadblocks along the way. ColdLinking doesn't work. While finding a clinical champion is essential, bypassing the decision making gatekeepers is, in some C-suites, are recipe for failure.
To the question of AI and machine learning, the Chartis Group report suggests that it's still in the early going at most health systems, with 70% of the respondents yet to establish any sort of strategic artificial intelligence programs.
Instead, in most cases, it will happen in five steps:
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INDICATORS of results and impact and how they drive continuous improvement
Getting through all these steps requires the stakeholders to have knowledge, skills, abilities and competencies that are not typically taught in medical or other professional schools.
Prepare yourself for the frustrations and barriers and plan to overcome them.
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs and an advisor at MI10
Updated 6/10/2022