How to close the doctor-data scientist-bioengineer divide

This past year has shown the world how vital technology is to society and there’s no looking back. We’ve seen some impressive innovation in healthtech and ensuring that adoption continues to accelerate is paramount to improving medical care for all, but that will require education. While technology is becoming commonplace in some areas, it’s still an add-on in others and there needs to be greater thinking about how technology can be introduced earlier.

The digital transformation strategists are telling us that it requires cultural change, process improvement, technology, and workforce upskilling. But, more importantly, digital transformation, particularly in applications of artificial intelligence in sick care, requires close collaboration between multiple clinical and technology stakeholders including not just computer scientist but bioengineers too.

Why?

1. Creates better products and services
2. Understand each other's viewpoints and perspectives
3. Get customer discovery insights
4. Remover the barriers to dissemination and implementation
5. Provide physicians with non-clinical career opportunities
6. Bridge cultural gaps
7. Add demographic, psychographic, and cognitive diversity to the product development team
8. Assist with lead generation and converting them to sales
9. Social influencing and social capital of key opinion leaders and subject matter experts
10. Help raise money
11. Learn to be bilingual without an accent
12. Work with an ecosystem sherpa

But sick care technologists are from Venus and doctors are from Mars. How do we get them to rotate around the same sun and increase the centripal forces between them? How do we close this part of the digital divide?

Since they speak a different language, dating apps might help.

I recently received this note:

"I'm extremely interested in healthcare & tech. Can you give me advice on how to best set myself up to combine both & create impact as I am in the beginning stages of this path?"

Most hospital-based clinicians, some 72%, feel they should have more say in decisions on software purchasing. This sentiment likely reflects the frustrations of the 43% who won’t say their hospital operations software helps them provide topnotch patient care.?

It also may have something to do with the 60% of IT professionals and 51% of operational leaders who admit they’re reluctant to involve clinicians in software decisions.

In a survey report released Oct. 8, symplr offers steps provider organizations can take to select and deploy enterprise software that relieves rather than adds to burnout.

Here's how we can close the divide:

1. Mandatory health professional digital health education and training and digital literacy competency
2. Project based interprofessional learning
3. Create more entrepreneurial medical schools
4. Recruitment, development, retention, and promotion of appropriate faculty
5. Rethink digital health technology transfer
6. Fix technology adoption errors
7. Cross the chasm with appropriate dissemination and implementation strategies
8. Overcome the barriers to AI/digital health
9. Measure data driven outcomes and impact
10. Rethink the health professional and graduate school business models.
11. Understand the differences in how data scientists think and how healthcare professionals think.
12. Find someone to reconcile the differences in mindsets and approaches to complex problem solving. How do you find people who are curious to be on your team? In fact, do you even need to get data scientists involved to solve your problem??A key to effective collaboration is to recognize which parts of a problem to hand off to the AI and which the managerial mind will be better at solving. While AI is superior at data-intensive prediction problems, humans are uniquely suited to the creative thought experiments that underpin the best decisions.
13. Create more opportunities for data scientist-healthcare professional interaction, networking and collaboration.
14. Create min-courses for data scientists in healthcare systems science and mini-medical school
15. Encourage physicians and data scientists to sign up on a problem board to form project based opportunities
16. Make it easier for physicians and data scientists to find jobs in healthcare technology sectors and industries

17. Make it easier for clinicians to connect with data scientists at universities, professional societies, local and regional ecosystems and social media.

18. Include clinical subject matter experts in bootcamp or product development teams

19. Intregrate bioengineers and data scientists into care teams

20. Improve knowledge transfer programs via sabbaticals, co-ops, internships and apprenticeships

In the case of bioengineering-clinician gaps, opportunities for improvement include:

1. Integration of clinicians into the project teams

2. Biomedical engineering curriculum reform to include technology commercialization and data science

3. Creating objective measures of pain

4. Rethinking the mission of biomedical engineering specialty societies to encourage more transdisciplinary education and training

5. Updated information about the outcomes of bioengineering undergraduates applying to medical schools (about a one-quarter to one third of graduates)

6. Better non-invasive, non-opioid treatments for chronic pain

7. Improving results of treatment of back pain, particularly in those patients who have had multiple back operations.(failed back surgery syndrome)

8. Educational exit ramps

9. Better knowledge transfer programs between academia and industry

10. Destroy innovation silos

11. Remote monitoring and management of pain

12. Better clinical decision support software and treatment guidelines and monitoring

13. Biosocial and behavioral care management platforms

14, Decentralization of care to address inequitable access to scarce and maldistributed pain management expertise

15. Primary care and patient education and training

Here is my data science-doctor collaboration wish list:

1. Start by being a problem seeker, not a problem solver

2. Play nice together

3. Educate each other

4. Find someone to lead cultural transformation

5. Remove the barriers to physician-industry collaboration

6. Stop frying doctors with your products and eliminate their burnout impact factor.

7. Make data literacy and data dexterity mandatory medical student and residency competencies

8. Engage patient entrepreneurs

9. Create a whole product physician non-clinical career platform

10. Reward the scholarship of innovation and entrepreneurship

11. Create leaderpreneurs who have a collaborative leadership style

When employees collaborate across silos, there are numerous benefits for organizations. But the employees who do this critical work — also known as boundary spanners or network brokers — may end up overwhelmed, burned out, and can even develop abusive behavior toward their fellow employees. Research shows why this can happen and suggests three key strategies companies can use to mitigate any negative effects: strategically integrating cross-silo collaboration into formal roles, providing adequate resources, and developing check-in mechanisms and opportunities to disengage.

In the meantime, here's how to get started as a sickcare entrepreneur.

The core of closing the divide will be interprofessional education and training, an organizational culture of innovation and digital transformation, and experience working as teams based on trust.

A 3 Minute Summary of the 15 Core Lessons

#1 Trust Increases Business Speed This book is primarily useful to businessmen and women because it insists that relationships that are founded on trust are much faster, especially when it comes to doing business. Many business relationships are rooted in the idea that both parties can’t trust each other, so certain bureaucratic checks and balances must be maintained for operational security. Covey attests that trustful relationships allow business to proceed more smoothly and quickly.

#2 Trust is Affordable In keeping with the above, Covey contests that relationships that are founded on trust can lower the cost of your business model. This is because making transactions go more smoothly and quickly necessarily lowers your operating costs. It also avoids having to pay exorbitant fees for certain bureaucratic security measures that people who trust each other do not need.

#3 Trust Yourself First Before you can trust others, you have to first trust yourself. Covey likens trust to self-confidence, which is only created when your competence and your character integrity come together. You must first trust yourself by developing four major aspects of your personality and leadership style.

#4 Integrity, the First Trust Aspect Businessmen and women who are trustworthy will always have integrity. Covey describes integrity as the ability to be honest whatever you can, even if you mess up or make a big mistake that costs your business time and money. This vulnerability is rarely seen in the business world, but it is absolutely crucial for any trustworthy person.

#5 Good Intention Covey says that the second major trustworthy attribute is content. You need to develop a positive intent for your actions and business model rather than simply trying to earn short-term profits. You may need to develop a new intent after learning this. But chasing after riches is not a good intention that will net you trustworthy relationships in the long run.

#6 Know Your Capabilities Trustworthy people understand their own capabilities and will work to develop new skills and capabilities over time. You need to be able to practice those things you aren’t good at and understand your own skill limitations when offering your services and talking to others.

#7 Results Trustworthy business leaders will have the results that can back up their claims to integrity. Sometimes this takes a bit of time to build up, but Covey says that are trustworthy record is worth more than even the most charismatic persuasive speech. A good track record can also stand-in for a demonstration of your capabilities to potential clients and business partners.

#8 Contribute to Build Trust When you’re building trust within a business or with your employees, it’s often a good idea to contribute as you can. Giving back to your people and organization, either in the form of effort or your time and attention, is a way to build trust that reflects back on itself and paints you as a worthwhile individual with which to build a relationship. It’s a lot like marketing for yourself.

#9 The Trust Tax Covey says that we now live in a society that suffers from widespread general distrust. This manifests in a so-called “trust tax” which causes people to be less open with their actual desires and fears and which slows the speed of progress and business. It limits economic activity and makes people less likely to take positive risks.

#10 5 Trust Waves Covey organizes the development of a trustworthy person or business as it occurs in five waves. The first wave hits when you develop self-trust and credibility in yourself. For a business, this may manifest as trustworthiness in the CEO or another executive.

#11 Relationship and Organization Trust The next two waves are focused on creating relationship trust between yourself and your employees or business partners. Only when there is a trustworthy relationship between you and your collaborators can you successfully cooperate and do work effectively together. Organizational trust is what happens when everyone within a company or group trusts one another, increasing efficiency and lowering the cost of activity.

#12 Market and Societal Trust The fourth and fifth waves of trust deal with trust from the market and across society as a whole. Market trust is achieved when you get a good reputation for your business model or your results. This only comes after significant effort has been expended and you have a good track record under your belt. Societal trust is an eventual outcome if everyone practices the above trust-building developments, though it is not always present in today’s day and age.

#13 Smart Trust Covey does note that it is not always wise to have blind trust in others. You don’t want to necessarily distrust people, but you need to learn how to extend trust without making yourself overly vulnerable or by learning how to spot potential liabilities or those who would abuse your trust. This is a skill that takes some experience to learn effectively, and it only comes when you trust in others.

#14 Restoring Trust Covey also goes over how to change your behavior and repair any damage you may have done to the trust others holding you. It usually requires a significant amount of self-observation and repeated good behavior, often without the expectation of reward. Restoring trust can happen but it takes exponentially more effort and repeated success than establishing trust for the first time does.

#15 Talk Straight By far, the best behavior you can adopt when establishing or restoring trust is to talk plainly and simply. Even if you have to deliver bad news or admit to a mistake, being honest and straightforward with your speech will do more to earn the trust of your peers and followers than any other behavior.

Data science and bioengineering students and practitioners also need to have competencies in innovation, entrepreneurship and the business of medicine.

For bioengineering students looking to navigate the business of medicine and collaborate with clinicians, here are some key areas to focus on:

1. Understanding Healthcare Systems and Market Needs

• Healthcare Landscape: Understand the structure of healthcare systems, including public and private sectors, insurance models, reimbursement policies, and regulatory bodies like the FDA and EMA.
• Market Needs: Gain insight into the real-world needs of patients and clinicians. Technology must solve problems—whether through improving patient outcomes, reducing costs, or making healthcare more efficient. Understanding where the biggest gaps are in medical technology can be key to developing valuable products.
• Regulatory Processes: Be familiar with medical device and pharmaceutical regulations, such as FDA approval processes (e.g., 510(k) or PMA for devices, clinical trials for drugs), and international standards (ISO, CE marking).

2. Product Development and Innovation

• Collaboration with Clinicians: Clinicians are critical in providing feedback on the utility and feasibility of bioengineering products. Understand that they may prioritize clinical effectiveness, safety, and ease of use over technological complexity.
• Provide, a clearly defined problem statement, comprehensive market analysis, competitive research, strategic business recommendations, detailed risk management plans, and user-focused requirements documentation.
• Translational Research: Bioengineering innovations often need to be adapted from the lab bench to clinical settings. Focus on bridging the gap between research and real-world application, collaborating with clinicians and healthcare professionals to test and refine technologies.
• Interdisciplinary Communication: Be prepared to communicate complex technical details in a way that clinicians (who may not have engineering backgrounds) can understand. Likewise, develop the ability to listen to clinicians’ needs, often expressed in terms of patient care, workflow, or operational challenges.

3. Intellectual Property and Licensing

• Patent Law: Learn about intellectual property (IP) in the medical field. Many bioengineering products are patentable, and understanding patent filing processes and the value of intellectual property is crucial when developing new devices or technologies.
• Licensing and Partnerships: Bioengineers should know how to navigate licensing agreements or partnerships with medical device companies, hospitals, or pharmaceutical companies to bring innovations to market.

4. Business Models and Entrepreneurship

• Startup Culture: If you’re considering starting your own company or working with a startup, understanding the business fundamentals is critical. This includes finance (costs, profit margins, funding rounds), customer acquisition, marketing strategies, and product scalability.
• Venture Capital and Funding: Know about the types of funding available for bioengineering innovations, such as grants, venture capital (VC), or crowdfunding. Learn how to pitch to investors, build business models, and scale innovations.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Learn how to assess the financial viability of your ideas, considering factors like production costs, market demand, and reimbursement rates, which are critical for the long-term success of medical technologies.

5. Clinical Trials and Evidence-Based Medicine

• Clinical Trials: Understand the clinical trial process, including phases of drug/device trials, recruitment, ethical considerations, and data analysis. Bioengineers need to know how to design devices or systems that will meet the rigorous standards required for clinical testing and approval.
• Evidence-Based Medicine: Clinicians rely on evidence from research to make treatment decisions. Bioengineering products must demonstrate clinical efficacy and safety, typically through well-designed studies and trials. Understanding how to gather, analyze, and present evidence will be key.

6. Regulatory Compliance and Ethics

• Regulatory Knowledge: Learn about the different medical device classifications and the regulatory requirements for each, particularly if you plan to develop bioengineering solutions that may be used in healthcare.
• Ethical Considerations: Bioengineering often involves working with patients and sensitive data. Understand the ethical implications of medical technology, such as patient privacy, consent, and safety. Ensure that you are familiar with the regulations regarding health data (e.g., HIPAA in the U.S.).

7. Communication and Teamwork

• Cross-disciplinary Teams: You'll likely work in teams composed of bioengineers, clinicians, regulatory specialists, and business leaders. Collaboration and communication skills are essential to making sure everyone is aligned with the project’s goals.
• Problem-Solving: In a clinical environment, problems are often complex and multifaceted. Work with clinicians to approach these challenges creatively while balancing the technical, practical, and business aspects of the solution.

8. Reimbursement and Market Access

• Insurance and Reimbursement: Medical innovations need to be reimbursed for widespread adoption. Understand the reimbursement landscape, including how insurance companies decide what products and services to cover, and what the process of reimbursement looks like.
• Health Economics: Gain knowledge of cost-effectiveness analysis, which evaluates the economic value of a product in the context of improving patient care. Bioengineers must consider how their product will provide value in reducing healthcare costs while improving clinical outcomes.

9. Networking, building your personal brand, and business model canvas

10. Career strategy and transition planning

In summary, the successful integration of bioengineering innovations into healthcare requires a combination of technical expertise, a solid understanding of healthcare economics, regulatory requirements, and an ability to collaborate effectively with clinicians. By grasping the business and regulatory aspects, bioengineering students can be better equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities in the medical field.

Creating more bioengineers and data scientists does not necessarily translate into innovation.

“Innovation requires as little intervention and management as possible,” Mr. Liang said in another interview. “Innovation often comes by itself, not as something deliberately planned, let alone taught.”

Hope is not a strategy. Technology alone will not get us out of the sick care mess or the global warming mess. People will; but only if they play nice with and trust each other and people get out of each other's way.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and Editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship