By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist – #TheIncrementalist
On this episode I talked to Margaret Lozovatsky, MD (@DoctorLozo), SVP and Chief Health Informatics Officer at Novant Health (@NovantHealth). Margaret came into medicine with a computer science degree right at the time Electronic Health Records were being rolled out giving her an edge in both understanding as well as seeing the potential for the technology in healthcare. This was further amplified at the University of Wisconsin Medical School located in Madison Wisconsin, home to one of the big EMR companies Epic. Margaret’s early experiences were still paper based providing useful insights into the challenges of chasing paper notes in healthcare and the difficulty of transition and the importance of change management.
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Finding the efficiencies of EMRs and focusing on the positive change that allowed for easier access to information was important in helping bring her colleagues along:
“helping them understand how this can be used to their benefit, and also continuing to hear their concerns, I think is critical. My approach is always to understand what the challenges are, and to try to find solutions to make it easier”
Many of the challenges associated with EMR’s were linked to the transition from paper to digital and the failure to change the approach, she compares this to taking a computer screen and putting the same thing on a mobile phone, something that doesn’t work very well
“I like to compare the transition from paper to the HR to the transition from a computer screen to an iPhone, you would never take the same website and put it on an iPhone the way that it is on the computer, right? Because you need a different user interface, what we tried to do is we tried to take paper and put it into the computer”
We discuss the Race Car Designed TeleICU Carts (Stewart-Haas racing expands partnership with Novant health) that came about through a partnership with Stewart-Haas Racing that helped them develop and make ICU webcam carts for Novant Health.
Listen in as we discuss the importance of the quality of data going in to the systems, how to achieve that and where Natural Language Processing has reached and where it might get to turning data into information at the point of care. We talk about how Novant Health was well prepared to handle the pandemic that caught so many and what others could learn form their foundational approach and the importance of meeting patients in their community. We discuss the challenge oftentimes being the only woman in the room and what helped her navigate a successful career including the importance of seeing people like yourself as models to follow. Listen in to hear her incremental suggestions for developing your own career pathway in informatics.
About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.
This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.