Voices of Innovation | Meet the Authors | Virtua Health

Welcome to another drop of Voices of Innovation: The Author Series. I am really excited about sharing with you more of the authors of this book, and the book I am referencing, of course, is Voices of Innovation. It is the second edition, and it comes out July 17th. I got lucky—the publisher sent me a couple of advance copies, so I am actually holding the book. We are really excited about the book, and I will tell you three or four reasons why. One is that it is a best-practice manual. If you are out there trying to innovate in healthcare, we often get knocked for not being innovative enough and not transforming as much as other industries. One reason is that we are not sure how to innovate, but Virtua is, and our guest today is, and you will hear more about that—and about 35 other contributors to the book. They are all doing it. We took the framework that HIMSS has on innovation and then gave four or five real-world examples from around the globe of people and organizations actually leading innovation, and the results are amazing. You will hear about some of that today.

That is one of the reasons we are excited. Another reason is that when people are doing great work, it is great to recognize them, like our guest today and Virtua Health. The most important reason to me—and they are all really important—is that all of us as authors and contributors are not taking any money. All of it is going to Mary Crowley Cancer Research. For this second edition, all the monies from the profits and royalties for those contributing go to Mary Crowley Cancer Research. It is a research center that does phase-one clinical trials, and if you know much about phase-one clinical trials, that is where people go when they do not have much other hope, and so the mission there is “Hope lives here.” I am on the board there. It is just amazing—a tear-jerker every time I go to board meetings, seeing what is happening. That is what is cool about this: not only does it add value and help organizations innovate, but we are raising money. You are raising money when you buy the book. We will drop how to buy the book—preorders are available now—in the comments section, and the publisher has been very generous, despite the high price of the book, to offer a discount.

Without any further ado, I want to introduce my friends and amazing innovators from Virtua Health. You all submitted a paper in our People and Technology chapter around how you are doing incredible things with digital transformation and leveraging some innovative governance. So, TK, I thought I would start with you. Can you tell us generally what the cool thing is that you are doing around that and being able to achieve those kinds of results?

Well, thanks so much for the opportunity to talk about this, and again special kudos to you for being the ‘Herder in Chief’ to get all of us stray cats together, get our ideas on paper, and just the fact that the proceeds are going to such an amazing cause. Virtua has been living through digital transformation the last couple of years and longer. Other folks have as well, so we are not the only ones in this space. One of the things that we have been very proud of is the governance structure that we have had. I think governance structure gets such a bad rap because governance is usually synonymous with the word ‘slowing down’ or ‘no.’ There is a saying that we go by: how come there is always enough time to fix it, but there was never enough time to do it right the first time? That is what we have used it for. Governance helps us look for blind spots. Governance is not necessarily meant to slow things down; it does cause us to take a breath and forces us to check ourselves at a couple of implementation points.

One of the key lessons for us here is that we are a digital transformation office. We do not own the projects by ourselves. The IT team does not own the projects by themselves. We always partner with an operator, and we co-own it and co-share it. The sponsoring executives from each operation, whether it be digital team, etc., we both put our necks on the line for this. If we are both not prepared to go after this, then we are not ready to do this right now. That is what has been so important for us. Governance does not mean single dictatorship; it means shared governance, but it also means watching for blind spots.

That is super insightful. I rushed through this and forgot to do introductions, but we will do them as we hit each of you. So TK, if I recall correctly, you are the Chief Digital Transformation Officer.

Yeah, I get to work with an amazing team that keeps me completely on my toes. That is our digital transformation team.

That is very cool. You talked about working closely with your clinicians, and I know—I go by Dr. Angela because I have trouble with some last names every once in a while—but Dr. Angela, I know that you are a key part of this as well. Can you talk about your role in this and how you make sure the clinical perspective is there?

Yeah, sure. I am the lead physician for telehealth at Virtua, and I have the absolute pleasure of working closely with the Digital Transformation Office on our projects, particularly those that are clinical in nature. When we are spinning up another digital-first practice or implementing a new tool for clinicians or patients alike, that is where I come in and try to offer the clinician perspective in terms of process, patient experience, and clinician experience. Lucky for me, we have had plenty of projects in that arena to work on.

That is great. Danielle, I know that TK already talked about it—because he is a great leader, he is like, ‘I am a great leader’—he did not say this, but I am saying he is a great leader because he knows how to surround himself with really strong people. Danielle, I know you are one of the main operator leaders behind the scenes as well. Can you share with us your perspective? I know that you operationalize a lot of this.

Yes, hi, thank you, Ed. Echoing my team’s comments, I am Danielle Wilson, and I also work in the Digital Transformation Office at Virtua. I agree there are a lot of ideas and strategies that Tarun is working on at his level, but to really make these projects a reality, you need a strong engine that is operating and implementing these tools. It really does take some diligence to get through all of the weeds, and I want to just touch back on that governance topic. Governance, like Tarun said, is not there to say no. I want to talk about that blind spot. If we do not have teams and other departments checking what we are putting out there, once something is live you could actually hit some additional roadblocks. The fact that these other leaders sit on these governance structures and have a chance to chime in before a project is launched means we already have their insight and buy-in, so it is a much softer conversation and buy-in for the rest of the organization.

You all are dropping great nuggets of wisdom here and, again, the book is just full—and your chapter is just full—of more of that. Sometimes it takes a partnership as well, and Krishna, I know that as CEO of QliqSOFT we did not go into details just for the sake of time—that is why we are just teasing people to go buy the book and read the book and get some details—but Virtua Health has done amazing things. Dr. Angela and Danielle were with me on a podcast, I do not know, a year or so ago. I was just blown away by all the amazing things, and I know that you have been a part of that as well. From a vendor perspective, how do you work with health systems to help them be successful?

Again, we are a digital health company, and we focus mostly on innovating new workflows and working with companies like Virtua primarily to realize their vision. When Virtua came to us with a problem, we sat down with them and then created a drawing board and used our existing tools and created a new set of tools. It is basically an iterative process, working with them in an agile fashion, starting with an MVP and then putting it into realization. In a simple way, it is scrappy innovation: you do it as you go, and 100 percent is not required on day one. That is where the Virtua team and we aligned so well during this innovation process. We launched the service through Virtua, and that is one of the things that, as a small company with an innovation mindset, we were able to find the right partner. We are really thankful to Virtua, and also thanks to you for bringing that story to the limelight and for the cause that you are championing.

Whenever people are doing great things—organizations doing things—especially on the clinical side (the business side is important too, I get it), my heart is all about the clinical side. What you are doing at Virtua Health is just amazing in your communities. I am kind of jealous sometimes; I wish I lived in your community. I will not tell you where I live, for those who do not know already, but that is for a different session altogether. I really appreciate all the work that you all did, not just actually making it happen and doing it—obviously the benefits accrue to your community that you serve—but also for the book. It takes a while and a little bit of effort to put together a chapter and put together your thoughts on paper about what you did and then to be willing to share it. I am so thankful for all of you for giving that time, for showing up, and even for recording a short video letting everyone know about the book. It can be, and is, a game changer. The feedback we got from edition one: it was a game changer for many organizations, because they are not blessed necessarily to have people like yourselves. They might be a smaller organization, they might be someone who has never done innovation—someone says, ‘Do an innovation,’ and they say, ‘What do I do?’ Well, there is a book now, and we are such a great community that everyone can talk to each other. So thank you so much for being a part of this book and a part of our little author series for Voices of Innovation.

Again, thank you so much for the opportunity, Ed. We so appreciate it.

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