This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

Newsday: Breaking Down Silos and Exploring Agentic AI With Jacob Hansen

[00:00:00] We want to thank our partner, Avasure. Over 1, 100 hospitals are using Avasure's virtual care platform to engage with patients, optimize staffing, and seamlessly blend Remote and in person treatment at scale, drive measurable outcomes and augment clinicians with an AI powered solution that deeply integrates into your clinical workflows.

Aversure offers virtual care solutions supported by a secure, scalable infrastructure that helps you to lead your organization into a future where cutting edge technology is at your fingertips. and Compassionate Care Converge. For more information, check them out at thisweekhealth. com slash Avisure.

today on Newsday.

Jacob hansen: the excitement about AI only matters to the extent that it's really focused on where the pain is, where the most pain exists.

I'm Sarah Richardson, a former CIO and president of this Week Health's 2 2 9 community development where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one [00:01:00] connection at a time.

Newsday discusses the breaking news in healthcare with industry experts. Now let's jump right in.

(Main)

Sarah Richardson: welcome to Newsday, where I'm joined by Jacob Hansen, chief Product and technology Officer at AvaSure, A leader in virtual care solutions that enhance patient safety and clinical efficiency, known for their innovative tele sitter and tele nurse platforms.

AvaSure helps hospitals and health systems scale care, reduce staff burden, and improve outcomes through continuous virtual monitoring and support. Jacob, welcome back to the show.

Jacob hansen: Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Sarah Richardson: Yeah. And we just finished up summits in Napa where AvaSure was present, so it's always good to see you and the team and thanks again for covering the news with us as well.

Jacob hansen: Yeah, I really enjoy these chats, so looking forward to it.

Sarah Richardson: Good. Well, let's jump right in. One of the first articles we're gonna cover is how Journey Teams have transformed IT at Ochsner Health. And this is really about how it revamped its IT approach by launching these journey teams that are focused on specific clinical and operational goals.

And [00:02:00] it shifted from the siloed departments to cross-functional teams where these teams are integrating IT clinical and business expertise to co-design rapidly deploy solutions. Aimed at achieving measurable outcomes, which is right up your alley. I'd love to hear your perspective on this one.

Jacob hansen: Yeah, I was really excited about what I saw in this article and what we're seeing from what Ochsner is doing.

Especially because as a health tech vendor, it's easy to get into a little bit of a roadblock at some point. If you start down a process where you're with a siloed team, not a cross-functional team There's been a lot of pilot and test activity, trial activity in the market, and a lot of those have been driven by one function that's wanting to solve a very specific problem that may not be aware of other problems that other functions are trying to solve.

So I think it's just really refreshing, and I should also add, I'm, I'm a product guy by background, and so product people, we love this concept of journey mapping. Where you're deeply focused on [00:03:00] user personas, jobs to be done that they're trying to solve for and a cross-functional approach to what that outcome looks like for the patient.

So I just think it's fantastic and if this trend were to take shape, I think it would yield a lot of progress in healthcare in a very short period.

Sarah Richardson: We have conversations often with CIOs and health systems that really put that human-centered design aspect at the forefront, Jacob, what really is about what value it's going to deliver to the patient at the end of the day, but also making sure that there's some consolidation and also clinical perspectives that are part of that overall ecosystem.

When you go into an engagement with a potential health system, how do those things thoughtfully come together in your planning?

Jacob hansen: We use what's called our virtual care maturity model. So for us, maturity modeling is all about a mindful continuous improvement oriented process for change in clinical environments for us, the staff, but then for staff, the patients is top [00:04:00] of mind in how that change is navigated.

And what you never wanna see when you're in a health tech vendor's shoes is a situation where innovation is happening for technology's sake. Oh, we want to try this new, shiny thing. Because it's harder to measure outcomes in that setting where it's attached to a technology that's interesting as opposed to a specific problem that you're trying to solve.

Our maturity model at AvaSure is aligned to this notion of journey mapping quite well because the care team's experience and the patients should iteratively be improving as you grow in maturity when it comes to deploying virtual care over time.

Sarah Richardson: How are you finding that having multiple champions or influencers within an organization is accelerating

some of that either coming together of not just thinking about it as a pilot, but really as a way that we do business inside our health system that delivers these results as an [00:05:00] example.

Jacob hansen: So we're seeing more and more organizations coming together where, I wouldn't say it's buying by committee rather. Committees that have influence together on outcomes, especially with virtual care platforms where you could have a CIO, CMO, CNO, CMIO, you could have VP of clinical applications.

All of these players have a vested interest in the outcomes, especially with, you think about layered use cases on top of a singular audio video, AI platform. Everybody's gotta lean in and prioritization and phasing of the way you deploy across those is everything, especially because then maybe it's an adjacency, but the CFO is the one looking at the KPIs that come from all of these different buying interests and saying, is this solution delivering what you expected?

Yes or no? And how do we validate and then justify what we're spending? And we're always [00:06:00] gonna see better outcomes with the CFO. More lasting deployment of technology that's delivering on what it intends a clear ROI, if we have that dyad or multifaceted model to leadership.

Sarah Richardson: And you've got a extensive footprint in healthcare today.

When you go into a system that has said, we want your product, and you recognize that they've got some plumbing to do on their side, to literally deliver what we just talked about, how do you help influence them and that perspective or the ability to have things happen in a more productive or fluid environment if they have these parameters in place.

Jacob hansen: I'd love to say we're really we're just perfect at that. I don't think any, if anybody's saying they're nailing that I'd say they're probably fooling themselves because it would be presumptuous for us to assume that we understand all of the prioritization and budget and spending considerations happening inside the health system.

Rather, we've gotta ask really [00:07:00] smart questions. We've gotta lean in when we get the chance, we've gotta be sensitive to the other pressures happening around that space and do our best. In fact, I would say the most important thing we can do is to bring everything we've learned from other deployments to say here's other metrics or outcomes that we've seen tracked how that's been tracked or measured to healthy effect.

And now let's go try that here. And give them a menu of options that will fit their culture, the best, their ethos, the best, whatever it is we have to have more options than just one. We can't just force our background, our expectations onto the customer if that makes sense

Sarah Richardson: It does. It's one of the things we talk about often in our healthcare certified sales professional training is that having references or talking about systems like the one that you are having the conversations with, because you see way more than an individual practitioner does. Bringing that perspective is always such a win, and it to a degree, lens us to the second article [00:08:00] that we

curated for today, and that's the AI agents are coming to healthcare and the reason I say it's corollary is that agentic, AI and the systems that can autonomously perform tasks across multiple systems, really can and are transforming healthcare. The thing is adoption is somewhat hindered by fragmented systems, variable data quality, regulatory complexity.

I'm gonna say all the things you already just talked about, Jacob, and how a system can have siloed approaches. When you consider ag agentic AI and how it really can perform complex tasks, people managing agents versus humans or a mix there of, when you start to apply that into today's workforce, what are some of those barriers that you believe need to go away first?

Jacob hansen: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned a core word there, fragmented. There are a variety of reasons that health system, technology partners all want to protect their own outcomes, protect their own data. so [00:09:00] one of the key elements is integration. But even separate from individual system partners who have concerns about the impact too.

The results with their products by being deeply connected with another. It also means health systems need capacity for their IT resources to even be able to support connecting these things, right? It doesn't just magically happen. You talk to any CIO, they know they've gotta prioritize which things they're gonna support connections between and why?

because it's gonna take effort from them as well. It requires change management at the bedside. So clear prioritization inside the health system technology vendors willing to come to the table are both really important. Standardization of data . Structure, also really valuable.

These are all things that we are excited to see taking shape where there's, APIs are becoming more standard. Data types. All of those things are getting more clarity and we're just excited to see how that [00:10:00] comes together

Sarah Richardson: I'm a huge fan of ai, whether that's from a generative perspective or agentic.

We're starting to do more and more agentic work, even at this week, health with agents and ways to bring things together. We started the question with what are the tasks you do every day that you don't like doing, and how can that be replaced? But to your point, if a system really wants to get there, they have to be thinking about

all of their data being clean, all of the processes, all of the governance, all of those different aspects. When you start working with a new or potential customer, even an existing one, who really gets what the future needs to look like, how often are these conversations coming into play? And again, how are you helping to shape some of the perspectives they need to really accelerate their growth and opportunity?

Jacob hansen: The nice thing is I think everybody's understanding of the fact that we're working together to identify health systems and technology partners who share vision who look [00:11:00] at the future and say, look, we acknowledge that in the short term there, these barriers are not totally removed.

However, we see where the health system wants to go. And we see our vision for where we expect to be, and we have commonality or overlap in those things. This is a big part of why we're working together to create shared. Vision built on shared principles. And one thing I liked about the second article was it talked about the doorman fallacy, which is to say that yes, you could automate the opening and closing of doors, but you can't automate or replace with that machine that's opening and closing the doors, the security the human touch, the welcoming the signaling to other employees that somebody's here and that they need attention. And I think that's a great example in healthcare. We have to be mindful of, for whatever a agentic AI can do.

Where do we preserve the human [00:12:00] touch? That's not so much a barrier to change as it is a risk that we will likely run into on the backside of trying to implement some of these

Technologies and tools. And we see that even in core workflows and virtual care that we think about all the time.

Virtual setting's a great example. There are some in the market asking the question, how long before we've fully automated some virtual sitting or observer workflows?

And the answer is, I don't think anybody actually knows that just yet. Is it possible that computer vision, AI could do some things that a virtual sitter's been doing Totally on their own in the near future?

Yeah. But then there are others where that doesn't make sense. And how do you balance automation and savings with patient experience, HCAP scores and outcomes that are more secondary but beneficial in the long run?

Sarah Richardson: And healthcare has been behind the technology curve forever. I mean, we've, I've been in healthcare for

32 years. And imagine it's [00:13:00] not your first job either. And we see so many trends and ideas, FinTech, manufacturing, other places that are faster. Do you get a sense, Jacob, that AI in whatever form it chooses to manifest itself within some of our healthcare ecosystems, starts to become the equalizer while healthcare can actually catch up to other industries

Jacob hansen: I've been guilty of targeting specific technologies multiple times over the last nearly 20 years saying, oh, this'll be the thing that pushes healthcare to be more caught up. Right? We've had like actionable analytics. We've had population health, we've had RTLS infrastructure. We've had IOT. Lots of different things that have been the thing that we were all super excited about and all of those things are now still in process, right?

Still looking for how it can help us achieve the tipping point where we're gonna start to deploy better or faster. I am once again excited and [00:14:00] hopeful that AI could be the equalizer to bring us on par. I think the question is, what does that mean for us in healthcare?

What part of being up to speed with other industries do we actually want?

You could take banking as an example. I do not like to go into a physical bank. I just don't. bet in the last several years, it's happened twice, maybe three times for some specific thing where they said, no, we can only do this if you come in. But I'm generally irritated when it's happened in healthcare, that is not true.

So I guess I just think it's like, it's interesting. Yes, it could be an equalizer. No, it won't look at the same as other industries where full automation is more acceptable than in healthcare.

But I, I'm certainly hopeful because it's ridiculous that we keep operating at these super challenging margins. When regulatory changes happen when illness trends or pandemics happen, all of a sudden chaos ensues, [00:15:00] healthcare systems margins dip into negative.

Everybody that supports the industry is in a panic. There's no need for that. We don't need to be so prone to that kind of whiplash effect. So hopefully we get there.

Sarah Richardson: And healthcare is very much an on demand space when you think about it. And so if some aspect of on demand is that we can get whatever we want whenever we need it, then minus some of your preventative measures, you really wanna have that immediate access or the human.

The second you find out something that needs to be treated and I don't believe that's gonna be a place where. We replace that human aspect. Like, yes, you want all the research information available to you from whatever source it's coming from, but you still want that conversation with a person, especially if you're scared or you have something that's happened where you don't really know what next steps could or should be.

That's when the human is gonna be such an important aspect of it. But all the background stuff, all of the getting there as I like to call it, takes us to our third article. Abridge raises 150 million series C to scale. Generative AI for clinicians. [00:16:00] Abridge like AvaSure is a partner with us and they recently secured 150 million series C.

This is accelerating their use of generative AI in clinical documentation. They're focusing on solving one of the most painful bottlenecks for care teams, clinical note taking by generating accurate summaries from provider patient conversations. Have you been to a physician who is using ambient technology yet and what was your experience?

Jacob hansen: I have,

Sarah Richardson: yeah.

Jacob hansen: Yeah, I mean, I've been to several of them. Depending on the physician, it's a little interesting. I've been to one where they always ask permission. They click go and in one case, the physician was very clearly talking to the AI using super clinical language, and it was almost as if I wasn't there.

Versus other cases where they've turned it on and we are having an interaction and AI is just listening. I think it's gonna take some practice for clinical users to get comfortable with that. I really liked seeing this news about [00:17:00] Abridge, and we have active, interesting conversations going with a variety of parties in the ambient clinical documentation space. And this ties this article and the last one about agentic ai together, the excitement about AI only matters to the extent that it's really focused on where the pain is, where the most pain exists. I worked nurse call for a while.

A lot of nurses would be asking, you have a microphone in the room, why can't it just listen to what I'm doing and how I'm talking to the patient? And the fact is, technology's had to come a long way. In support of what all these different entities are doing.

But this one and clinical documentation is just top of mind. It is one of the core pain point

that ties to staff productivity at the end of the day with documentation and EHR.

Sarah Richardson: I worked with a gentleman at my last role, and if he listens to this, he'll know, and I always give him street [00:18:00] credit for his name's David Jim Bruno, who says, rule number one, follow the money. Rule number two, see rule number one to your point, where are the ideas really gaining steam organizationally and making a difference?

So, so doing ambient listening for the sake of having ambient listening, not as much of a win. I've heard organizations talk about it can be harder to quantify. A widespread adoption of the ambient listening, because what if it's only producing burden? And I think, oh my gosh, did you just say that? Because my 2 cents is, this is the first time in 20 years that physicians are actually excited about some of the technology we're providing them in terms of when they're visiting with the patient or some of their after hours activity.

It's not about seeing more patients in a given day unless they really want to. It's about being able to actually get some of that work off of their plate, because everything we've done for the last couple of decades has put the burden on the doctors and on their staff. This is actually a space that starts to ameliorate some of that, because nurses a lot of times are the

last one in the mix of some of [00:19:00] this activities, and now you're bringing in multiple platforms and opportunities for clinicians to have tele sitting as an example, and to have ambient listening. These pieces continue to come together. You think about what the future looks like for that nurse, that PA, that physician.

It's pretty remarkable.

Jacob hansen: It's the reason we're so excited about. The varying models that we've invested in our platform. Nine computer vision models, one, ambient listening. We're gonna be moving into Gen AI with our analytics platform, so long as we're being clear about where the data goes, who it's supporting, what steps it's removing.

There's so much opportunity to make it better, to make a difference. And we see a lot of that, that today there's a camera there in the room, a microphone. How do we bring these new and exciting things in a way that's supportable at scale? There's nothing worse [00:20:00] than teams getting the courage up to try something like this.

And then they go to solve a problem and the technology falls down. So we've all gotta work together to be ready to do it at scale, to do it in a way that the clinicians will trust the technology

It's a big ask to take something for the way it's been happening and to say, oh, jump into this new way of doing things and trust us, it's gonna work.

You can't have a swing and a miss.

Sarah Richardson: Incrementalism is what builds that trust and the foundation to try new and more things. When you do go into business with the new health system or you try out new products, what approach in that incrementalism is working best? Is it part of the suite and then more and more of the suite of offerings?

Or how are you seeing the greatest adoption actually occurring?

Jacob hansen: I'd say two things. One, transparency, clarity about what you're deploying. What stage in it lifecycle that thing is in. And two is to your point, phasing or layering tiering of what's being deployed. [00:21:00] So starting with something that's really rock solid, like virtual sitting as an example, it's producing an ROI in essence, it can fund what's next.

so build the foundation on something that's known and trusted, not on the risky or the super innovative first. get the excitement to start to deploy those things fast. But the innovative side of things will always go better if it's building on tech that the team trusts. So that's the number one thing we're looking for.

And that goes back to that maturity model that we were talking about. Start with something that, you can drive the proven side of

[Mic bleed]

and push from there to go beyond that with all sorts of interesting things on the heels of

[Mic bleed]

Sarah Richardson: Some of our research for these articles noted that clinicians are watching and if we relieve their burden, it'll grow trust in the inside out.

I also wanna throw out there the patients are watching and they're especially watching if they're the one in that bed and the technologies are coming to them to help their caregivers. That's always the aspect I say, yes. [00:22:00] Think about everything that's happening in your clinician. Ecosystem in your organizations always also lead with that patient lens because they're ideally also the ones benefiting from all of these new technologies that are advancing so rapidly.

Jacob hansen: Yeah, agreed. We worked really hard to make sure that we're really clearly aligning to staff. With trust that by staying so focused on staff members' needs and outcomes that the patient and the patient needs will align to that and follow it. That's probably also tied to the fact that,

That's a big change for companies like ours that have been focused on the staff for a long time, and I think something that we're gonna have to work at to be better at paying attention to both staff and patient outcomes

Sarah Richardson: So in general, closing, I have to ask, as a patient, what are the two things you are most looking forward to in terms of what technology is bringing forward today?

What do you want be true?

Jacob hansen: As a [00:23:00] patient, I've been a patient in an inpatient acute setting four times. I've got a very cool fake hip that I love

And I would say as a patient, the thing I'm the most excited about is alleviating the tension between patients who want to be well-informed and who want to align to the things they should be doing.

But feeling uncomfortable with interrupting staff because of how busy and how crazy things are for staff in the inpatient setting. So that's the first one is really empowering patients to stay educated, to ask questions, to get ready, to get out of the hospital without burdening bedside staff.

And we can do that with digital assistance through ambient listening. We can do that with better coordination and triage that brings that remote team members to the bedside by monitoring, observing what's happening and then proactively bringing people to the patient.

That element of eliminating that tension is something I get really excited [00:24:00] about. And then the last one is. And I think this is probably a little bit of a longer put, but a patient's experience when they exit the hospital as a facility, the connection to the original intention and the follow up with that, it gets awfully gray and challenging sametimes

So the arc of patient rehabilitation and the opportunity that we have to use AI to monitor their progress without having to set up new appointments or have somebody come back to reduce readmissions. I just think that's another huge story here is as a patient, I think I would've felt far more confident and rehabilitated faster if I had, had a little bit more clarity that went beyond what happened after I left.

Sarah Richardson: Yeah, that's a great point. And more than anything, today's conversation, it proves that innovation isn't just about new tech. It's about thoughtful alignment between people, process [00:25:00] partners who are supplying the technology. And whether we're talking about journey teams, AI agents, or targeted clinical tools, it comes down to solving real problems in real environments.

Huge thank you to you, Jacob, and the AvaSure team for helping us connect the dots between strategy, technology, and the human experience in healthcare.

Jacob hansen: Thanks for having me.

Thanks for listening to Newsday. A lot's happening in our industry. And while Newsday covers interesting stuff, another way to stay informed is by subscribing to our Daily Insights email, which delivers expertly curated health IT news straight to your inbox.