In this episode, we dive into the world of disruptive technologies in healthcare with Vignesh Kannah and Abhishek AK from the Everest Group. Join us as we explore the groundbreaking innovations that are reshaping the medical landscape, promising improved patient care, and revolutionizing the way healthcare professionals work. Learn more about the show: https://www.amnhealthcare.com/amn-insights/elevate-care-podcast/
In this episode, we dive into the world of disruptive technologies in healthcare with Vignesh Kannah and Abhishek AK from the Everest Group. Join us as we explore the groundbreaking innovations that are reshaping the medical landscape, promising improved patient care, and revolutionizing the way healthcare professionals work.
Learn more about this episode: https://www.amnhealthcare.com/amn-insights/elevate-care-podcast/disruptive-technologies-in-healthcare-the-promises-and-challenges/
Learn more about the show: https://www.amnhealthcare.com/amn-insights/elevate-care-podcast/
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TIMESTAMPS
(00:24) Introduction
(05:55) Shortage in the Workforce
(19:32) Future Skills for Clinicians
(24:12) Benefits and Risks of Generative AI
(33:10) Human Centric Design Approach
(37:25) AI in Healthcare
(44:25) Adopting to New Advancements for Leaders
(46:08) Advantages of VMS
(53:00) Mindset Shift
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ABOUT THE GUESTS
Vignesh Kannan is the Vice President, BPS of Business Process Services team and leads the Everest Group's research and advisory practice focused on enterprise functions and have authored 60+ research papers focused on technology, sustainability, and transformation. His area of expertise lies in supporting clients in GTM strategy, value proposition refinement, and market assessment
Connect with Vignesh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vignesh-kannan-07986185/
Abhishek leads the healthcare and life sciences charter at Everest Group. Specializes in helping healthcare companies realize incremental value from the marketplace by advising on investment strategies and digital transformation initiatives.
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Welcome to Elevate Care, the show where healthcare professionals, visionaries, and thought leaders come together to explore the limitless possibilities of healthcare innovation. I am your host, Janie Dubke. Welcome to a journey where innovation meets humanity. In today's episode, I speak with our friends from across the world in India, Vignesh Kannah and Abhishek from the wonderful Everest Group. Vignesh Kannah is the vice president of the Business Process Services team and leads the Everest Group's research and advisory practice focused on enterprise functions. He has authored over 60 research papers focused on technology, sustainability, and transformation. His area of expertise lies in supporting clients in their go-to-market strategies and maximizing their value propositions. Abhishek is also a vice president who leads their healthcare and life sciences charter at the Everest Group. He specializes in helping healthcare companies realize incremental value for the marketplace by advising on investment strategies and digital transformation initiatives. I'm excited for this dynamic duo to give us insights today in the latest research in healthcare. For our conversation today, we will be focusing on optimizing talent, generative AI, because who is not talking about that, VMS technologies and so much more. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Thank you guys both for joining us. I am so excited for everybody to get to hear your genius and get to see all the wonderful things that the Everest Group does. We really appreciate our partnership with you. You guys are constantly giving us wonderful insights and really helping our clients and helping our hospitals really understand the needs of healthcare and how to affect their patients. So I like to make sure that we remind people that we are on mission to always make sure that there's humanity in healthcare. And I always like to make sure that our guests get to share their personal journeys and their stories. So I'd love for you guys both to just tell the audience about what you're passionate about and what you're on purpose for and really why you're motivated in this space. Ignash, let's start with you, my friend. Yeah, so a little bit about myself and first of all, Jamie, thanks for a great introduction. So keeping aside the professional side, one thing that keeps me going is I always like to explore the unknowns. So I'm always into adventure and always curious about a lot of things that are not known to me. So that is one thing that is keeping me going at work as well. So as a research analyst, we track a lot of global events. And then the ability to. connect different dots and what it means for a particular sector and deriving insights out of multiple information. That's exciting. Awesome. You also happen to jump out of planes too. So how does that passion meet with what you're doing in the healthcare space? So yeah, that's an, I would say an interesting experience, right? So I always, like I said, interested in trying something new. And I actually started focusing more on the healthcare space and specifically, you know, how the talent demand and the talent market in the healthcare sector shaping up from the last two to three years. And the trigger for me was actually the COVID crisis, right. So I'd like to take this opportunity, this forum to thank all the healthcare professionals for the great contribution during the COVID crisis. So I thought... know, that excited me and post COVID actually the entire healthcare sector, you know, the way it operates, the way the talent is shaping up and the way the technologies are exploding is tremendous. That's what the curiosity brought me into the sector and tracking what's happening here. Awesome. Yeah, our healthcare professionals are still our superheroes and what they did during the COVID crisis is absolutely amazing. And actually it's part of of why we're in the space that we are in today when we start talking about burnout and attrition. There's lots of implications into what happens. Now Abhishek, I know you don't jump out of planes and you avoid that, but we'd love to hear your passion and what you're on purpose to do in this space. Yeah, so first of all, Jamie, thank you for inviting me to this podcast. I'm personally very happy to be here. Of course, from an evidence group perspective, we'll be happy to share insights. At the personal strength, I am passionate about fitness. So I ensure that, you know, in a week, at least two to three times I hit the gym or play some racket sports. So what that keeps me is to motivate it and always have a fresh peace of mind whenever I'm going into work as well. The second thing that I'm very passionate about is technology, especially how the technology landscape is evolving. And specifically when it comes to healthcare, right? How the technology is impacting the lives of the patients. And that's also at the same point in time. Technology, how is it helping healthcare players and providers alike help optimize its operations and also bring cost efficiencies. Which is why, you know, I found my niche in every group leading the healthcare and life sciences vertical. Awesome. I also love to work out. Do you have a favorite lift that you like to do? No, no, I'm more into cardio. I don't do weights. Oh, okay, okay. So I'm more into cardio. Awesome. Well, if you ever want to learn weights, I'm a deadlift girl and a back squat. Awesome. Well, gentlemen, thank you both so much again for being on the show with us today and really having this great conversation. I think we're going to really be able to provide a lot of insights to everybody who's listening. So, gentlemen, we've already kind of talked a little bit about kind of the COVID pandemic and some of the clinician shortages that we're now facing coming post-COVID. And there's a growing concern across the world. The shortage not just doctors, not just nurses, but really specialized health care workers as a whole. And there's a lot of factors that contribute to that, right? So we have an aging population. We now have five generations in the workforce and that creates its own complexity. But as an aging population increases, so does the demand and the strain on the health care system. Besides that, we also have geographic disparities, right? So clinician shortages are not evenly you have maybe a more difficult time getting access to that. And that is across the globe. That's not just located in any one area. And there's fewer incentives for clinicians to practice there as well, too. So the access and the health equity becomes even a bigger conversation, which we're not going to be able to solve today, but we can add some insights, too. And then there's also educational and training constraints, right? So we know that the The process of becoming a clinician is lengthy, it's costly, there's a lack of training at our medical and our nursing schools. The cost and the duration of training really is deterring some people from getting into that career. And then again, we've talked a lot about the burnout, right? So clinicians are experiencing high levels of stress, the burnout due to workloads, administrative burdens, the long hours. And this really leads to many leaving the profession permanently. if it took them that long to get into it and now they're leaving kind of prematurely, that's really heartbreaking, not only just from what the demand is on our healthcare, but just from the human aspect, right? So we have people who are, they have a heart to serve, they desire to do really great patient care, and we really wanna talk and kind of think forward on how do we help create that environment that sustains the work. the work environment where they feel safe, where they get to feel healthy, they get to show up as their best self, and how do we allow them to do their patient care and operate at the top of their licenses? I'd really like to hear it, because I know the Everest group does so much when we think about tracking the healthcare ecosystem. And so Vignesh, I'd really like for you to just kind of set the stage for us and talk about the role of technology and how it's evolving to help streamline the entire staffing process with the shortage in Lund. Yeah, actually, JB, you brought up a very interesting insight, right? There is definitely a talent demand and supply gap to put our data to that. Actually, right now, just in the US, there are one million more job openings than people who are ready to work for jobs, specifically in the US healthcare sector. And we strongly believe and from our research perspective as well. The technology is going to be a great lever to address this gap and how organizations approach the entire talent management is drastically shifting with contingent workforce coming into the mix aspect. So if you take say pre-COVID, most of the healthcare organizations were leveraging contingent workforce. to say 20% of their workforce, that contingent workforce. Now most of the leading organizations, contingent workforce makes us talking about 40 to 45 percentage, right? So what is drastically, or there is a paradigm shifting how the contingent workforce is viewed by the organization. Like earlier it was, you know, I want to get access to large scale of specific skills at a cheap cost. Now contingent workforce is actually becoming a strategic lever in meeting organizations objective. And technology has a very, very important role to play here because the nature of contingent workforce is also evolving with the skill gaps widening. Right now the contingent workforce is no more just the subcontractors or temporary laborers, but organizations are finding creative ways to bring in and bridge that skill gap by bringing in say. services procurement and leveraging that pool of freelancers, gig workers, right? And the complexity in managing the contingent workforce, specifically the healthcare segment is there is a lot of credential management, shift scheduling, there is a lot of complaints, requirements involved, right? So VMS as a technology has evolved significantly in the last two to three years, right? what used to be just a management of contract workforce tool is now becoming a key segue or key enabler of total talent management. Now, VMS technologies have capabilities to not just manage temporary workforce, but also bring in other talent pools and manage it in the same platform. And that's one aspect. Beyond that, lot of, you know, PMS providers are now building advanced capabilities, leveraging AI engineers, we spoke about ZAWI and we will come to that. But a lot of analytics modules are also being built into that, not just to create a reporting or a dashboard, but also enable in some of the decision making. So a lot of advanced PMS technologies now have workforce analytics, predicting to what extent I need certain workforce. what time period and now these PMS technologies have capability to monitor external events. So to give you an example, hypothetically there is a flu season coming up and it has happened in the last three years and it sends us that and predicts that in two months time period you might need 30% more nurses at this location. So that's how technology is coming as a savior to ease the pressure. to bridge that skill gap, to bridge that demand supply gap. Absolutely. And we hear and see that too with our hospitals that are using some of our smart square technology and some of our VMS technology as well too. They really appreciate that. And then when you think about the overall strategy of retention and really trying to make sure that your nurses and your clinicians are safe. and making sure that patient safety is top of mind, right? Because that's really what our clinicians care about. When we think about what motivates them and really truly triggers them is really like patient safety and their ability to create an environment where they can operate at the top of their license as we keep mentioning, but anticipating that, right? Anticipating what that workload looks like for another human and really being able to be strategic and then also too from a, to be a good steward of your finances. knowing when and where to position that. And you mentioned fractional and kind of that gig labor. I know we're working really hard to kind of push the boundaries of how do we help our healthcare systems now start to really think about how would you leverage that? Because Generation Z is here to stay. And by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennials and then Generation Z will be right after that. So we've got a demand for it. And now we have to really think about what does that maturity model look like? Almost like you would diversify your portfolio or your foray on Wall Street. We have to start thinking about how do we diversify our talent pools? What is your permanent staff to your contingent staff? And then how do you make sure also too, not that you just have different pools of talent, but then how do you bring them together and then how do you help them kind of harmonize? Because you want an environment where people get to show up. where they love to work and culture and leadership really are at the heart of that as well too. Yeah, and if I may add, since you brought up a very interesting point around millennials coming into the work population, right? So earlier if you look at other VMS technologies in general, they're very supplier centric, right? But looking at the millennial population, work population, now the technologies are evolving. to give a better user experience, not just to the organization, not just to the suppliers, but also to the talent pool. So millennials are expecting that B2C experience, the Amazon experience, the mobile experience in their work environment as well. So VMS providers are building mobile apps to engage the talent pool, and AMN healthcare also as your AMN passport. So similar such mobile applications are coming up. Absolutely. And really, we're really trying to also help utilize that as a way for the clinician experience to really focus even on their development. So we're also working and thinking through like, how do we evolve and kind of change even a staffing model, right? So if you have somebody who just graduated and they have their wish list or like, hey, here are the top five hospitals I want to go work at, here are all the skills I want to go gain. Right? Like people are motivated. Like the science and performance psychology would suggest there are three basic needs that every human needs in any job, right? And that's mastery, autonomy, and purpose. And helping humans achieve that is a concerted effort, right? It's an organizational effort and it's an ecosystem we create. So in our VMS technologies, in all of the generative AI and even the skills taxonomies that a lot of new kind of AI tools that are coming out in the HR spacer. incredibly exciting. And we're going to be looking to partner with some of those organizations too as well to really help kind of think out into the future, right? Because if you're a new grad or you've been in the profession a while, you're trying to think, well, where are we going to be in the next 10 to 15 years? Because nurses too, like there's only so long that somebody can stand on their feet, right? Like then we really also need their brains. So that's the other thing that I love and appreciate so much about the different generations in the workforce is that we have so much knowledge that needs to be transferred. to all the newer generations. And they in turn also have a lot to teach us too. So it goes both ways, right? The mentorship just isn't singly focused downwards. It also needs to be inverted as well too. Abhishek, I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this too because I know you're incredibly passionate about this topic. Sure. So just to add on to Jamie's, Jamie your point and Vignesh's point, you know, there is one important part of the clinical workforce, which is nurses, right? at least in my experience, in my personal experience as well, nurses are the determinant of a patient experience at the hospital enterprise. Now, another important aspect, according to me and to carry forward Vignesh's point, is that during COVID, we saw a shift in delivery models, wherein it is not necessary for a patient or a person who is asking for care to visit the hospital, right, that is out of hospital care. which actually led to technologies like telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and all of those things. So yes, it is important for us to be addressed with all the technological advantages or the technology capabilities that the market has to offer. Yet at the same point in time, I would like to say that at the end, it has to be patient-centric because we are in a healthcare ecosystem. And at the end of it, patient journey and patient experiences, all that matters. 100% agree with you. There's many options and opportunities, especially in some of the bigger cities, right? Like you may have 15 hospitals within a 10 mile radius of each other. And so there's a choice. It's the same kind of thing that's happening, right? To airlines and to restaurants, right? Like you see reviews and everyone goes to Google, right? And now we're looking at ER wait times and we're looking at the reviews of the staff. And so. you are 100% right that patient to clinician experience is so important. And that's also too why I also am so passionate about talking about the clinicians experience as well too, because we know if we take care of the people who take care of the patients, that everyone should hopefully have a better experience. And then that increases the ability for patients to recover well. And we keep talking about generative AI too guys, and I know we're gonna get there in just a second, but Abhishek, I really like to, to stay on kind of this talent segment and really think about how are we kind of segmenting into both the clinical and the non-clinical and thinking about the skills of the future. I know prompt engineering is a new skill that I've just started picking up on in the last year now that we've got all kinds of crazy cool stuff with chat GPT, but I'm teaching my five-year-old right now how to use chat GPT because I don't want him to fall behind. So help us think more about what kind of the skills of the future are gonna be needed so that all of our clinicians can use this technology? Yeah, so you bring out a very, very interesting point, right, so how I would like to segment the skills market, right, would be split, like you said, between the clinical part and the non-clinical part. In the clinical part, where you have your nurses and physicians, I believe that increasingly going forward, all clinicians and nurses need to become increasingly comfortable with technology, right? I believe that is also a skill that you are able to adapt to any technology that is given to you and you are able to take the benefits out of it. To my point earlier when I talked about certain technologies like remote patient monitoring, telehealth, over there now there is an incumbent need on the professionals on the clinical side to also update their skills with regards to data. Data management as a whole as well. Through these technologies, you'll get loads and loads of data, but the analysis is still at the helm of the physician itself. Now, when I talk about the non-clinical part of it, which is the administrative part of it, that is also a place where most of the hospitals and health enterprises are suffering from, like you said, burnout because there is a lot of admin overload. And also at the same point in time, there are increasing costs that the healthcare enterprises are having to deal with, right? In that case as well, it is important for that non-clinical talent also to generate a nuanced set of skills which also includes talking to a patient when they are just having or there is a request for scheduling. Also at the same point in time, there is also an emphasis to have empathy when you are speaking to patients. One important thing that we know especially during the COVID times as well was an issue of mental health, right? So when a mental health person is calling to get the scheduling done, you want to be aware that he's dealing with some issues. You want to be empathy, you want to show empathy when you're speaking to them. So I would say now, while it is a domain centric industry, right? But there's an increasing pivot towards having techno domain skills. You need to be both good in technology and domain is obviously a gift. Awesome. Thank you so much for bringing that up, right? So mental health has only continued to increase and there's a lot of insight and data and science that shows us that this became really prevalent between like 2011 and 2015. And we really started to experience that with the kind of implementation of social media and all of the things that happen with our cell phones, right? So these little computer things that are so amazing. have really started to kind of change our brains. And so now there's so many implications about what mental health crisis is look like, but it's also kind of changing the game too. Abhishek, what I loved about what you said is that you talked about this meta skill. I think having empathy and being able to have conversations with humans is now a meta skill, right? Whereas before we would have been able to know how to have a conversation, but I think people get really courageous. behind their cell phones and on screens. And then when it comes to humans, there's this fine art. Like we used to call them soft skills. I still call them human skills because it is really important that we know how to actively listen to somebody and not listen to respond, but listen to actually hear what the person is saying and really truly feel what they're feeling. And that's something that healthcare professionals typically do so beautifully. But I think they're also facing too, maybe even a... actually not maybe even they are, the incivility also too even from the patient and the patient's families or the environments, right? So I think about safety on both angles, right? So I just remember back to even when my grandmother was hospitalized back in 2002 and 2003 and there were a lot of her nurses that were, they were on their like second double shift or they were on like demanded overtime. And so you see these nurses who are just trying to love their patients well, but they're just mentally exhausted. And there is only so much from a resiliency perspective too that you can expect the human brain to be able to take on. So I really think that topic of empathy and engaging with humans is also going to become critically important, which is why I really want to kind of talk about generative AI also too in this space because I think there's so much fear, gentlemen, and noise in the world that is like, generative AI is going to take over every job. And we forget that there are so many roles and spaces that you need that human interaction that no computer will ever be able to overtake. So I'd loved it to hear you guys talk a little bit more about how you foresee generative AI coming in and what are some of the values that and objectives that have to be realized? Yeah. So let me take a shot at that first, right? So you're right, generative AI is front and center of everybody, right? Not only hospital health system, but across the industry landscape. Now, as per my vantage point, I think it has a lot of potential, also at the same point in time, a lot of risks as well. But let us talk about the positives to be kept. So I believe right, and to the point that you said that there is AI, there's generative AI. So... What the lead that Generative AI has done vis-a-vis, I would say, our traditional AI is that it has had the ability to contextualize data. That contextualization was something which was lacking in the primitive AI solutions. And what Generative AI has taken is taken that lead that it is able to contextualize data. And the name that comes from Generative AI is able to generate content. So let us take an example. a patient visits a hospital, right? There has to be data which has to be generated or made by the clinicians in order to record what the particular patient was suffering with, what is his diagnosis. And that was more or less a manual task. Now, what Generative AI's promise is that with the advent and use of Generative AI, that patient summary as to when he visited that particular clinic or he visited a particular hospital, will be auto populated for the physician to just review and approve to be pushed into the EMR system. So that manual work or the manual load has been taken away from the physician to it. Now, another use case that you talked about, right? That about drug discovery, about reading X-ray machine. So, you know, we have Mayo Clinic, which is a leading health system in USA and probably across the world. They have gone a step further. where they are trying to use cases where through the use of generative AI, reading the patient X-rays, reading the patient data histories, reading the diagnosis, able to generate insights as to what would be the underlying causes for that. So, you know, the thing that generative AI does is it helps you in order to get a running start when it comes to a patient. So now, and another point that I would like to make with regards to generative AI is the conversational aspect of generative AI. So what happens when you are actually conversing with a generative AI model is that the model is able to learn and also revert to the particular user regarding what are kind of details that are still not to be put. So let us say that. A person is scheduling an appointment of his and he mentions his name, his age, but he forgets his telephone number. Now what Generative AI is able to do is you can have Generative AI chatbots where you will be feeding this information in a conversational language like you and I are speaking and that particular Generative AI what will say, hey, we are happy to set your appointment up. Just one second, we forgot to take your phone number. Now that leap is what Generative AI is able to bring to the table. I love that. I think about what it does to maximize not only the patient experience, but then how do we automate some of the administrative burden that's happening on the clinician side and how do we really allow them to really get to do what they need to do, which is help the patient, right? And then also talk to the patients because I don't know about you guys, but now when I go to visit just my regular gen-pract physician, I'm lucky if I get 10 to 15 minutes. They're trying to see like five to eight patients an hour. And so I love the fact that Abhishek, you spoke to that and what it's gonna allow clinicians to do from the patient's perspective and really actually get to empower more patients. Because if we get, we have generative AI now that if a patient says, hey, help me understand what are the questions I need to ask about what's happening, right? Like it helps them understand because for so long, it's like, well, physicians went to school. They are the smartest people in the room. They know everything. And now it's almost like we get to help kind of co-create our care. And I know we had Robin Farman Farmean on our last podcast, and she was talking about healthcare at home and what it's gonna really force us to do and some of the technologies that are really gonna enable these conversations. And so Vignesh, I'd really like to hear your perspective on that too, because I know you guys are both really passionate about this. Yeah, I'd like to emphasize Abhishek's point, right? All of us think of generative AI as fundamentally new technology. It is not. It's a significant leap of the traditional AI that we have been using. From Abhishek's cover, he spoke about how it is going to change the patient's experience. How is it going to reduce administrative burden? Bye. It also has a significant impact on the talent side, on the not-Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians aspect. So to take an example, say a contingent worker who is looking for a specific career path with a specific set of skill sets, Generative AI is able to help for your set of skill sets. These are the different. types of career path that you have. Picking up on that and that's an interesting word Abhishek, techno domain skill set. So a lot of clinicians and non clinicians, the career journey is changing from linear to non-linear path. What used to be you know do your education and you get your degree and this is the linear path that you have to follow. That is changing. Someone who has done a nursing course. can move to a technical skill set. So one, it is very, very important for everyone to work with technology. And I strongly believe Generative AI is here to help reduce the burden, help progress our career path. And it is not going to replace anyone's job here. promises, right? So it reduces the burden on the recruiters. It does a wonderful job in screening the candidates, and giving an output on, hey, it's a potential match. And it's still probabilistic, but it reduces a lot of burden. And it also, I've seen it in action. It's doing a wonderful job in creating a job description. Now it's no more a description or a requirement based on a designation. So a lot of evolution is happening on skips, ontology, skill mapping, finding the ideal potential match. You don't need someone with certain designation or a title who will fit for this job. It's able to screen through thousands of space you based and pick up, you don't need this title. But these are the skipsets that can be a potential match for this particular role. It is going to change how organizations look at talent. And the key for generative AI to work is data has to be in the right place. I would say data is a new health care currency. Once everyone is able to bring all the data together. So you have this data residing in hospital. You have data residing in health plan. And you have patient data. If you are able to do that data managed in a holistic manner, which Abhishek was talking about, generative AI's potential can be experiment shared. That's amazing. Thank you so much for all of those thoughts. I literally was just even trying to think about what the implication is too, just from a retention perspective as we think about job descriptions, right? So... In my practice over the last 15 to 20 years, I've been very focused on a human centered design approach. And even when I've encouraged my leaders, especially my executive leaders, I'm like, as you think about job descriptions, be cognizant that you're like creating a laundry list of things and it's very specific, but we know when you actually show up to the job, the expectation of what you have versus what that person has. are going to be different because of the skills and because of the specific leader and how they're integrating. And so I always try to encourage all of our leaders and pretty much anybody who's a leader of people, always think about what the experience is when your job description has these finite like 15 things versus, well, there's going to be humanity in there or there's going to be a lot of gray, right? So don't try to be so... and black and white, especially when you talk to people who've been in a career for 10 to 15 years, there's a lot of things that on average our jobs help us accumulate, right? So that acquired diversity that we bring to a new organization and clinicians are especially attuned to that, right? So based on the patient, based on the case, like you could have a very rare disorder that this clinician helped treat or be part of the team that helped treat that. I really like to help us think differently about having that diversified approach instead of trying to find those unicorns. It's how do we bring a team of clinicians together and approach it from a team aspect, right? And how many people can you have that have this skill versus this skill, right? It's about finding that inherent and acquired diversity within all of our teams to truly help us propel ourselves forward. Yeah. description that I've seen where the requirement was an individual should have eight plus years of work experience in product and spirit. Oh my gosh, why are you... I'm telling you as an HR professional, it's always kind of made my skin crawl when I see that and I'm just like, you'll see the, hey, this was especially big a few years ago when you would have a highway specialist, like when Python first came out. And the job with Christian was like, me 10 years of Python, it's like Python's been out for two years guys, like that ain't gonna work. So I totally love that. But we make those things, we just make those assumptions as leaders, right? And it's not all the fault of our own, we're just like, we know that's an important skill. So we use that as a way to say, okay, I'm gonna make it a priority, right? So we have to even start thinking differently about what are you prioritizing? Are you prioritizing the year or are you prioritizing the skill and how they acquire that? Because even when you think about that meta skill that even how we learn, learning itself is a meta skill and how we encourage people's learning, right? So if you're not a visual learner, like I'm very much a kinetic learner, like I want to see, do, and then execute. And that's how my brain translates data. But a lot, even if you think about the clinicians, a lot of them are very much like, very tactical, they're like, I need to understand every aspect and the implications, right? Because you're talking about human lives here. So they need to understand what is the risk, and then they have to quickly be able to analyze and strategize like what percentage, like what is the risk profile if I do this, right? So they're doing mind maps like all day long, which by the way, it takes a lot of effort and energy. So please make sure you guys are eating your carbohydrates because that's a really heavy brain activity. I know keto is in. But when you're doing that with brain power, please eat your carbs. Carbs are a good thing. Not processed carbs, but you know what I'm talking about. Avastec, I know something that you are really focused on in this area has a lot to do with risk. And so in a highly regulatory space, and especially with privacy, there is nothing more sacred to people, obviously, than their health privacy, the privacy surrounding that. So I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit more about that regulatory perspective. privacy and that hallucination standpoint. And please do us a favor and explain hallucinations. I think if you're in your work, or I've heard that from some of our clients at Stanford, they're talking about hallucinations. And I'm like, wait a second, are you talking about like actual hallucinations? So I'd love for you to share that perspective. Sure. So Jimmy, like I said, a generative AI has a lot of promise, but it has to be a measured step that everybody in the market needs to take. Talking about risks, right? So you talked about risk of data privacy, which is front and center in a very regulated ecosystem. If I am a patient, I would not want my patient treatment journey to be available on chat GPT at any stretch, right? Won't I want my personal data be also available on, you know, some of these chat GPT large language modules? The other thing that you talked about, which is the risk when it comes to hallucinations. So the definition of hallucinations is, as you realize the architecture of generative AI is that it is trained on these large language modules, which has a lot of data, right? But there are certain use cases or specific cases where that large language module does not have the answer. But by design, what will happen is, it will give you a response, which it does not have the data backing for, but because it has generative capabilities, it will try to back work towards the answer. So the case in point could be that as a result of reviewing some patient data or patient history, let us say that by design or by stroke of luck, we are not aware of the age of the patient, right? So, The generative AI has this potential to generate what a treatment journey would be even though that person's age is not known, which is the risk of hallucination. So it will prompt and give you data which is absolutely not applicable. Another risk that I believe Jamie is important is the risk of bias or you know the big risk of ethics. As a person who is being treated by generative AI. Are you telling the person that you know what part of your journey will be taken over by generative AI? You know that is an ethical consideration for health clinicians also when they are giving access in a particular case for a patient to just interact with a generative AI chat board. Then there is an additional risk of bias, right? Now again to Vignesh's point, the underlying data is very important. And in a diverse ecosystem, in a diverse country like America, like India, you don't know when generative AI is throwing bias, right? And it is a very important consideration that all of us need to be mindful of. I believe from my vantage point, you know, the open AI, the Googles, the Bards are aware of this as a risk, right? Which is why they classify at least ChartGBD as your co-pilot. They don't say that it's a pilot in your journey because there is always going to be a human in the loop, especially when it comes to healthcare ecosystem. That is so important, right? So and Vignesh, I think you mentioned this earlier too, right? So like the person who is operating the AI has so much influence. And Abhishek, I love how you kind of shared that perspective because that is a true concern of mine, right? Even in just your basic. of chat GPT scenarios. I was sitting next to my son and he was asking questions and I was thinking to myself like, oh my gosh, what if they put something else in there that would not be appropriate? And so there is that kind of general concern or that opportunity for, you know, people who do not have a patient-centric like heart or focus or people whose value systems may be different from your own. And so- It's crazy to think about how people will manipulate AI in that space. And I really appreciated how you also talked about the different meetings with that, right? Cause you're gonna treat a pediatric patient differently than you're gonna treat a more mature patient. Even when it starts to recommend tools and systems, and then you start talking about robotics when they're doing surgery and like how programmed everything has to be and how precise everything is. Oh my gosh, guys, sometimes like it's It's overwhelming even thinking about that and how we ingest that. Vignesh, any thoughts, my friend, on that aspect? I'm sure you've got a perspective as well. I would say education on how to use generative AI is very, very important to mitigate those risks. So everyone... especially the professionals who are leveraging Gentry TOBA in any shape or form. So there are formal GPT, there are chat GPT, there are legal GPT, different versions of GPT coming up. So everyone should be educated on how to use and more importantly where not to use. So we have seen a lot of examples. Earlier, I have a shake where chatting about it, people are putting their questions on. chat GPTC these are my symptoms what my symptoms would I take. Right? Oh my god. Do you really think that's time to go with that? That's so frightening. Right? So I think. So it's very, very important for us as a society, as an organization to educate everyone on the risks of generative AI, when not to use, when to use. The other aspects from organization side is generative AI is not the answer for everything. So everyone talks about the rosy picture of generative AI, all the promises it brings up. But there's also a cost involved in implementing generative. It's a massive cost, your infrastructure cost, your model training cost, the computation power it takes to generate a single response. So it is important to identify where to use generative AI. In a lot of cases, a simple automation tool is much more cheaper and efficient than implementing a generative AI. So those are the two things that I would highlight. Awesome. Thank you so much for that. We could probably talk about this all day long. And I know we're gonna have you guys back on the show again. So thank you so much. But I do have a few follow up questions because I wanna kind of set the stage for what can all of our listeners really kind of think is on the horizon. So I'd love for you guys to talk about any type of like cool new kind of tech or what's on the horizon. And then also think about like how leaders need to think about adoption. And then also the implementation aspects of that. Yeah, maybe I can start with how the entire technology and managing talent is going to shape up. Like I said, the reason why I started involving myself more in this space is the interesting aspect around how the entire talent management is shaping up. So if you have been tracking this market in the last three to four years, there are multiple talent-related technologies that has been developed. The number of unique technologies related to talent, I would say, in the last two years or so, thousands of startups have come out. So as leaders, it's very, very important to think about talent related technologies in a much more holistic manner. And thinking about the future of managing talent and how the technology will shape up, I strongly believe EMS is going to play a key role here. And going forward right now, VMS is playing a key role in managing the contingent or non-permanent workforce. But the way the evolution is happening in the VMS space, it is going to become the central hub to manage total talent. And we have already started seeing signs of VMS bringing that total talent visibility. The next step would be VMS being the core of total talent management. What I really want to also do is really help all of our hospitals or clinicians think about what is the advantage of having a technology like a VMS, what it means to the business, what it means for them, what it means from their time perspective, right, too, versus trying to do that all on their own. Yeah. So technology, like I said, is going to be the bridge of different stakeholder groups, right? So if you look at VMS as a technology. And the nature of interaction with such technologies, multiple stakeholders are involved here. So your talent acquisition team, HR, when it comes to a contingent workforce, procurement is involved, and your staffing suppliers are involved. MSPs are involved, and organizations are there, plus the actual talent and candidates. So this VMS technology is now evolving cater to the needs of all different stakeholders. So focusing on talent experience, focusing on patient experience, focusing on recruiter experience, focusing on hiring manager experience. It's going to be the central hub. And one of the key changes that we are seeing is that runway to change or the pace of transformation as... shortened a lot, right? Earlier what organizations were doing in one year, now they have to do it in three months or four months and that agility is becoming a key factor here, right? So that's where the third party technology since a lot of cases we have seen, you know, third party providers, they must be playing a key role in enabling this entire talent transformation because they've got the expertise, they have access to tools and they are. acting as an orchestrator in bringing VMS as a central technology and then enabling that ecosystem to coexist with each other. Awesome. Abhishek, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So as per my vantage point, right, I see the future, especially from a healthcare ecosystem perspective, slowly but steadily working towards the, you know, the not star of 360 degree patient review, right? Where you know every detail that is required for a doctor to treat patients and to meet them better. Now, certain steps have already been taken in that regard, which is of interoperability of EMR EHR systems, right? Where your medical data can flow from one system to the other. Now what is happening is through the advent of your variable devices, right? You are, if you are... having some pulse oximeters, booming that data towards the cloud so that a person can be, or a caregiver can actually monitor the health of the patient in a 360 degree manner. Now to the other point, Jamie, that you said, what should be, you know, executives be thinking about? So, you know, they should be thinking about the benefits. Of course, there are mighty benefits. They should be thinking about the risks and the cost to the point that Ignice mentioned. But another aspect of technology is how is the user experience getting impacted? If a technology is there where it is the user experience is not good, that technology will fail because there is a person who is going to be behind that technology. So there is a plethora of technology tools which are there. It is the job, I believe, of professionals within the healthcare ecosystem to decide what are the correct moves to make. a technology overload which defeats the entire purpose of ensuring best patient care. 100% agree with you. Yeah. Guys, both of those. Sorry, go ahead. I just want to pick up on Abhishek's point on 360 patient experience, right? It is also translating and reflecting on the talent side as well. So 360 degree talent management is becoming a key focus for a lot of executives. So the way... the entire talent management is shaping up. There's a lot of organizations, leading organizations started thinking about not just talent acquisition, talent management, compensation, and how do I design a career path for my employees. At the same time, how can I tap onto different talent pools and enable internal mobility as well, right? Like I said, there are people analytics, there are different talent pools, marketplaces existing in the industry. So I strongly believe VMS is going to be the central system that's going to integrate with different pockets. So there are internal mobility system, there are rate card management systems, there are career path management systems, there are people analytics, there are workforce analytics. So this is going to be the hub. the orchestrators of different talent technologies to enable that vision of 360D talent management. No, I think both of you bring up really great points. What I especially love though, is when we talk about the people aspect of that. I think our fear or what media or everybody wants to talk about is how it's gonna mitigate all the human components. But to your point, Vignesh, I think it's gonna literally like allow us to come back to some level of humanity. because all of the automation and all of those processes, administrative stuff that kind of really disengages a lot of people and really burns us out because it costs a lot mentally to be able to do that work. Like now we're gonna have more time as leaders and as humans to like have some really awesome conversations like about development, about what motivates me. And then from a mental health perspective, what can we do to like fast forward those conversations as well? verbal technologies and a lot of things that are coming out in the market right now from a mental health aspect, right? Like I just saw something yesterday about like being able to count breaths and what it does for cardiac events or is voice pattern recognition going to be able to detect some mental health crisis, right, as it starts to break down. So I'm incredibly encouraged about all the automation that AI is going to afford us and us really getting to focus back on some of these human skills. Now we'll probably still have to take some training classes and still make sure that we have people who are educated on that and who can help us unify that, which is really what motivates me. So guys, thank you so much. I wanna leave you guys with one last question. So if you could challenge our audience to take one specific action or adopt a mindset shift based on our conversation today, what would that challenge be? I would say do not see technology as a threat and start thinking about career in a different way. So earlier like I said the linear path of career of you know your schooling, education, job and then retirement is no more relevant. You will have to upskill and reskill every two to three years to stay relevant in the industry. In that case your technology will become a copilot. and enable you have better lives. Oh my gosh, that's brilliant, my friend. Stamp that, that's gonna be a quote someday. Yeah, so from my perspective, I would say, you know, it is important to embrace technology as it comes and to your point to challenge yourself, at least from my personal standpoint, the kind of work that I do, any new technology that comes up, you know, that I hear about, I try to implement it within a day or two, you know, take the risk head on rather than fear of the staying in the fear of the unknown. You know, that is the worst fear to have that you don't know what will happen so you don't take a step. So at least what I will challenge all of the wonderful viewership that this program has is to take technology head on. If you think that there is a technology worth trying, try it at your personal space, try it at your workplace, and if it works, try it at the enterprise level. Oh my gosh. I love that you said that. Because now that we have shorter attention spans. and our tolerance for tension becomes kind of progressively decreasing as we age or as society ages with us. I wanna remind people back in 2006 when the iPhone was first adopted and we all started with those awesome dumb phones, whether we got the smartphones, I'm telling you, like people wanted to throw the iPhone back at the stores or they wanted to return them in droves because they were like, wait a second, we can't figure this out. And we will continue to experience that level of frustration. So, Thank you guys both so much. I think everybody learned so much today. I know I learned a ton. It was wonderful having this dialogue with you. And I just wanna again say thank you so much for everything you do from your research, from the insights, just all of the connections and the partnerships that you continue to make. Please let our audience know how they can get in touch with the Everest Reuben with you. Yeah, hope you had a very interesting discussion and. got some good insight. So you can follow us on EverestGRP.com and we are happy to connect you to our LinkedIn as well. Jamie, it was a wonderful discussion. You have been a wonderful host. Oh, thank you. You're so kind. Likewise, Jamie, we really love this podcast and we had this discussion, especially the energy that you were able to create in this. Oh, awesome. Thank you both so much. I love what I do, but I love getting to have these dialogues with such wonderful, brilliant thought leaders and people who are really trying to help us progress this space. So thank you guys so much. Thank you for joining us today for Elevate Care. We hope you enjoyed this episode. I know we did. If you found this podcast valuable, please consider subscribing, rating, and leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback means the world to us and helps us to reach even more listeners just like you. You can learn more about our show on our website at amnhelphcare.com and follow us on social media to stay updated on new episodes and the ever evolving world of healthcare. Thank you for being a part of the ElevateCare community. Until next time, keep elevating healthcare and remember that together we can create a brighter, healthier future for all. Special thanks to AMN Healthcare for making this show possible.