In this episode of Elevate Care, Kerry speaks with Robin Goldsmith, Global Lead for Health Innovation and Strategy at Verizon. They explore how connectivity is transforming healthcare, from meeting evolving consumer expectations to driving health equity. Robin shares her insights on pandemic-driven innovation, the critical role of startups in tackling health disparities, and the exciting potential of AI in the industry. Discover how reliable connections enable care at home and why fostering a culture of innovation is essential for healthcare organizations. Tune in to learn how Verizon is shaping the future of healthcare through technology and strategic innovation.
In this episode of Elevate Care, Kerry speaks with Robin Goldsmith, Global Lead for Health Innovation and Strategy at Verizon. They explore how connectivity is transforming healthcare, from meeting evolving consumer expectations to driving health equity. Robin shares her insights on pandemic-driven innovation, the critical role of startups in tackling health disparities, and the exciting potential of AI in the industry.
Discover how reliable connections enable care at home and why fostering a culture of innovation is essential for healthcare organizations. Tune in to learn how Verizon is shaping the future of healthcare through technology and strategic innovation.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Health Innovation at Verizon
02:19 The Role of Connectivity in Healthcare
05:51 Trends in Healthcare Technology
08:39 Consumer Preferences Shaping Healthcare Delivery
10:26 Verizon's Commitment to Health Equity
12:16 Innovative Startups and Health Equity
14:43 Fostering Innovation in Healthcare
18:55 Challenges and Opportunities in Healthcare
20:21 The Future of AI in Healthcare
23:33 Advice for Maintaining Innovation in Healthcare
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (00:00.148)
Welcome to Elevate Care. I'm your host, Kerry Perez, and I am thrilled today to be joined by our guest, Robin Goldsmith. He is the global lead for health innovation and strategy at Verizon. Robin, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Kerry. Awesome. OK, so long title with At a Great Business. Could you give us a little bit more about your background? Yeah, a lot of words. And what that really means is I've been in health care a long time, about 18 years. You know, I've kind of worked across health care.
patient acquisition, patient education, patient engagements, data analytics for healthcare. And then, right in the midst of the pandemic, I got the call to join Verizon. it made so much sense as we were doing these kinds of meetings that connectivity and devices would play a big role in healthcare that would keep expanding. So I have a unique role at Verizon where I get to touch many of our enterprise healthcare customers and tell our story, what we can enable in healthcare.
So it's a dream role, to be honest. I love that. It's always great to love what you do. And every day then is kind of something exciting. So you started mentioning a little bit about connectivity and devices. Because when most people think of Verizon, the first thing they think of might not be health care. Can you talk a little bit about that history of Verizon's getting involved into health care? Yeah, mean, think Verizon's been in health care as they've been in every other vertical.
in the US and globally. think we've just invested in hiring teams and that's why, you I'm one of the domain teams. have domains across and that's domain expertise. A lot of us come from the industry, so we have domains across healthcare insurance and life science where I sit, financial, finance, retail, manufacturing, entertainment. So I think it makes a ton of sense to have people that
speak the language, know the industry, really understand the challenges that are affecting specifically healthcare that can tell a better story to our customers and really look at what Verizon has to offer, which is a lot of solutions and capabilities and partners we can bring to bear and translate those into how it can really help our customer base. That's really our mission and mandate on my team. Okay, excellent. So you started talking about kind of the trends. It would be interesting from your perspective
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to hear about those macro trends in healthcare and then how Verizon is uniquely positioned to meet them. Yeah, absolutely. I think we all saw in the pandemic that the need for connectivity, a reliable connection. You and I are probably lucky that we had this kind of capability to do video conferencing and had a telephone, had a cell phone, had that device and connectivity to engage in education. If you have kids,
engage in healthcare with telemedicine that we saw the rise during the pandemic. But I think that shone a big light on the disparities across the US and I think just highlighted the role of Verizon's position in this market. And we're really a big piece of the puzzle as healthcare looks at what we saw during the pandemic, the challenges around staffing that continue that are not going away anytime soon.
that this move towards more more healthcare being delivered in the home is where we play. We've been a part of remote patient monitoring for very, very long time. We're the chipsets that enable those devices to function in someone's home. So I think the rise of care being delivered in the home simply because of people like to be in their home, the outcomes and the data show that people like that.
that environment, it's less risky, there's no hospital-borne infections that are going to happen. The data shows that the outcomes are very, very positive. So, hospital at home, care at home, these things are all accelerating and growing. And then when you look at the hospital environment, the networks that devices connect to in the hospital, those are moving pretty fast. All the use cases you've probably heard.
AI, machine learning, computer vision, the need for more and more connectivity, faster speeds, lower latency, I think are just continuing to grow. So we spend a lot of time on what we call the connected hospital. Other people call it smart hospital, but it's this idea of what is the network architecture that's really going to be future-proofing our hospital clients into the future for what they're doing now and then what they're thinking about in the future.
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So think we have a big role to play in those two areas. And then we have a lot of other capabilities like security services that is a big strength for Verizon. The whole gamut. you know, technology, of course, is moving very quickly. From your perspective, what's the sort of readiness of hospitals to kind of be thinking future forward?
Are you finding that a lot of clients are there and ready to go? Are there still people kind of in the discovery phase? What's your sort of perspective on maybe the maturity in this space? I think we've seen... I think the pandemic, if there was a silver lining, it's that innovation was accelerated. I think, Carrie, you probably know this, that you've been in healthcare for a while.
I think healthcare used to get a pass as compared to retail and other experiential, people who had experience in other industries like how they bank and how they go to the stores and all those industries, their modern experience is very digitally focused. And I now think that as we get these digital first natives, younger folks starting to engage more in healthcare, their expectations are higher than folks like me. They want more...
They want a better experience. They want to go to a hospital and have the same technology they have in their home, like voice enabled capabilities, other things that we have in our houses that are now moving into hospitals. And some hospitals already have them. They've been thinking about them. But I think healthcare is modernizing their environments to raise the bar of that experience. Because at the end of the day, they're very, very focused on the experience of their patients for loyalty, retention, and also their staff. They want to retain their staff.
want to leverage technology to make their staffs hopefully a little bit easier, those workflows easier. So yes, healthcare is not as fast as finance in other industries because their priority is delivering care. That's always going to be the case. And I think in some ways that's phenomenal. In other ways, there's some issues with that. mean, they didn't solidify their security as well as they probably should have because they've got other priorities.
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And we're seeing the effects of that with the breaches you see probably every week across all kinds of healthcare industry, big players in the space. I think we're seeing a tipping point where they're realizing that, you know, from my perspective, the connectivity infrastructure, what we do is super important to enable everything they want to do now and in the future.
Yeah. So do you feel like you have to do as much education as you did in the past or people are starting to kind of speak the same language and singing from the same song sheet? You know, I think it's... A lot of my time is spent just really getting the word out on the full slate of capabilities that Verizon has to offer. I'm sure when we started talking, you're like, yeah, my phone's Verizon and I've seen your stores, but you probably didn't really understand what we do for, you know, B2B.
what we do for our enterprise clients. mean, we work with 90 plus percent of the Fortune 500. We've got a great footprint there. And I think oftentimes we have, we want to get to a more strategic layer with all our customers so we can really impact their business in a profound way versus being more transactional, which as a very large company, that can happen sometimes. But I think our team and the goal moving into 2025 is to be even more strategic.
evangelize really what we can do in the market. And I think we've seen the fruits of that kind of messaging resonate in the market. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You mentioned a hospital at home and started to talk a little bit about consumer preferences, that people prefer to be home. Maybe what are some trends that you're seeing there as far as how consumer preferences are really helping to maybe shape what you think about or what hospitals think about or what the industry thinks about from a tech perspective?
Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there. When you think about healthcare being delivered in the home, there's a lot of different ways it's delivered. On one end of the spectrum, you've got hospital at home, which is an acute care setting. It's literally a hospital environment. In your home, typically a 10-day
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a 10-day period of time. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got folks that may have diabetes, that have a continuous glucose monitor. They might connect that to a tablet, and then that data goes back to their care team. So it's a pretty big spectrum. But for all of that, you do need a reliable connection to get that data back to where it needs to go, or for it to even function. So I think add to that the digital divide. A lot of folks who are participating in these programs are older folks. And I think
you know, remembering Wi-Fi passwords, setting up technology can be a challenge, right? You've probably dealt with it with your family, your grandparents, whoever it is. I think we can all relate to that. So I think making it more frictionless. you know, oftentimes, you know, the optimal state would be cellularly connected tablet, you know, tethered to pick a medical device, a smart scale pulse ox, wireless blood pressure cuff.
that out of the box just works. There's no configuration, tethering, remembering a password. If we can make it easier for folks, I think we'll see more adoption, a better experience, and the kind of snowball goes from there. I love that. The future seems bright. With that, know in particular, probably for Verizon, access to care is important, patient access. Tell me a little bit more about how Verizon plays a role in that. It might seem intuitive.
But maybe just a couple sentences on that. Yeah, I think access is a huge... I mean, it's a major... It's on the top of everyone's mind, including us. When we built this network that is across the country, we're always thinking about how do we connect more more people to the Verizon network. Excuse me. And I think the investments we've made in our network, being hyper-focused on building a reliable, quality network...
The most recent investments really, I think, will affect folks who live in rural areas because we've got really good connectivity in the major cities, the BEC cities, but when you're talking about places that are several hundred miles outside of a major metro, everyone's got challenges. Name a telco provider and we don't all have ubiquitous coverage, but we're working really hard to cover more more people.
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And we've really, something I'm really proud of is that health equity and access has been a focus of our team. So we've really partnered with not only health systems, but other technology companies to try to think about in a tribal area in Kachikan, Alaska, for example, pretty rural. They don't really have any medical diagnostic equipment on the islands. So we literally built a wireless network on the islands so that folks could engage in healthcare by inter...
basically lighting up a weather hardened virtual kiosk there. So something, thinking outside the box of how do we connect more more folks that don't have the access you and I do is something where, is top of mind for us and something we're passionate about. Robin, you were talking about health equity. Interested in maybe how you start measuring the success of that from what Verizon is able to do? Yeah.
Again, another positive that came out of what we've all experienced over the past five years was a big light was shown on health equity and the disparities out there, not only in rural areas, but in urban environments and just access to care. we actually stood up an accelerator program within Verizon as part of our Forward for Good program where we funded seven startups where health equity was at the core of their mission.
Funded them, put them through a training program, 16-week training program, looked at their tech stack, did a final showcase and invited investors, et cetera. And that was across the gamut of transportation, mental health, remote patient monitoring. really founder-led, passionate folks really trying to make a difference. And to a company, the founders really built these companies out of their learned experience that they had actually gone through to try to make it better.
Looking at companies that are doing things differently that need our kind of resources was something that I was really excited that we did. I think that's top of mind for every healthcare executive I speak to is how do we provide care to our most vulnerable patients? Because at the end of the day, if we can help them, it raises the boats for everyone. We have to take care of those folks because they're the most frequent users of healthcare.
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Typically, it's when they show up at the emergency room and that we know that encounter is very expensive for the system. If we can leverage things like telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, if we can have this always on type of care for those folks and everyone, we can lower the cost, take the strain off our nurses and docs. And I think that the whole ecosystem will be better for it. Yeah, agreed.
I was keeping this thought in my head because I found it so intriguing going back to when you were talking about the startups and how you were leveraging them. I think that's just such a cool angle to recognize that, maybe sometimes well-established companies could get some infusions from people starting stuff in their garage. Can you tell me a little bit more about why startups and why you thought that would be a great angle to get some of these innovations? Yeah. So every year we pick up...
It's part of our Forward for Good program, so we pick a societal topic and issue every year. we started with, I believe it was climate change, then we did disability, then last year we did health equity. So each year we pick a major topic that is front and center, and it just happened to be health equity this year. So I was an advisor on the program. We got hundreds of applications, and it's a unique program because we offered non-diluted equity, which is...
really helpful and having this kind of program is really helpful for folks that are bootstrapping these operations and went really well. I think it just, in my mind, it opened my eyes to the thinking around health equity and what needs to change in that market and kind of where Verizon can play a role there. I think we have a lot to offer in that area and we're really passionate about, you know, how do we look at, you know,
out of the box thinking when it comes to programs that, for example, mental health services. We did a program with UC Davis and Dr. K Nakagawa was really the driving force behind this, but they provide mental health services to a lot of folks who are incarcerated. And when they're coming out of that scenario, they want to keep that lifeline with their mental health provider. And that's typically a phone and minutes, right? And something as simple as that, if you take that away, it's a major blow to that
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that journey of coming back into society. They also had a program around unhoused folks, giving them this lifeline of a phone and connectivity to really just try to re-enter society. We take it so for granted, but for so many people, it's just not an option for cost access. And I think doing things like that and leveraging subsidies that are out there through the government, you kind of touched on that before. think those are ways we can work with...
customers, and it just makes us a better partner to our customer base if we think about things differently to try to solve a challenge they have and along the way do some good. I think that's always a great thing to think about as well. That's huge. And I think the word that you mentioned as far as partner, that's so important because as I was listening to you talk, it also sounds like you're very consultative with your clients and helping them to think.
innovatively and to maybe challenge status quo. Is that a true statement? A, and then B, how are you kind of fostering the innovative thinking? And maybe are there things that you kind of have to break through sometimes with clients to help really foster that environment of innovative thinking? know, challenges around innovation always because, you know, might ...
You mentioned I'm focused on innovation and strategy. I don't think anyone in innovation can relate that it can be nebulous and it can be challenging. But I think aligning the right resources internally, and really that means how do we cement our place, our strategy in healthcare within a very big organization and get the right kind of coalition of the willing behind that is key. But I've been really lucky. I always say I'm
very, very privileged to work with some of the best health systems out there, some of the most innovative med device manufacturers, pharmaceutical customers across the whole ecosystem that are really thinking about this unsustainable healthcare system we're in. think everyone I've spoken to would agree with me that we need to make a lot of change. And I think it started. We need to keep that going.
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Because we all see how unsustainable it is. And I think if you can leverage technology to offset some of the shortcomings, I think that's a must. So that's why I'm excited to be where I am today and really, again, privileged to work with a lot of the innovation folks in healthcare. Yeah, that's great. And everybody is seeing just the myriad of things to tackle to solve some of these challenges. There's almost too many to pick.
You know, you've mentioned things around cybersecurity and around remote patient monitoring and kind of hospital at home. What are maybe some of the other top issues that you find your clients have on their short list? You know, it wouldn't be a health care podcast without talking about AI, right, Kara? So I think I don't think that's a problem, but I think it's something that people are really trying to to understand better and to put into practice. We've seen
a lot around kind of back office. How do we automate a lot of the interactions doctors, when they're in the exam room, how they're putting in data into the EHR, that can be done through ambient listening, through AI. And those things, think a lot of the back office capabilities is perfect for AI. And then I think the clinical side, I think most docs would agree they're a little bit gun shy about putting that into a true clinical
environments, drug discovery, diagnosis, those are, you're looking at vast datasets and AI was built to go through millions of these pieces of data very quickly and provide insights. think if we can keep feeding and training those models to get to where they need to be, it's truly profound in healthcare, the implications. it's definitely, that's part of every conversation I'm having as well.
Well, your passion really does show through, and I'm sure you can't ever pick a favorite sort of technology or opportunity or innovation, but are there things that when you're getting engaged in solving a specific problem where you're like, yes, that is really speaking to one of your top passions? Yeah, that's a hard one. I do my own experience. think I'll name two. I mean, think any time I can work.
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around making aging in place a little bit easier. I think that's something that not only for the person who's aging in place, but also the caregiver. think there's a lot of work that needs to be done there. I think a lot of folks in the sandwich generation that are caring for kids and an aging parent or those that are just caring for an aging parent, there's so much more we need to be thinking about and doing to provide through technology just
more touch points and how do we keep better, I don't want to say better tabs on our loved ones, but just more visibility so we know they're in a good place and alleviate some of that worry, right? And how do we better enable folks to be more dignified as they're going into their final chapter of aging in place gracefully and how do we make that better? So that's one. And then, you know, I'm a huge fan of our nursing
our nurses. think they're really the incredible folks. Any time I can work with them and tell their story and try to make their lives a little bit easier, I'm always happy to do that. Yeah. That spoke to me, especially your first example, because I personally remember during COVID, my grandmother was in skilled nursing and it was very hard to
stay connected in that meaningful way. So I think that is so needed. And you're seeing a lot more things now, feel like, even buildings getting built to be able to age in place. So you'll see a lot of things around Dallas, where I'm based, of mixed use, where you'll have retail, you'll have a skilled nursing facility, and you'll have an apartment where you're also having the communities mix and being able to have that be more forefront so it doesn't feel so.
isolated and this is what happens when you age. So that really spoke to me. Thank you for sharing that. No, absolutely. I think a lot of the tech companies that I've been speaking to and even health systems are thinking about how do we kind of interweave, you know, build in healthcare capabilities in new housing, right? How do we kind of build for the population that is trying to age in place gracefully? so it's good to see that. I mean, some pretty large...
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technology companies are putting up show houses in some of the larger, of more well-known aging communities. And I think we'll see more more adoption of that. Very, very cool. Okay, so maybe starting to wrap up a little bit, is there anything on the horizon for Verizon that you're excited about that you're at the point where you can share with our listeners? You know, I think there's a lot we're excited about.
2025, I think, is going to be a big year for us. The rise of AI is kind of an inflection point for Verizon. We have a big role to play in the delivery of that. When you think about connecting data centers and a lot of the kind of infrastructure that is enabling that is a huge growth area for us. Healthcare and manufacturing are big focus areas for us.
we see a lot of critical kind of private 5G use cases that are very, relevant for healthcare. So we've started, we've been growing pretty quickly and I think 2025 will be a really big year for us. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm very optimistic because again, I'm privileged to speak to folks who are doing such amazing work in healthcare that makes me...
inspired by what they're doing. We'll be at a lot of the key conferences like Vive and Health and HIMSS and others. So we'll be there, come say hi. And I think it's going to be a great year. That's excellent, Robin. Maybe one last thing. AMN, one of our core values is innovation. Do you have any words of advice for people who are looking to stay innovative or to kind of maintain that spirit of innovation?
Yeah, think for me, surround yourself with people that are hopefully maybe a little bit smarter than you, that inspire you to keep thinking about things in new ways. think we get stuck in a rut of this is how it's always been done and innovation as core is thinking of different ways to do things. So that's worked for me. I try to maintain that and just take a step back. We're in a unique...
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industry. Healthcare is unlike anything else. I we truly are both very challenged. It's probably the hardest vertical to work in, but also the most privileged to work in an industry that has such a direct impact to all of us. It's something that everyone is experiencing or through them set their own healthcare journey or through their loved ones or friends. So take a step back and when you're thinking about solving challenges in healthcare, just remember what
industry you're in, the difference it can make, and remind yourself of that if you're ever getting stuck. Oh, I love that. Just really connecting to the mission and the why will help you be innovative. Robin, thank you so much. If people want to learn more about Verizon Health and you, where can we find you? So in 2025, we'll be at Vive, HIMS Health, and a few other smaller conferences across the country. So please come say hello. You can go to the Verizon
main website and just use backslash healthcare and you'll see a slate of use cases, white papers, big areas we're focused on specifically in healthcare. And you can check out our podcast, Healthcare On Air by Verizon on Apple, Spotify, and you can find the video versions if you just Google it. And I'm privileged to host that, so come check it out. Awesome. Thanks so much, Robin. Thank you, Jared. Thank you for joining us today on Elevate Care. If you found this episode valuable,
please consider sharing it with a colleague and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. You can learn more about this episode and our show on our website at amnhelfcare.com and follow us on social media to stay updated on new episodes and the ever-changing world of healthcare.