Ray Lowe, CIO of AltaMed, discusses how healthcare organizations can leverage technology strategically to bridge health equity gaps while serving diverse, multilingual communities. Learn how AltaMed's digital transformation initiatives create more accessible, culturally competent care delivery models that other healthcare organizations can adopt.
Ray Lowe, CIO, AltaMed
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live
Welcome 0:01 Welcome to Digital Health talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't. As we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Janae sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS, deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
Megan Antonelli 0:29 Welcome to Health Impact, digital health talks change makers focused on fixing healthcare. I'm Megan Antonelli, CEO of health impact, live and today we're talking to Ray Lowe, the CIO of AltaMed health services, and our conversation was going to center around health equity and technology's role. However, here we are in Los Angeles, both of us amid the LA fires, having just received notifications that we think might be a bit of a false alarm with going across all of town, but ultimate has been impacted. So, you know, we're going to talk about equity and kind of what we're going through today. Hi Ray, thanks for being here at this, you know, kind of critical time. Hi
Ray Lowe 1:09 Megan, thanks for inviting me. Yeah, the shift of focus of the conversation, I think it's really important for folks to understand how community response happens, how we pivoted in our communities. We've been directly affected by the Eaton Canyon fire. We lost one of our facilities to that. And you know that there may be some learnings for the audience out there in terms of, how does the health system respond? Reply? What do we need to do and still make sure we provide safe, quality care for our patients, keep our providers and our employees safe. How do we rally around that? So I'm looking forward to the conversation so very timely and a very interesting time in our in our lives. Never I've seen such catastrophe in the greater Los Angeles area.
Megan Antonelli 1:58 I know. I mean, it really is. I mean, we've, you know, I've lived here for over 10 years now. I know you've been here a lot longer, and it's just this has certainly been the biggest, and, you know, really, most devastating fire we've seen in such a, you know, such a highly settled, congested area. You know, all of them, and obviously have friends and family who have been impacted. But I saw earlier today about the ultimate facility. Tell me a little bit about what happened. I know it was in the Eaton fire. So Pasadena, yeah, I
Ray Lowe 2:33 saw I know that you're nationwide. Megan, so please share with who Ultimate is. So ultimate, we're actually the largest, or second largest, federally qualified health center inside of the United States. We treat over 500,000 lives, primarily in the Medicaid market, which means folks are 200% below the poverty level. Many of them are non English speaking. And you know, we are the areas that folks go to for their care. Okay? So it's really important that, in terms of ultimate, you know, we have a family of companies. We've a lot we're a large provider network providing those services. We also have PACE programs which focus on elderly care and full comprehensive care, fully capitated. And then we also have a Medicaid insurance plan and a managed services organization. So we look very seriously at, how do we provide that proper, value based care that's culturally sensitive?
Megan Antonelli 3:32 Yeah, so important, especially in so many communities here in Los Angeles, right right now, you guys do do some great work and provide amazing care. And I know, you know, at a time like this, to, you know, to evacuate, you know? I mean, I can't even imagine, you know, what the process is and what has to go on to make that, that happen. But I know, I heard that they were, you know, everyone was safely evacuated, even though the building was lost,
Ray Lowe 3:59 yeah. Well, you know the crazy thing, Megan, I mean, we're only 48 hours from, you know, the news flash showing those fires roaring up Pacific Palisades, which is one of the most curated and wealthy areas of Los Angeles. You know, I'm there, and I don't think people realize what was happening and how we needed to react. And while people were glued to the stars, the athletes, Tom Hanks poems, lost iconic restaurants that you would go for once a year for a special celebration, Gladstone, all blown, all burnt, right? And then it moves over to the San Gabriel Mountains, over into and the called Eaton Canyon, which is a Sierra Madre Villa north of Pasadena, which is again winding canyon roads up there. And the way that that fire just marched down the canyon burned everything in sight, and then it made its way in. To Altadena, north of Pasadena, which is somewhat densely packed, and it's a very interesting demographic in there that you have more working class type of middle class folks in the Altadena area. And then when you go to the palace age, you really have the wealthy. And the fire is shown, I mean, it doesn't discriminate in terms of service and what you're doing.
Megan Antonelli 5:24 No, I mean, and that it is, it's an incredible thing to see. And just, you know, I mean the houses and the devastation, but you know, everyone is impacted equally, you know. And and it's just, you know, you lose your house. It doesn't matter what you know, what that house is. It is yours, you know, and it is everything. So it's just devastating, you know. And it's a lot, and I, you know, I think we think, obviously, of the fire, the fire departments and and, you know, those first responders. But of course, it's a, it's a strain on the healthcare system as well, right? I know it's,
Ray Lowe 6:00 I was actually acting as administrator on call and on Tuesday night, and we were kind of assessing what was happening, you know, and I called the CEO and I said, we need to activate emergency response in all of our health systems. We have administrators on calls whose job it is to make that call and to alert the executive team for you to move ahead. And then you go into your incident planning and your corrective action planning around there, you know. And some are good at it, so we're not so good at it on there's always something you learn through these situations. But then as you go to the next day, and you're in your act, and their command center has been activated, and those different layers, and you start assessing, right? You know, Santa Monica is adjacent to Pacific Palisades the evacuation line. It was pretty far into the city of Los Angeles, not just on the mountains. It was into the city, the true city of Los Angeles, and those folks that had to evacuate when you come over into the San Gabriel Valley, the Eaton Canyon fire, lots of folks. It's in Kaiser Permanente, Cedar Sinai. A lot of those providers, they live in these nice areas, and you know, they are under evacuation. So when you're coming to the office the next day, you have a number of folks that are evacuating. You have folks that may have lost a house or in transition, you know, and how do you as a health system react to not only your patients, but to your employees, and ensure that you have that well being, you know, accounted for across the board? It's, it's, it's a true testament of our commitment in healthcare,
Megan Antonelli 7:39 right? Yeah, no. I mean it both from the employee standpoint, where you know, everybody basically is, you know, lives in a place that's been impacted in some way, but also, even just the roads, you know, you're meant to stay off the roads. There's congestion. So you know, is there anything you know in that you know, sadly, having just come off of the pandemic, a lot of your team, you know, being virtual, being able to not come in, you know, are there some of the things that you've learned from from that or been but put into place from that made this, you know, at least a little bit easier on your teams? I
Ray Lowe 8:13 would say, actually, yes. I mean, I think all of us different health systems, we all had command centers that had to be defined around COVID, right? It wasn't that long ago. People may think it's only two years just and passed, that's not that long ago. On there, we can't learn those good lessons. So fortunately, we knew how to activate our emergency response on there. You know, during COVID, our technology was was behind. We've matured much more, and then we're figuring out, how do you do a testing center, right? And that was a big question, shelter in place. What does that mean? Everybody is now homebound on there, and you're reaching out to people that are scared in a pandemic, and you come into a disaster system like this, whether it be the LA fires, whether it be Katrina, whether it be there's nor'easters or there's big fire up in Santa Rosa, if you call that, that just decimated those areas. So how, how does organization respond? You know, and you know, again, I think number one, we have to be incredibly empathetic in terms of what is happening to everybody, everybody. I mean, there's no differentiator in who that person is. And understanding what we also did is, you know, we looked at our number of appointments, about 1000 a day, or your Census on there, determining what and or how or where you can move people, obviously, is the facility validation. What's open, what's not going to be open, where staff can be redirected. How you're going to redirect some of my hospital friends, they had evacuation plans in place. Where are you going to be moving patients to? How are you going to, you know, make sure that they have a continuity of care. So, you know, I. A it's a different type of crisis, similar type of execution, right? But it's all again, all focused, you know, on the patient, right? In terms of, how do we do it,
Megan Antonelli 10:09 right? No, it is. It's, you know, having those, you know, sort of guidelines in place, and the and the response team and the incident team is so important, you know, and then in terms of, you know, the resiliency of the teams that you know, they've they've been through this before, but, yeah, I mean, I imagine, particularly in some of the underserved communities, and where, you know, with the elderly, who I'm sure have, you know, with chronic breathing problems and things like that. I mean, all over the city right now we're dealing with poor air quality, and, you know, and so much so the tap, you know, the sort of stress on the healthcare system is there? What about kind of, you know, I know, in terms of some of the virtual care solutions and things like that, are there, you know, are you watching kind of upticks of that, as people are trying not to come in, or, you know, not as much. It's
Ray Lowe 11:04 no, no. It's a fabulous question. So what we did is we actually pivoted right more folks to virtual care, and again, in a non English speaking we're talking about health equity and the ability for people to make sure that they understand, and being able to bring in language translation services so that people are aware into that video visit in there. We're Fortunately, we're epic, and we actually are moving forward with a new pilot. I mean, now we're talking about technology which allows us to bring in interpretator interpreters on demand, right? So if we're having this interaction with the provider, he just often they called it and the service pops in. Before that, we bring in a translation, a little kiosk in there for a patient, so that they could have a better understanding of their health and what that's being required of them. But now we're able to do that in the same window, like we're talking here, right? So that really makes sure we're being culturally sensitive, making sure our patients are understanding what's happening, you know? Oops, there goes another alert,
Megan Antonelli 12:12 yeah, well, you know. And hopefully that alert is to tell us that the that the first one was a mistake. But I mean, we're literally living this right now, and you think about it, and here we are, you know, pretty savvy with our phones. Can go on the internet. Can say, Okay, well, where is the fire? Can go directly, you know, we, you know, sort of, I opened my citizen out to see, okay, is there really a fire nearby? You know, because I'm just that connected, you know, if I have to, I can actually turn on the police
Ray Lowe 12:41 radio, I do,
Megan Antonelli 12:43 and you know, but everybody isn't that, you know. So right now we are literally, probably, you know, surrounded by people who are kind of panicking about this alert. That is probably a technology glitch, because the fire is in Woodland Hills. There's a new fire, the Kenneth fire, and that is, you know, sort of near, but certainly not something that we should, you know, we would have to evacuate for so, you know, but we know that however, you know, we're in a there's many people whose phones just went off that that don't, and it's kind of kind of crazy. So,
Ray Lowe 13:20 yeah, there's, there's a lot of literacy, right? And there's judgment in there, you know, again, if you look at people's lives again in any of these towns, and unfortunately, some of those folks that perish in the fires up in Eaton Canyon, they could have been some of our seniors, right? And and they may not have the cognitive ability, or they refuse. This is my home. I'm not leaving my home. What are you talking about? I've been here for 80 years. It's never happened. It's not going to happen, you know. And you know what? How is the reality of that, you know? And, and I know it's, I don't know. It's just the kindness I think we all need to show each other, and now we have to help each other and reason. And you hear beautiful stories of folks banding together, right? Well, you know, to save and water hoses and dirt and everything in order to put out a fire, to protect their neighbors and neighborhoods. So it's, it's a nice story of humanity, right? Some of the goodness of what's, what's kind of happening, you know, out there,
Megan Antonelli 14:16 yeah, and I, and I think, to your point, you know that it really does, you know, it doesn't, doesn't show any, you know, favoritism in this. It's, everyone is impacted, and it is, you know, and it is moving. It moves so quickly, you know, coming from the East Coast, I, you know, it's hard to even understand, you know. And I talked to my friends on the East Coast, and, you know, and it's, this wind that, like, you know, is crazy, and we happen to, I don't like to say it out loud, and, of course, I just got the alert, so I, you know, I believe it's sort of, but, you know, we don't really live in the the area that gets that wind, so we haven't been impacted yet, you know. But anything is possible, and it's a it's just, you know, it's so devastating. But thank goodness for the helpers. And, you know, I think I saw, you know, the quote from Fred Rogers, that when you see devastation, that the you know, the helpers are the ones to look for. And there certainly are in this situation and and luckily, organizations like AltaMed and folks like you who have, you know, kind of laid the foundation and the bedrock to, you know, for the systems to be able to respond effectively.
Ray Lowe 15:21 Yeah, you know, the interesting thing is, so what's currently going on again? If you remember that gripping video on the news channel which showed that skilled nurse facility, you know, being vacating, I mean, you couldn't look away from it, and you saw all these patients, many of them older, you know, on gurneys, and they were being transported to the Pasadena Convention Center around there, the Department of LA County, Department Health Services, put out a call for help, and they reached out to AltaMed for us to help provide clinical services. You know, doctors, nurses, behavioral health folks, right and other hands on there. We certainly did meet the call for them. We have a couple teams that are down there working, you know, with the community around there as well. And so, I mean, you look at the the impact of it and and, you know, the fire will pass, right, but the lives will take months, years to be repaired. I mean, you're hearing about these nice offers from Airbnb, etc. Well, you can live here for free for a week, which, which solves your immediate need. But, you know, the long term effects I go, your house is gone. It's gone, right? If your school is burnt down, it is burnt down, you know? And it's really telling, right? You know, how we move ahead and how the communities, right, come together, you know, and how we yourself health delivery folks also support those,
Megan Antonelli 16:49 yeah, no, it's interesting. And, you know, I mean, I saw someone online sort of saying, you know, all I'm seeing is about the celebrities, you know. But part of that is because so many people follow the celebrities, are talking about this because it's in many cases, their backyard and their homes, and they have the platform to share, and we pay attention, and then that ultimately gets amplified by whomever, whether it's you know, people Us Weekly, the news you know, talking about it, but you know that that sharing that visibility of it, at least calls the attention to it, and, you know, ultimately, will hopefully channel those resources to where they need to be, not just the celebrities who are already committing, you know, millions of dollars to fundraise and do what needs to be done, but also, you know, obviously the government and everyone else that needs to help out here, because it isn't just celebrities, it's, it's, you know, you know, hundreds and 1000s of lives of homes that have been lost. So, right, right, yeah, well, you know, I think, and we know, it's such a, you know, crazy time, you know, particularly these last couple of days. But you know, we always like to talk about positive things. And we do our segment, which is the five good things, you know, broadly, you know, we've just started a new year. We've had some not so great news and not so great days in the in the last week or so. But as you look to 2025 when the smoke, you know, clears, what are some of the things you're excited about?
Ray Lowe 18:20 Well, you know, the ultimate goal is we really want to be the Medicaid model for the country, you know, so with our patient population, you know, over half a million lives that we manage, and we look at the quality scores that we're able to achieve from a HEDIS measure were we constantly receive awards from the from the health plans, right for the quality of service, even for Medicare ratings of a four, 4.5 stars in an underserved market, you know, and we've been able to do a lot of that. That's kind of the health equity, you know, by fortunately, and we're epic, we have our own version of epic, and we're able to do the predictive modeling. We're able to do the quality outreaching. You know, from a patient engagement strategy. We deliver it in Spanish, English. We deliver telenovelas which are like photo links, which tells you this is why you need to go get a colorectal cancer screening, not in 100 word text, but it also gives you a link here. It's a comic strip which is much easier to understand why you need to do this. Right? We do other things in terms of our transitions of care, and helping our our patients transition from a hospital and back into care with the, you know, three or four visit program employing remote patient monitoring, reporting home, including Home Health Nursing as well. So, you know, from a delivery network perspective, we're moving right to be more, you know, comprehensive in terms of focusing on wellness. You know, for our patients now, when you look at your Latino patient population, right, there is chronic diabetes, chronic hypertension. You know, with their it's, it's, it's cheaper to get cokes and chips and then a bottle of water, right? Or, you know, the access to fresh vegetables, etc. This also determines help. And how do you do that? Right? So what we do at ultimate again, is we have a program, ultimate helps. It focuses on SDOH is, you know, when we connect our folks, not just here's a referral to but we follow up from our PACE programs. If we have pace participants, this is our elder care program that are homeless, right? We will get housing vouchers. We will help them, escorted them. What's happening today with the fires we know folks that don't have food. We have food delivery going out to our patients so that they can have somebody to eat. I mean, Megan, I don't I we had a power outage for about 14 hours where I live. And then, in addition, fire was very close to home, because there were some little transponders that were dropping sparks that were living little brush fires, you know, along the roadway, literally half a mile from my home. And you know, it's this, it's, it's a very kind of eye opening, right, what, how, what, and how do we respond, you know, to those things. I mix up some of the corporate things and personal things on that perspective. But in terms of health equity, that's, that's, you know, that kindness, that involvement in the community, right, understanding, communicating in the proper fashion, using the technology to enable to discern as well. You know, you know, I'll kind of pause there. I can go on for a while, but I'll let you ask me, yeah, questions, no,
Megan Antonelli 21:52 but I think you know, you know, the mixing of the corporate to the personal. You know, healthcare, you know, is nothing if it's not personal, right? And when you you know are in your role and work in healthcare, you have to think about that. And then where social determinants of health come, which I always find to be a really, you know, kind of dry way of saying, you know, your personal, these are your personal demographics, right? We've kind of, you know, in some ways, that sanitizes what you know, what those things really are, which are your access to food, your you know, income, you know, certainly home. You know your whether you have a home or not, which you know is one of the bigger, you know, biggest deciding factors in in your health. So I think you know that is so important. And I think Medicaid has always been in such a, you know, great position. You know, it's a tough, it's a tough place to be a provider, and it's a tough area to actually deliver care. But because it is, you know, looked upon as having to have an impact on those social determinants of health, and it's, you know, it's sort of like a well, you must look at that as opposed to, and, you know, doesn't matter. We just look at their weight and their biometrics, and then, then that's okay, you know. Whereas this, you know, Medicaid requires it to do, and it gives you that ability to have more leverage. So, you know. And I think those programs you know that are happening all over the country, around, you know, access to food and assisting there are so important,
Ray Lowe 23:19 yeah, and Medicaid, I mean, you know, 30% pretty high, 30% of the US patient population is in Medicaid, right? So there's 300 million people in the United States. You know, 40 to 60 million people across the country, whether it is urban or rural, right? Are facing these issues, and how do you close that gap? Provide those services. Provide that health equity, which is kind of the topic we're going to start on, is really important. And so again, we're really proud that we're able to make those advances. Other things we're excited about is, when we look at we have about, you know, 400 providers in our organization, which is fantastic. We have a pretty deep bench of providers, so we're looking at authorizations and referrals, for example, you know, it may take a while. It's very hard to find a specialist, and that will take Medicaid, because it is not a strong payer, you know, in there. And so we're building new muscle about our docs, providers that have that specialty in sports medicine, have that ability in cardiology, oftentimes at a primary care is they may just have a question right that needs to be answered or want a second opinion. And so oftentimes, right? We will refer that authorization out to a provider in the community, but that community that access for that patient may not be out there for six months, right? Just because it's so impacted, right? Folks that have PPO have a lot of choice. Other folks, you know, we got to see, how do we close it? So we're looking at interesting program. Is where we do our internal consults, right? We can almost turn it back almost immediately with the patient right, and provide it back to that primary care specialist. So, you know, it allows us to close a number of visits or type of questions for those patients when they're in front of us, either virtually, you know, or in person. So that's something we're really excited. Are
Megan Antonelli 25:21 you leaning? Are you leaning on any of the kind of digital provider networks that are specialty, because we, you know, I've had a few of them on the show, in terms of, I think, just recently, cylinder, which is a gastroenterology, you know, network we've talked to, you know, certainly PT and OT type networks. Are you looking at any of those, or is it more within your existing provider base, those, those specialties? Well, the
Ray Lowe 25:50 fans will do both, obviously, you know again, you know insurance, right? Help the payers taking nothing from them, right? Medicaid payer market pays poorly, right? Everybody takes Medicare. Everybody loves private insurance. You know, employer insurance, when you come to Medicaid, the reimbursement levels are much lower. So to find specialists that will take that level of pay, it's very hard, right? So suppose, for those that are we certainly community cooperate with those in our markets. You know, we have agreements put into place with them and then internally. But I'll tell you, the challenge is, is, you know, we're all gonna go back to the EMR, right? And how do you get those specialty notes back in so that you can see it? Interoperability, okay, that's another topic, right? Is constantly a challenge, right? We at ultimate or an epic shop again, so I can communicate with cedar, Sinai and UCLA and and Kaiser and Province, which sounds great, but, you know, my patients don't go to those hospitals, right? They they go to some, sometimes a dentist, hospitals, regulation of CHLA, you know, they're on cervical or Oracle. We have other ones in Downey that are on eclipses. And so when you look at the interoperability and the data alignment and how that gets back to the point of care for the provider, it's still not fixed, right? It's still a problem, right? And, and the HIE is an interoperability so again, that's something else we're working on. So that's another, yeah,
Megan Antonelli 27:19 and that's something I mean, when we've talked to the some of those specialty digital health companies, you know, that is a lot of, you know, figuring out, how does that get back to, you know, and back to the back, even back to the patient, you know, because you don't want to put so much on the patient, where they've got 15 different, you know, 15 different apps, one for their One for PT, one for gastro, you know, one for, you know, health, but, you know, general health management, so it's, it is still that is a remaining, you know, remaining, ever present challenge that, in some ways is, I think, getting worse before it's getting better. Because while some of these digital tools can solve the access issue, and it allows the patient to then get that access. It then creates their health record as being more disparate, and puts it on them
Ray Lowe 28:08 Absolutely and you know? And unless you're in healthcare, I mean, and you have a very strong health advocate, it's very daunting, right? And if English is not your primary language, and you're not familiar with the terminology Andrea where or how to push on there again, it's even more daunting. And, you know, people will kind of nod like, you know that their understanding, but they really are, so that's where we need to focus again, on health equity, so that they understand the messages.
Megan Antonelli 28:36 To go back to the fires, though. And one, you know, silver lining of all this digitization. I mean, losing a building, losing a structure, I imagine there was a paper lost, but I hope and, and sort of assume, but maybe I'm wrong to assume that there was digitized records and, and that there's, to some degree, you know, that you're now on those EHRs. It's, it's less of a, you know, a bit of a, less of a tragedy than it could be if you actually were still on paper records. So, yeah, well, it's a reminding of the efforts made.
Ray Lowe 29:11 Yeah. Well, that's like, that's a nice thing again. I mean, we had migrated that facility over onto our epic system, so there was no data integrity loss, no patient records lost. The interesting thing is, this was an acquisition of another FQHC that recently was completed only about four or five months ago. So all the data alignment, the data archiving, and transitioning a lot of those patients into into our system. It's fairly fresh, you know. So it's fortunate, right, that we have that in place so there's no breaks, you know, to the patients again, and then the ability, if they have a question, to through our ultimate now program, which is, you know, an instant video visit with a provider. And we. Able to provide that to those folks, you know, if they had things that were scheduled, right,
Megan Antonelli 30:05 right? Yeah, no, it is. I mean, it just reminds you, we've come a long way, you know, we're not there yet. Interoperability was a problem, then it's a problem now, but it's different. You know, it's not entirely paper to fax to to, you know, etched in stone, or do I even remember it? But we've got some digitization, and it's brought us to a different place that makes, you know, make some things a little bit easier, but in light of, you know, recent events, it's, it's hard. Sometimes it's a little hard to see the silver lining, but, yeah,
Ray Lowe 30:37 yeah. But that's, I think that's a good thing, right? You know, that fortunate we have in there. I think, you know, I want to hit just a couple of other items since Kenny, one of my is that five. Think I've answered two or three of those. So I'll give you, I'll give you a, you know, a few more. You know, I said one thing we're really looking at is enrich clinic analytics from an operational perspective. You know, access, you know, is one thing. There's no show rates. How do you do it? How do you manage it? How do we have an effective scorecard? You know, on the hospital acute side, you know, you can go into the ED kind of see all, all these great things, ambulatory, it's not as well developed in there. So we're really moving. We're looking at nurse efficiency. How much my chart adopt utilization. We have what are open slots? What is risk of no show what is risk of patient acuity coming in, right? So CH, SEO, PD, they have a high risk. We may need to spend more time on them. So we're spending quite a bit of effort, and this is really towards value based care as well. To have those scorecards built, have those visible in the clinics for their daily huddles. So they can be more efficient. We can meet our patients more where they are. So if we have first an example, a patient that no shows, in addition to following up on it through texting, etc, on there, you know, we should, you know, really reach out to our case from our case manager to front offices to reach the patient, right? And if they're going to no show, you want to ensure that we have those slots open for people that walk in or somebody else that needs us. So that's something we're really excited about. The other thing is, you can't talk about healthcare these days, about AI, so we're excited. We just put together agreement with a bridge to rouse organization. And what we love about his products, or their products, is, not only does it really do really good ambient clinical voice listening, it also has the ability to translate as you're talking so again, in our market, health, equity, Spanglish is a language in there, and mobility in order to parse out right, the Spanish, the English. So that drops in the proper note. We're really excited about that. You know, we're going to be piloting this shortly, and we're really excited about the outcomes that are going to be, you know, coming that way as well. It's
Megan Antonelli 33:03 amazing to me. I mean, I only realized, you know, I mean, and that we've been talking certainly, about ambient listening and digital scribes for a long time, you know, and they've been on the market for a long time, but the the transcription and translation and even accent recognition and translation has been pretty bad for you know, and so it's exciting. I've heard good things about the abridged product and and a couple, a couple other products that are catching up,
Ray Lowe 33:29 but bridge, Nabla, Microsoft, facts that are all fabulous products in there, yeah. And I think that's where it's going, even for like nursing notes. You know, there's other future for orders. Now, of course, again, on AI, we all need to validate that it is correct. It takes a person, right, you know, to oversee it. It's just not gonna give us the answers. And you know, that's our responsibility as as humans, to validate what is coming out of the generated AI areas. And I'd say the last year, of course, is cyber security. I mean, it's constantly changing. The threat vectors are out there, you know, change, health is the big one everybody talks about. And, you know, it was a simple, I believe the root cause was, like a multi factor authentication, you know, if you use duo or something, or, you know, in order to validate in, there it was, I think I heard that that is, was a kind of the cause of how the the attackers got in, you know, and these bots are spraying your system all the time. How are you isolating it, you know, how are you managing it? Another great opportunity for AI, we use Cisco umbrella, Cisco ice in there. And the whole cyber security front has really changed, because before the if there was a attack happening, it would identify there was an attack of some sort. Then your security engineer would go out figure out, what does that mean? What do I need to do? Okay. Okay, now the and the way that it's moving now is that there you have defined attack parameters, and you have it, you have defined risks area, so it's more like security design. And so the software now has the ability to intercept the the attacker, and then it will isolate to provide the security engineer the options of what you should do, which is a real change, and it changes the skills of what you know your staff has to do as well. So, you know, that's, you know, that's kind of along the technology and the cyber fronts of what we're seeing and how we need to move, keep moving ahead.
Megan Antonelli 35:40 Yeah, yeah, it's an, it's a really interesting and exciting space. I mean, it's a little it's also scary, but I think it's, you know, it does feel like healthcare is under a bit of an attack, you know. But, you know, it is happen. It happens everywhere, and the and the cybersecurity element of it, but that ability, I think while AI creates some vulnerability, the tools that it is, you know, the improvements it's making to the tools that are in the toolkit to protect the data and protect the systems, are luckily catching up, you know, and certainly interesting. I mean, it's just amazing how much technology is out there and what it's able to do, right? I agree,
Ray Lowe 36:23 right? You got to manage that. Yeah, don't be afraid of it, right? But you have to learn it. I mean, message, you know, to it, folks listening to it, I go, it's another big change time. It's about another big change moment, right? And we need to move with where we are going. We have to strong in our fundamentals, right? And yet we need to have a manual Lee able to learn, right, and how we're going to keep moving ahead?
Megan Antonelli 36:47 Yeah, yeah. I think it's interesting. I think, actually, it might have been Andrea Andrea Dougherty was saying, you know, it's like, it's brought cybersecurity to the forefront, and it's made it a table, you know, sort of the table stakes of the conversation, and people are paying attention. So, you know, sort of that other silver lining of things that, you know, of bad things, is that it's now such a, such a big focus and so important, and it's getting the attention it needs. So that that is, it is a good thing, for sure. And today we need a lot of good things, whatever we whatever we can find, we'll take them, right? Yeah, you
Ray Lowe 37:25 know, I think a good thing is we kind of go back to the top of the call, you know, Megan, and going back to the fires out there. I mean, literally, it's 48 hours. I was talking to my admin. I go, I was out of the office yesterday, right? It was Wednesday. I mean, today's Thursday, and it was Tuesday afternoon that all this craziness, you know, happened, and I'm just my heart is just so warm by the support from my fellow health healthcare folks at Cedar, Sinai, Brett kawait, house key, for example, say, oh, Ramos up at Mayo. And then even, before, like, from the vendor community, reaching out to me, submit, Rana, you know, the new president of epic, reached out, and we exchanged text shivraud or bridge. You know, hearing things from 18 T and Cisco and some of our staffing firms at Tech. I mean, it really shows you the power of your ecosystem, that we're not in it alone, right? We all need each other. We can all help each other. And these moments of priceless, these those that are waving their hands, how can we help you? It's just so hard won't be doing that you're not alone. Yes,
Megan Antonelli 38:32 well, I think you know, I know you have a lot to tend to right now, and I thank you so much for taking the time. And I think that's a great sort of note to kind of end on today, which is, you know, I too, you know the outreach and the outpouring of you know concern, even though, you know I'm a safe distance away, but it certainly just being, being within the you know area of this. It's, it's, it's hard to it's hard to be a part of it. So, you know, but thank you, and thank you for all you do every day to help the community in LA and all of your colleagues at AltaMed. I've met many of them, and I appreciate and love them all. So thanks so much, Ray, and thank you to our listeners for joining us today. This is Megan Antonelli for health impact digital health talks, and until next time, we'll chat soon today. Safe out there.
Thank You 39:31 Thank you for joining us on digital health talks, where we explore the intersection of healthcare and technology with leaders who are transforming patient care. This episode was brought to you by our valued program partners, automation anywhere, revolutionizing healthcare workflows through Intelligent Automation, netera, advancing contactless, vital science monitoring elite groups delivering strategic healthcare IT solutions. Sell point, securing healthcare identity management and access governance. Your engagement helps drive the future of healthcare innovation. Subscribe to digital health talks on your preferred podcast platform. Share these insights with your network and follow us on LinkedIn for exclusive content and updates. Ready to connect with healthcare technology leaders in person. Join us at the next health impact event. Visit Health Impact forum.com for dates and registration. Until next time, this is digital health talks, where change makers come together to fix healthcare you.