Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Dave Newman, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Virtual Care, Sanford Health

Transcript

Dave Newman, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Virtual Care, Sanford Health · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

• 0:02
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• 0:31
  Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
• 0:35
  My name is Will Riley from r one.
• 0:37
  I'm joined today by doctor Dave Newman.
• 0:40
  Dave is chief medical officer of virtual care
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  at Sanford Health. Welcome to the podcast, Dave.
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  Thanks for having me. You bet.
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  Dave, start us off. Share with us a
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  little bit about your role and the communities
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  that you serve at Sanford. Yeah. I truly
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  think, well, I've got the best job in
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  the world. So as the chief medical officer
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  of virtual care, I get to reimagine the
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  future of care delivery in rural America. I
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  get to bring together clinicians and educators and
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  technologists,
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  to
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  discover cool new health care modalities from
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  AI assisted
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  workflows to virtual care,
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  and to building the first virtual hospital, one
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  of the first virtual hospitals in the country.
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  Awesome.
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  Davis, as consumers grow accustomed to
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  real time experiences in in industries like banking
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  and retail,
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  how can health care rise to meet those
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  expectations?
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  And where do you see opportunities?
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  Yeah. It's a super important question.
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  As I've seen in my life, people want
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  things to be easy.
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  When I'm ordering something online, if it takes
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  me more than three or four clicks, I
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  get frustrated. I'm not gonna do it. If
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  I'm trying to make a reservation for a,
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  a hotel, I need to be able to
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  do it online. I don't wanna call somebody.
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  Health care needs to be the same way.
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  We need to be able to make an
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  appointment with a mental health care provider from
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  your phone. We need to be able to
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  serve those communities from your phone or from
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  your computer.
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  A good example of this is, one of
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  our pediatric doctors. In rural America, we struggle
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  to recruit and retain some some specialties.
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  Doctor James Wallace is a pediatric pulmonologist, which
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  is like a unicorn find.
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  It is very hard to find a pediatric
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  pulmonologist to be in the Dakotas.
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  His patients come from all over the place,
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  so they have to take time off of
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  work. They have their parents need to find
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  childcare for the other kids. They've gotta board
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  their dog. They've gotta pay,
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  gas money. They've gotta do all these things
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  to have one clinic appointment. So we decided
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  that that is not acceptable, and he does
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  virtual care now. Virtual care to multiple different
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  states. He is able to use a digital
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  stethoscope to listen to their heart and lungs.
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  He's able to run a a very complicated
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  cystic fibrosis clinic all through the virtual hospital
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  with pharmacists,
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  with,
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  social workers, with doctors, all of these things
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  from the comfort of the patient's own home.
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  Got it.
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  It's interesting because health care has historically moved
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  quite cautiously
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  with technology.
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  But is that still true, and is that
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  changing with the advent of AI technologies and
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  new innovations?
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  Yeah. So we are moving
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  quicker than we have in the past kind
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  of out of necessity.
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  Is,
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  right now,
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  we are
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  evaluating every single AI product that comes in
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  the same way you do evaluate, like, a
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  new medication.
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  The there has to be trust by not
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  only the patients, but also providers that these
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  work. The same way that if a new
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  medication comes out, we have to vet this.
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  We have AI governance. We have data governance
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  to make sure these are safe and effective.
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  There is a huge, huge trust component. And
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  before we're,
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  enacting any sort of AI product, I will
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  make phone calls. I will if it is
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  a cardiology program, I will talk with cardiologist.
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  If it is an AI agentic agent that
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  is making phone calls to do,
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  population health, so example, for congestive heart failure
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  or diabetes to make the phone calls to
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  make sure the patients aren't ill, I'm gonna
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  talk with the primary care providers if they
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  think this is a good idea.
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  We have struggled in the past with operationalizing
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  some of our AI products,
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  and that has been our fault.
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  We have to be
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  have, learned to have everyone at the table.
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  For example, chronic kidney disease, big problem in
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  United States, big problem in rural America. Dialysis
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  is a huge issue because patients can't get
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  to their dialysis appointments because sometimes they've gotta
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  drive several hundreds of miles. And in the
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  wintertime in the Dakotas, it's impossible.
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  So now we're focusing
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  upstream. How do we prevent chronic kidney disease?
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  We have a predictive model, but for years,
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  we couldn't operationalize it. Now we've got it
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  directly front and center in our EMR
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  to get the appropriate labs done and to
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  treat earlier stages so they don't move on
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  to dialysis.
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  The hardest part was figuring out what our
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  doctors wanted and getting the right people in
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  the room. Got it. Yeah. Okay.
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  That's a amazing experience.
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  With that in mind, what are some
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  key considerations
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  that you would
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  recommend to execs trying to establish
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  initiatives with new technology or AI? Yes. Derpup.
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  Did you learn? Yeah. Have a champion. And
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  the champion should be somebody that is trusted
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  in the clinical space that, if you don't
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  have somebody that can vouch for the product,
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  they're not gonna follow along with it. Having
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  peer reviewed evidence really, really helps now too.
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  There are several large journals that are focusing
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  on AI. And in the same way, like,
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  I use the medication example or
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  or a procedure. We wanna make sure it's
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  safe and effective, and lead with the evidence.
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  Lead with the trusted voice. The next thing
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  I would say that you've gotta have the
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  appropriate infrastructure to operate, realize this. When you're
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  looking at your data governance or your AI
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  governance,
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  I would suggest separating into clinical and operational.
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  There are different guardrails for both those. And
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  while they're equally important,
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  especially in the clinical side, you wanna know
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  that it's gonna be safe and effective.
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  And third, collaboration has to be your catalyst
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  for progress. You can't do this alone. That
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  there's no way that one person can just
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  be your AI strategist. It's just gotta be
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  incorporated into almost every single,
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  area of health care. Got it.
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  Fantastic, Dave. Thank you so much. Are there
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  any other thoughts that you'd like to leave
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  us with?
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  No. I don't think so. I I think
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  that,
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  if you're listening to this podcast, you know
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  how important AI is gonna be and how
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  important technology is gonna be. And,
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  if you're not innovating,
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  you're gonna be left behind. Yeah. Okay. Super.
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  Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it, Dave. Thank
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  you.