On Technology

Great techspectations: can we find a way?

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I have lived and worked in Ann Arbor for 3 years now and have made many trips to Lansing and Detroit for meetings and events. In Lansing I go to about 5 different locations: my car is almost on auto pilot. I have been to various locations in downtown Detroit and the surrounding suburbs. What would I do without the GPS technology we all take for granted?

I have a built-in navigation system in my car, but you probably have the same ability with a map app on your smart phone. My daughter warns me though, to not depend on GPS when you are down to the last mile; “Use your eyes,” she says. That’s what I do when I’m going to the Ren Center in downtown Detroit. My biggest concern then is that I will be in the wrong lane and end up taking the tunnel to Windsor, Canada. You can’t just do a U-turn on the other side; you need your passport with you. Unless I carry my passport in my car, it would be a major delay.  I have heard about people who missed events by an hour just by making that mistake.

And there is a lot of road construction with detours on my way out of Detroit these days. I must rely on my GPS to adjust my route and use my eyes to keep track of the detour signs.

Do you remember those thick spiral-bound books of maps for a metro area?  You needed a magnifying glass to read it. You also needed a co-pilot in the passenger seat. A real challenge if driving alone at night!

I remember when we stuck add-on Garmin devices to our inside windshield or tried to somehow balance them on the console.

I still sometimes use the online Mapquest or Google Maps service to print out the directions in advance; sometimes I want the big picture visual with me.

But the convenience of a built-in navigation system with voice directions in my 2008 car is far better. I rely on it whenever I’m headed someplace new.

But what about when you are inside a large building complex?  Wayfinding in hospitals is a challenge for both patients and staff, especially in large academic medical centers with old and new buildings connected on a sprawling campus. Continue reading →

Spreading hope, 21st century style

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1 in 9 people in the U.S have used it. Its reach extends to 236 countries. In 2014, 2.2 million new people joined communities. 300,000 people visit every day. More than 72,000 families created a website in 2014. Any idea what I’m referring to?

Those are some of the key stats for a social media tool called CaringBridge. It works like this: patients set up a private and secure website where they post journal entries about their health journey. They invite close family and friends to join their site, creating a caring and supportive community. Family and friends are kept up to date and they can post encouraging and supportive messages. It takes the communication burden off the patient and their immediate family so they can focus on healing.  It replaces the black hole of not knowing for those who care and worry.

I first learned about CaringBridge many years ago when I was the CIO at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. We jointly sponsored it with Dana Farber Cancer Institute and encouraged our cancer patients to use it. At the University of Michigan Health System, we make patients and families aware of this service and another similar one called CarePages.

For all my years working in health care and using the main social media platforms, I’m finally experiencing firsthand the healing power of CaringBridge.  Continue reading →

Back to the future

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It’s back to school time! College bound students and their parents are having a lot of mixed feelings. There’s the excitement and anxiety of starting something new, maybe far from home. And for the parents, the goodbyes and the reality of being an empty nester may just be sinking in. Parents sense that they’ve done their job and now, it’s launch time.

There are questions college students hate to hear – “what are you planning to study?”; “what do you want to do when you graduate?”  They need to find their passion first. And who knows what kind of jobs will be there come graduation time.

Many of today’s jobs didn’t even exist 5 or 10 years ago. If you are on social media at all, you will see tons of job opportunities for just that – social media experts. But it’s just over a decade for two of the giants – Facebook and LinkedIn, and less than 10 years for Twitter.

And at the intersection of cars and technology, do you suppose the people working at Mcity thought 10 years ago that this is what they’d be doing? Continue reading →

Investing in the success of others

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What do @TheWomenRising, @digitaldivas3, and #HITchicks have in common? They are some of the Twitter handles and hashtags that young women professionals in technology are using on social media to encourage Women around CR tablemore women to go into the field. I recently did a fireside chat with Kate Catlin, the organizer of Women Rising, and about 30 young women in downtown Detroit. It was the first in a new UpRising series where they invite in “high-powered women in technology” they want to learn from.

The questions covered a broad range of concerns, and not just about working in technology. We were scheduled for an hour but could easily have continued for several more. I answered their questions with advice and lessons from my own experience.

Some of their questions:

How did you get started in technology?  Continue reading →

At work and at play: IT leaders connect with patients

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Monday was the 42nd annual  C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital Golf Classic. While the golfers have a lot of fun, it is a significant annual fundraising event that makes an important difference in the lives of children and their families at Mott Children’s Hospital. Over the years, individual and organizational sponsors have provided support for computers at patient bedsides, medically safe camps for children with serious health issues, assistive devices for children with special needs, and many more important projects and services.

The Mott Golf Classic is committed to advancing pediatric medicine and enhancing the care experience for patients and their families. It supports unique initiatives that distinguish Mott Children’s Hospital which is ranked as one of the best children’s hospitals in the country by U.S. News & World Report.

Reminding all of us in health care why we do what we do, each year a child and their family are recognized as an honored guest and we hear their story.  This year Larry Prout Jr. and his parents, Larry and Kathy, along with his five older siblings and other family members were the guests of honor.  Larry Jr. was born with three birth defects – Spina Bifida, Cloacal Exstrophy, and a massive Omphalocele. His parents didn’t know if he would make it through the first 24 hours after birth and there were many times during his first six months that he had to fight for survival. With their love and the specialized medical care of a multi-disciplinary team at Mott, Larry Jr. overcame many setbacks. He is celebrating his 14th birthday on June 11th.

One of my IT leaders, Joe Kryza, Executive Director of Infrastructure and Systems Operations, has made significant contributions over the past 10 plus years to the Mott Family Network, a non-profit volunteer organization that many of our IT staff contribute time to. Continue reading →

Yes you can: encouraging girls to pursue IT careers

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Last week I spoke with high school and college age women about the Journey to a Successful Career in Information Technology. I gave the keynote at an event jointly sponsored by the Student Resource and Women’s Center and Career Services at Washtenaw Community College. The event was part of their women in non-traditional careers series. It was fun to do – having a chance to encourage and inspire the next generation of information technology professionals.  And it was great to see some familiar faces in the audience – a number of women from our IT team decided to attend as well.

I started my talk by profiling real women in real IT jobs today – 8 women from our IT team.  Their positions include service desk, business analyst, programmer, database administrator, data architect, project manager, training manager, and infrastructure manager. I described what they do in a typical day and the skills they need in each position. One comment overheard after the talk: “This is exactly what these girls need – to see that women can and do work in IT.  Then they can picture themselves doing it, too.” Continue reading →

Creating a security culture

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I wrote recently that if the CIO is the only one worrying about the EHR implementation, it’s a problem. Likewise, if the CIO and the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) are the only ones thinking about IT security, it’s a problem.  You only have to read the news any given week to see the rising number of breaches within health care – the recent Anthem breach being the biggest to date with over 80 million records involved.  And there is a new breach we are all hearing about as of this week – Premera Blue Cross potentially involving financial and medical records of up to 11 million customers.

IT security is a common topic amongst health care CIOs these days. We are continually trying to learn from one another and share best practices.

I recently had a third party IT security assessment done for our health system in order to identify key gaps and get recommendations to strengthen our IT security program. One of the best pieces in the final report was about creating a security culture. So what’s a security culture?

Signs an organization has developed a security culture include the following: Continue reading →

Surfacing problems, prototyping solutions

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According to Wikipedia, “a hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects”. Hackathons are a great way to surface problems and prototype solutions in a short time period.  I just participated in my first hackathon and what an eye-opener it was.

Last week, four different IT groups participated in “Hacks with Friends”: central campus, school of medicine, school of dentistry, and the hospitals and health centers.  It was a grassroots event organized by staff. It was great to see such talent and creative energy in one room.

Every available surface was used to brainstorm and organize ideas.

For two days, over 100 participants in 20 teams worked to develop projects in 3 categories  – gamification, collaboration, and play (which turned out to be the catch-all category for a problem you wanted to explore or experiment with). Projects could be either externally focused on our customers or internally focused on improving processes for technical staff. Many teams included members from the multiple IT groups solving common problems.

Each team was to develop a minimally viable product (MVP). An MVP is a simple way to address a problem that adds value, is demonstrable. An MVP can be an improved process, a new way of doing things, or an old tool applied in a new way.

Poster presentation proposing FitBit integration with UM’s wellness app.

Each team had to create a winning presentation in three stages. First they needed to create an elevator description of the project, including problem statement, solution and differentiators. Then, they needed a five minute poster presentation. If chosen as a finalist, the team needed to prepare a seven minute demonstration of their product.

To succeed, the team needed to understand the strengths of their team members and welcome a broad range of experiences into the team. Best ideas come from co-design. A great reminder that hackathons are not just for people who can code!

Laura Patterson, the UM CIO, Ted Hanss, the Medical School CIO, and I were the judges. We applied these criteria:

  • Fit to category – how well does the project fit the selected category?
  • Feasibility – would this work in the real world?
  • Completeness – how far did the team get in the allotted time?
  • Documentation – did the team document what they learned?

The winning team, “Magic Mirror,” hard at work.

The products proposed were creative and exciting.  Some examples:

World of Workcraft – a game to track what we are learning everyday – books, articles, courses, conferences.

Active You – integrating FitBit with the ActiveU mobile app. I think a high percentage of the 11,870 participants in this UM employee wellness program would love this!

Rundeck – a way to automate system administrator tasks using the Rundeck tool.

The winner of the Hacks with Friends event was Magic Mirror – putting student photos in their profiles in the new learning system to help faculty get to know students and students get to know one another. The runner-up was Go Phish – an interactive training tool to help people recognize phishing email leveraging gaming technology.

The coveted “golden hard drive” trophy.

But from another perspective, Activity in Motion (AIM) was the winner for me.  This was a team led by Sally Pollock, Manager of IT Service Management from my IT department, that developed a multi-platform application to capture and centralize major incident activity real-time.  Benefits include: providing real-time information, minimizing distractions during the major incident call, minimizing the duration of the major incident, capturing a list of participants, making activity highly visible and storing it in a database, where it can be used for reporting and the post incident review process.

The team’s presentation helped me realize the current state of managing major incidents and how a simple app like this could improve the process. I jumped on it.  I asked the team to present to my leadership group meeting on Wednesday and we gave directional support for this solution. They will come back in a month with recommendations on how to fit this solution into our current major incident process.

A great example of how a hackathon opened one leader’s eyes to a problem that needed to be solved.

Great techspectations for the inpatient experience

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Everywhere you turn technology makes our lives easier. Yet we take it for granted – until it’s not there.

I spent the holiday week in Boston with family. I observed every day, commonplace technology in my travels, our hotel stay, shopping, eating out, and more. We booked our airline tickets online. We check-in online or at an airport kiosk. We pass through security and find our current gate info on large screens conveniently located. Barely any human contact except when the flight attendant checks our seat belts and offers us pretzels and a drink. The safety information is a video and when we arrive we find the right baggage carrousel on another large screen. Continue reading →

Women and technology, part 2

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I had the chance to deliver the opening keynote talk at the NG HealthCare US Summit two weeks ago. I was to fit a 20 minute talk between the salad and the entree at a dinner. The summit organizers said I could talk about whatever topic I wanted; I just had to be inspiring.

I titled my talk: “Our Future Workforce – Unlocking the Potential”. As I posed the problem in a recent post “Technology, where are all the women?,” I talked about the fact that not enough women are going into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. I have been particularly concerned with the drop in women entering computer related fields.

Why does this problem exist, what are some of the programs that are helping address it, and what can IT leaders do about it?

The IT leadership conference where I was speaking was about 75-80% men, so I thought there might be a risk with this angle on the future workforce. I am happy to say the talk was very well received.

Afterwards, men talked to me about their daughters – whether they are in college studying in a STEM field or in grade school interested in computers and robots. Women told me about their own Continue reading →