Health Care Transformation, Digital Tools and More – Digital CxO Podcast EP 69

Hello and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani, and with me again today is Mike Vard. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. Happy to be here. Wonderful.

Well, you recently wrote an article about Salesforce and they have some new offerings, um, in the AI space, uh, especially with their Einstein ai. So what do we need to know about this? Well, I think this is gotta be, I a good example of what we're gonna see across the board here when it comes to automating processes in the age of generative ai.

So if you take a look back at what they've done is they have MuleSoft, which is an API integration platform, and then they have Salesforce, which is evolving into a set of SaaS applications that you can extend and build these various workflows around. And that's all good. And then the third piece is they have this Einstein platform, which is kind of an orchestration engine for accessing various AI models.

Now, what all that means from a digital CXO perspective is historically I wanted to automate a process. I kind of had to go find somebody either to write the code at a low level or I had to go find somebody who could write it at a higher level using a low code no code tool. Now, if I wanted that to happen, I had to get the subject matter expert involved with the developer and the two of them might come together and have something interesting and three to four months.

And often it probably didn't look all that great and uh, probably didn't scale and there were probably security issues that had to be dealt with as well as we evolve, you've seen the rise of prompts and these are prompts in the context of a, um, generative AI platform that just lets you write in a natural text what you want the platform to do and you fine tune it as the responses come in. But you can also start to think about this in ways where I can daisy chain a bunch of prompts together to automate a process. I can now connect the dots and um, the LLMs are getting smarter and they have reasoning engines built into 'em.

So we're gonna have to figure out ultimately how many processes can we automate just by letting the subject matter expert do that using the LLMs and natural language versus how many are we gonna actually need to go write some code for that requires a low code tool or some other type of tool to go build that. And I think each digital CXO will need to figure out what's the right mix there. But I, my gut's telling me right now, in the long term, it might be as much as 80% of the automations are just gonna be, uh, rink combining prop libraries versus building and writing applications the way we used to.

Well, I would certainly think so because you do also have to think about the skillset and do you have the right people on your team that can type all that code out and and understand the code it's necessary. Yeah, and you make a good point because arguably that's been holding us back. I can't get the subject matter experts to stop what they're doing, say, we'll work on this stuff because then that's the other thing that they get paid for.

So I don't have the people to sit down with the developers and of course the developers are expensive and hard to find as well. So if we can get to the point where more of the automations can be handled by the people actually running the processes and they don't have to go find a developer to help them do that. And let's be honest, most of those people don't think the way thinks.

But if I wanted to really boil things down to the brass level, we have been using software to interact with machines and now the machines know how to interact with us. So it's a lot easier to go the lateral route than the former route. So I think what we see is more people will get comfortable in mastering these prompts.

I don't think prompt engineering necessarily is a job, but I think we'll all develop these skills about how to connect these things together to automate something. Absolutely. And I, I think, um, everyone's playing around with prompt engineering and on any day I can look on LinkedIn and see someone else posting a whole bunch of engineering prompts that are out there shareable to use.

So I, I don't know if we'll see that as a job in itself either. Well, I'm hoping that there'll be a lot more things automated than ever. 'cause my gut tells me that 90% of the things we could automate we haven't simply because we didn't have the time or energy or the resource.

Correct. So moving on, let's talk about healthcare specifically. Uh, digital tools and electronic health records.

So health, health, the health industry in general is trying to digitalize a lot of data and in this process, the customer tends to be on the short end of the stick, I would say, because they're having to enter in a lot of information over and over and over again. And, you know, th this best laid efforts of of the healthcare facilities. Um, it's really not digitally transforming a process.

If you're having as, as the patient to constantly enter in your information every time you go somewhere, it's not connected. It's very difficult to access all these health records across the different, um, healthcare facilities. So, um, so there's this um, this kind of a lack of understanding between digital transformation and just simply digitalizing.

So what are your thoughts on this and how do we solve this issue? I think we've talked about this in previous episodes and it seems like I'm, hopefully it's gonna get better and maybe this is a great place where we'll see some of those prompt libraries we were just talking about. But um, too much of what, if you go look at these healthcare apps, they kind of revolve around these electronic record systems and they were built as systems of records and um, if you're not familiar with SAPs, they're kind of like SAP systems for the healthcare sector and they're not very flexible and they're very monolithic and they're not a lot of fun to work with.

So I think a lot of the people who were put in front of these things just follow along and or do the best they can. They're not really thinking about the customer experience. They're actually just, we've turned them into data entry junkies.

And so, and I don't really blame those folks 'cause this, they're responding to the system that we built in design and the people who bought it never really thought through how it was gonna be implemented on a day-to-day level. And it's a bit of a mess as a result. So I think we need to kinda re-look at the whole system and I'm hopeful that at least in this article that some folks are going that route.

Yeah. com and read this article. It's um, share some information about how to handle this situation and um, potentially harnessing ai, um, could help.

So next step, we haven't heard or spoken about this in a while. The metaverse, this was really like all the rage maybe say a year or so ago and then it kind of fizzled out but now it's back in the spotlight a little bit more. It was never gone.

Uh, but as AR and VR tools are becoming more accessible and a little less expensive, um, and more out there, companies are looking back at how can we harness the metaverse? What is the metaverse? They still don't quite all understand what it is, how to use it, what benefit is it gonna give to their customers.

But as this becomes more accessible, they're looking at it. So what are some of your thoughts? I always thought that the business corollary of the metaverse is what we call a digital twin, right?

And I think there are plenty of applications for, uh, people wearing glasses to create some sort of metaverse experience to for training is a great example. Um, and a lot of that can involve, you know, essentially a digital twin of, I don't know, I'll pick an aircraft engine or something that we need to train somebody on. I think that's a huge opportunity and I think that that has been kind of rolled up into metaverse for businesses at work.

I think that is metaverse for consumers and I don't know, I don't quite see that part yet just 'cause I don't think a lot of people wanna wear these big clunky glasses just yet. I know there are some kids that are will go play and that's all fine, but even them I notice they get tired because wow, the, the gear starts to come down on the top of their nose and it gets all red and it's uncomfortable. And so, um, I think we're a couple of generations away from making this, you know, mainstream, but I think like most things there'll be some steady growth as we go along.

Yeah, absolutely. And those headsets can get really heavy. I was um, at a conference last weekend, I went a couple of times to the VR sandbox gaming experience and played some different like dragon hunting and uh, other games and by the end I was so sweaty and my face was so red and hot.

Um, so, but there are, you know, people are looking into, some of the companies are looking into just regular glasses like what you're wearing that can give us that same um, you know, the same benefit put on a much more comfortable, uh, scale. So who knows where the future lies with this, but the other question is the return on investment and companies aren't really sure, you know, cost-wise if it's gonna be worth it or not. So we'll just have to see.

Yeah, I think Apple is probably at the forefront of this along with Microsoft who had that HoloLens for a while but still has it, but they're gonna drive that experience that's gonna get better and better over time and as that becomes a better experience then all this other stuff will open up. Yep, absolutely. So next up, you wrote an article recently about DevOps and the network edge.

So can you share with us a little bit more about this? Normally I wouldn't kick out too heavily on the digital CXO, but I know that all of you have encountered the following scenario. You build an application and looks great and then you start rolling it out and suddenly some end user in, I don't know, green Bay is not having a great experience and yet everybody who's in New York or San Francisco is doing just fine.

That's called the internet performance problem. And what happens is, is like there are so many layers of services on the internet from CDNs and all kinds of stuff that we're using that we don't have any visibility into what the actual end user experience is. And I think what I'm just pointing out here is we need to kind of meld up all this observability tools that we've been building out on the DevOps side and um, all the stuff that goes in the application performance management to make it effective and make it real.

It's gotta find its way out to what's actually happening on the endpoint itself and all those network layers in between because otherwise it's just kind of theoretical and uh, in the end customer looks at us and goes, you know, I don't know what you guys are doing, but it doesn't sound like you know what you're doing because my experience is still awful. And what we don't really realize is, you know, not every service is gonna be delivered equally well across the global internet and we need to figure out which ones are running where and prioritize some and maybe reroute others. And I think digital CXOs don't always get into that because they think it's a low level it thing, but I'm telling you the difference between success and failure often comes down to this internet performance management step.

Certainly and especially as we have more and more technology at the edge that more and more, uh, consumers are using. So we wanna be able to deliver the best service. You would think that would be the end goal.

I think a lot of times we um, get caught up in the theory and not enough, uh, awareness of the practice and a lot of times, even if something's working great and you think you're done two weeks later, all hell is breaking loose because something changed on the internet services that you didn't see and you know, the carrier did something and, and so you gotta continuously stay on top of this stuff. And I think it's, I would argue one of the things that trips digital CXOs up most is this kind of like last mile performance issue to wherever the end user happens to be. And by the way, that end user's likely to move around anyway because one day they're gonna be traveling and next week they're gonna be in a cafe somewhere and the other day they're at a friend's house and it's all different networks and they have different experiences and you kind of need to know what's happening with that.

I'm hoping someday algorithms would take care of all this stuff and AI will make it all better, but I don't think that's happening anytime soon. So it's kinda up to the digital CXO to kinda work and understand what questions to ask the networking people. 'cause they'll tell you the service is available.

That doesn't mean it's a great experience. Absolutely. And so now I wanna turn and pivot a little bit.

We've been talking about technology and, and all these great tools for automation and digital transformation and we recently had a, a podcast interview with somebody sort of on the other, uh, side of this. His name was Vladimir Bot and he was, uh, a little bit, uh, arguing against the technology and more for the human side of things and uh, saying that human creativity and human innovation and drive was going to be the winner and the end. So can you share a little bit about this and then what are your thoughts?

It was a wide ranging conversation, but we get a little enamored sometimes with the automation and not enough with the what is the means to the end. Um, and the thing about it is, so yes, I can automate all these marketing motions, but I wind up taking out the humanity of the interaction with the brand, especially as his point. And so, um, he, in his case, he was stressing the fact that it's critical for companies to have people who were representing them on these social media that, and you have to have somebody you're interacting with who you like and respect and who reflects your values.

Otherwise it's just, you know, a constant barrage of, um, unengaging content that just kind of says, you know, look here, look at me and, and lacks the uh, that that little touch that makes people wanna actually do something versus um, just kind of scrolling through it and looking at it as yet another advertisement that came over somehow or other and that they're trying to ignore. Um, so that's what I got out of it and I it was a great reminder. Um, and I think we know sometimes we just think that, you know, wow, we're gonna have digital avatars and they'll do all the pushing and then all the content will come out and we'll just take that marketing motion all the way down to full automation.

And I'm like, eh, not quiet, but that's what I got outta it. Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, that human element is always important.

We, we do say that and these tools are great augmentation tools and blending the two is what's going to ultimately be the winner. Alright, so don't forget people still matter. That's right.

Okay, well thank you for tuning in with us again. And you know what, if you're watching this podcast I haven't asked before, but feel free to comment, share your, uh, thoughts on, on our podcast discussions. And until next time, have a great week.

See y'all.