Jordan Cooper: We're here today with Jim Heimann.

Jordan Cooper: Uh, the AVP of product services and management?

Jordan Cooper: In the clinical digital solution space at Northwell Health in Long Island, New York, Northwell is a health system based in Long Island with 5200 beds and 17,000 providers across 20 hospitals and other health care facilities.

Jordan Cooper: So it's a very large health system in its market, Jim, thanks for joining us today.

Heiman, James: Thanks for having me.

Jordan Cooper: So the theme for today's conversation will be the power of a platform.

Jordan Cooper: Jim, you've worked with a lot of different platforms in the past.

Jordan Cooper: You've worked with developing a health information exchange internal to Northwell.

Jordan Cooper: You worked with a more regional HIE in your past for data management, organizational efficiency, community partnerships.

Jordan Cooper: Let's talk about the power of platform.

Jordan Cooper: How?

Jordan Cooper: What sort of platform you're building?

Jordan Cooper: What's your strategy?

Jordan Cooper: How does it fit in with Northwell?

Heiman, James: Cool.

Heiman, James: Yeah.

Heiman, James: And so again, I I think that you know platforms in general are really catalyst to to be able to do a lot.

Heiman, James: Ohh, right now we've kind of pitched this notion of strategic platforms.

Heiman, James: Ohh, whether they're embedded with some other strategic partnership with the main vendor or really central to our enterprise digital services kind of solutioning space.

Heiman, James: No.

Heiman, James: And so again, we've got a a couple of things in the mix right now.

Heiman, James: But really, looking at the power of a platform and the way that it kind of enhances the ability of a business to scale and and really using a system systematic approach to really solving challenges as well as you know putting him putting in place a consistent foundation and framework to be able to continue to deliver.

Jordan Cooper: Please.

Heiman, James: And so at the core of that really is data.

Heiman, James: Data is the core to most of the ohh information on on the platform, but then building out robust services and functions as well as kind of the interoperability layer that sits in between extracting the data and getting it in front of a a user.

Jordan Cooper: Sure.

Jordan Cooper: So there's a lot of to unpack there, so we're talking about a strategic platform with a systematic approach.

Jordan Cooper: That's a good abstract approach to generally what a strategic platform is.

Jordan Cooper: I'd like to dive right into a particular use case and walk through exactly how you're executing on this strategic platform data.

Jordan Cooper: Would you be able to?

Jordan Cooper: Walk us, perhaps through how the how you've been setting up the HIE example for with the data platform.

Heiman, James: Sure.

Heiman, James: A couple of different things, right, so we've got this notion of having a core services or foundation team, a system team and then various levels of other key roles, whether it's data normalization, data ingestion, data utilization, how we send data outbound, and then what other strategic services are then built on top of that data.

Heiman, James: So all of those become different roles.

Heiman, James: Umm, in that larger ecosystem, but the ability to, you know the, the, the biggest thing that we kind of think about in in that framework, it is not just the things that we're doing, but the things that were being requested for the future and and really one once you have that foundation in place that's the starting point for what you're gonna do with the platform.

Jordan Cooper: But.

Heiman, James: It's not the ends and and so so often in conversations that we have as an organ as organizations and how we're gonna address problems and challenges.

Jordan Cooper: There's.

Heiman, James: We often think that once we set up that the technology layer that in some cases we're done it's not, that's the beginning of all of the cool and the coal solutions that can be built on top of the platform leveraging it at scale.

Jordan Cooper: It's.

Jordan Cooper: That's so how would you build out a strategic informatics platform?

Heiman, James: It's great question.

Jordan Cooper: Here.

Heiman, James: So again, I think you, we we would we would build it by first allocating, umm, resourcing to each one of those key areas that I spoke about before did ingestion, did orchestration and and then outbound data utilization, interop solution management or or products that we build on top of that from you know using data as a product or even some of the functionality as a product on top of that.

Heiman, James: So setting that up is the key foundation and framework.

Heiman, James: Ohh and then once we have those components running umm would then we'd move more into kind of Step 2 which is at the same point in time of care and feeding of the platform.

Heiman, James: Where were you essentially have this kind of notion of incremental innovation built baked into the infrastructure, so you're always, you're always modifying ohm and advancing what the core platform can do at the same point in time.

Jordan Cooper: OK.

Heiman, James: You're taking some of the native services, you're building out native service offerings and delivering those to customers.

Heiman, James: And so at the same point in time, building a healthy road map or use cases intake form from different clients within your organization, outside your organization to be able to deliver at really a predictable speed to those organs to to those entities that you're delivering a service for.

Heiman, James: And so it's really the the those each of those different steps and then really you know then you know your, your, your, your platform goes into ongoing maintenance mode which is again innovation baked in to continue to scale the platform include different and new features as part of what the platform can do, whether that's adding in layers of artificial intelligence, potentially bringing in other software providers into the mix and other cloud native services into the mix that can continue to enhance your your platform, maybe doing a couple of POC's while with with one area of your platform team we're at the same point in time you know you you have another group that's really running service implementation um and taking one of the outbound services that we have and you know from the HIE standpoint data interoperability or strategic data interoperabilities and key parts.

Jordan Cooper: I.

Jordan Cooper: Right.

Jordan Cooper: But.

Jordan Cooper: 6.

Heiman, James: So to give an example, ohm, we've got a team that's working on strategic outbound data interoperability to synchronize data between whether it's two different systems or or possibly even very targeted synchronous about interop where maybe handful of patients from a common department that's maybe on a risk contract or something and and then can we keeping that downstream up to date at the same point in time.

Jordan Cooper: 1st.

Heiman, James: We're working on, you know, kind of replacing or augmenting the back end from an innovation standpoint with new tools, new cloud, native service offerings, whether it's, you know, looking at companies like data bricks or other AI providers where we can, you know, add more intelligence, more rules into the mix where we can continue to scale out the types of offerings that we may have as an organization.

Heiman, James: And on the services, so at the same point in time of delivering it high scale and speed or predictable speed, we're also trying to make things faster, Ohm's low code, no code offerings, etcetera.

Heiman, James: On top of that platform and so really getting into that systematic framework it it's, it's really helpful and and the ability to kind of.

Heiman, James: Replace the batteries of the car while the cars flying down the road at the same point in time is is is the new way of working.

Jordan Cooper: Right.

Jordan Cooper: So replacing the batteries are cars going down the road or building the airplane while we're flying it to common metaphor.

Heiman, James: Yep.

Jordan Cooper: Is it in the industry you said one of the main reasons that somebody would be interested in building out a strategic informatics platform is to enhance the system at scale.

Jordan Cooper: You've just mentioned about two dozen different initiatives or or criteria that you need to keep track of in order to to move the platform forward.

Jordan Cooper: And then at the same time, you're also adding innovation with all these different POC's and cloud native services adding an AI.

Jordan Cooper: How do you make sure that nothing I?

Jordan Cooper: I guess there's an agile managed project management, but how do you make sure nothing falls through the cracks?

Jordan Cooper: How do you keep it all organized and streamlined?

Jordan Cooper: And efficient so that you can scale because it gonna imagine it's going all end up very much like a rats nest of projects and things get lost and things get miscommunicated and siloed.

Jordan Cooper: How do you make sure that the platform actually enhances scalability instead of just confuses everything with many different different parts moving at the same time?

Heiman, James: So, and there's a couple of different things that kind of ground us.

Heiman, James: I'll obviously finances and how to fund these type of an issues ground us there's also key business strategies that ground us and also you know some of our own platform strategies ground us so that's key to understanding well what types of requests we're taking in what are we doing with these requests how do we scaling the platform how do we prioritize those architectural enhancements at the same point in time as you know do we take on this net new customer requested do we fix the infrastructure and so there's a bunch of very complicated agile processes that we follow in order to assess properly the prioritization of these different kind of aspects and so you know what while it's it's not necessarily easy.

Jordan Cooper: That's.

Jordan Cooper: There's.

Jordan Cooper: Hello.

Heiman, James: Busy, we're able to in usually a single pane of glass or a project manager or sort of product management perspective.

Heiman, James: Look at all of these different things and be able to make those decisions.

Jordan Cooper: It is it.

Heiman, James: You know, kind of looking at, you know, comparing those things pretty much side by side and looking at both the future growth that you know that incremental innovation's gonna do and how much faster would be able to deliver to customers and compare that against, hey, these two new customer requests when they're gonna get it, how they're gonna get it, it's scale and maturity when when it gets into a customer's hands and and be able to make very key informed decisions on on how to prioritize work.

Jordan Cooper: Well, OK.

Jordan Cooper: We're.

Jordan Cooper: So OK.

Heiman, James: And also, I'd also say very clearly, one of the strongest roles that's needed in these areas is a product owner.

Jordan Cooper: Umm.

Heiman, James: The product owner is at the core of most of these decisions and and really has to have a full working and understanding of both what the customer needs, what the platform strategy and what the targets are as well as how each of the different business strategies are evolving to be in the right driver seat to help make all of the decisions around prioritization and and and and and really the tactical operations.

Jordan Cooper: All the it's.

Jordan Cooper: OK.

Heiman, James: And in this space.

Jordan Cooper: So even when you have a product owner who's fully aware of what the customer needs are what the platform strategy is, what the business strategy is, and you go through the agile process, you find your priorities, you understand what needs to happen.

Jordan Cooper: As you mentioned, there's still may be financial constraints.

Jordan Cooper: So how would you walk through the financing aspect of corporate budgeting in light of the power producing a data platform?

Heiman, James: So the way that we've been able to kind of parlay these things together, we we've really been able to to combine this notion of support delivering on additional customer success and really encapsulating the rest of the growth of the organization.

Jordan Cooper: Yes.

Heiman, James: And how do we how do we take some of these things that we've done and continue to scale them out?

Heiman, James: We've been able to have a fairly lean portfolio around the this particular platform that we've been working on for a while.

Heiman, James: And so essentially we've we've essentially been able to budget for the people and in a much higher scale than we normally would do things on a, say a project by project basis.

Heiman, James: And so that's been key for us as an organization to essentially have a stable funding to quote unquote the platform team.

Jordan Cooper: Speak.

Heiman, James: So to to this platform, which which really allows us to do kind of all three of those aspects, the support aspects, the, the, the continued delivery on customer success as well as that kind of back end or incremental innovation to continue advance the platform strategy and really wrapping all three of those into kind of a single budget line item where you know from a funding perspective a key piece of that is the continue operate maintenance of the platform.

Jordan Cooper: That's.

Jordan Cooper: Correct.

Jordan Cooper: It.

Heiman, James: But then the ability to continue to deliver it and and expand its growth and utilization, I think some of the got.

Jordan Cooper: So like this I like to ask you about some key performance indicators for success.

Jordan Cooper: How do you evaluate whether your platform strategy actually is meeting these these these delineated business strategies, financial strategies and platform strategies, right?

Jordan Cooper: How are you meeting those goals and and?

Jordan Cooper: And when I ask you to elaborate on these KPIs, I'd like to ask if you could ground it within a particular project, perhaps HIE, perhaps AI or cloud native services or some POC that you've done just a small use case where you looked at KPIs and evaluated how a particular project has done against the organizational goals that you set out to me.

Heiman, James: Sure.

Heiman, James: You know, again, I think there there's it.

Heiman, James: It's it's.

Heiman, James: It's interesting because we kind of have our hand in a lot of different use cases, so often it's hard to allocate the appropriate resourcing to measure the success of everything that we're doing.

Jordan Cooper: This.

Heiman, James: But we do it on a targeted basis.

Heiman, James: So for example, you know looking at some of the core services that we provide, it's easier we can go by number of clicks.

Heiman, James: We can go by number of notifications.

Heiman, James: We can go by how much data is being used and and put in front of a clinician at the at the.

Jordan Cooper: This the with the.

Heiman, James: You know right, clinician, right time, right, patient.

Heiman, James: And and how does that continue to scale in other more granular use cases where it may not be as as easy from our core services side, look at data interop, we can look at, you know, system success, how often we've been able to do targeted notifications on a given, let's say, a risk contract that we have that we're, you know, trying to limit readmissions on.

Heiman, James: It's a little bit easier to do that.

Heiman, James: We've, you know, there's a potential for readmission, we we were able to potentially offset that from a notification.

Heiman, James: We can measure how many of those occurred, be pre imposed and be able to deliver on on on those types of API and then on our on our third space, which is really a full stack application development where we've been able to.

Jordan Cooper: OK. Like.

Heiman, James: Essentially, you know from from data to through UI, we've been able to measure both.

Heiman, James: You know, again, a lot of this is getting is used to get a providers and and and office staff and operational staff off of spreadsheets doing certain types of of follow up activities on patients.

Heiman, James: We've been able to the success.

Heiman, James: First off, is looking at how how much more efficient the users are.

Jordan Cooper: Well.

Heiman, James: Again, also hard to manage how hard to to hard to measure, but at the same point in time, you know obviously truly rewarding in terms of some of the services that we've been able to offer, the scale that we've been providing and one of the things.

Jordan Cooper: But.

Heiman, James: And then from a kind of a platform support maintenance and kind of exploration future growth, we essentially use this measure of we wanna essentially be in the 6040 range of of where we're delivering net new enhancements and features to customers.

Heiman, James: So 60% being allocated towards either a net new feature or a major feature inhanced Ament to our customer base where 40% being smaller enhancements keeping the lights on and other types of activities.

Heiman, James: Umm, as those numbers start to shift to 4060, we know that we we we haven't necessarily met enough of the platform strategy enhancements or maybe we're getting bogged down somewhere too much in in net new development where we know that that's expensive.

Heiman, James: We know we need to rely on partners to do a lot of that kind of larger innovation outside the incremental and so those are some of the things that some of the different measures that we use as a team.

Heiman, James: Every quarter we we use agile cadences and then the other the other measures that we use are looking at ohm speed to market, number of bugs, times the to address bugs.

Heiman, James: Some of the standard stuff around, you know, kind of the the the internal operations on that front.

Heiman, James: So we're looking at many different KPIs across all levels of performance to business strategy to customer, to platform and obviously internal engineering performance.

Jordan Cooper: Awesome.

Jordan Cooper: So Jim, we are approaching the end of this podcast episode.

Jordan Cooper: You've taken us through a lot of information from KPIs that building the platform to what's driving the build to how to organize it, how to allocate resources.

Jordan Cooper: As we wrap up this episode, I'd like to ask you, since you've been at Northwell for quite some time, if you could think of an anecdote to illustrate some of the value that has been brought to Northwell our actualized through having this data platform strategy.

Jordan Cooper: If you could tell, maybe a story of some providers or some patients or some internal customers, somebody at Northwell who has benefited and seemed value actualized from your data platform strategy.

Heiman, James: Yeah.

Heiman, James: And again, it's it's hard to pick one.

Heiman, James: We we probably have close to 300 different solutions into our Northwell ecosystem that have the HIE S the background or the backdrop.

Heiman, James: And so that in of itself highlights the power and the investment in this strategic informatics platform that we've that we've kind of developed upon.

Heiman, James: I think I still think that the the most obvious and clear umm, growth area for us is is is still in the value based Care World and and and just you know you know 88 to 10 years ago a market without any solutions in it.

Heiman, James: We've been able to create one of the most robust back uh, you know, kind of platform sets of capabilities to to get.

Heiman, James: But.

Jordan Cooper: The.

Heiman, James: Essentially, manage cohorts at scale umm and and kind of get those service breadth of services to our care navigators.

Jordan Cooper: 1st.

Heiman, James: In in many different regards, whether it's, you know, managing gaps in care or, you know, notifications when someone's presents at one of our facilities or essentially managing a list of potential follow up patients after an inpatient visit to get, make sure they're getting their follow up care and they're referrals, umm, properly managed.

Jordan Cooper: Well.

Heiman, James: We we've been able to do a lot and so I think that's probably you know where where people don't necessarily have large large solutions otherwise in many cases things that the EMR doesn't or or or the standard EMR doesn't necessarily do finding those gaps, scaling them out and being able to put those solutions in front of customers.

Jordan Cooper: People.

Jordan Cooper: Thank you for our listeners.

Jordan Cooper: This has been Jim Heiman, AVP product services and management and the clinical digital solutions space.

Jordan Cooper: Today we've spoken about the power of platform, how we've managed population health, how we've leveraged data to drive innovation, to actually improve patient outcomes, financial returns for the organization and a culture of innovation throughout the organization to drive key business strategies forward.

Jordan Cooper: So, Jim, I'd like to thank you very much for joining us today.

Heiman, James: Yep.