Digital has the potential to uncover new and hidden markets. What about the existing market full of competition? How are companies leveraging digital to establish higher value-based positioning, increase mindshare, proactively prospect, and enhance delivery to displace competition?
Contributors

• • Samuli Savo, Chief Digital Officer, Stora Enso
  • Edward W Marx, Chief Information Officer, Cleveland Clinic
  • Thomas Barnett, Chief Information Officer, University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:24]:

Hello, and welcome to this segment on CTN, and to learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com and the topic for today is Displacing Competition Through Digital. So when we had this digital started, the fever of digital started, we said we are going to have great potential and it’s gonna help uncover new and hidden markets, but then, it doesn’t mean that we do not have competition. We will not have those red ocean full of sharks where we have to compete, and when you’re trying to do so, can we truly see digital as playing a role in being able to do things which we used to do pre digital, which is try to build a value based positioning or to be able to increase the market share or be able to prospect smartly and proactively, and also finally when we do sell something we are able to deliver things which exceed a customer’s expectation. Can all of that be also done in the interest of becoming better than our competitors and essentially displacing them? So to discuss that, I have, an esteemed panel here today. Samuli Savo, who’s the chief digital officer for Stora Enso. Hey, Samuli. How are you?

Samuli Savo [00:01:37]:

I’m good. Thank you. Just coming back from a holiday, so it’s a beautiful evening.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:44]:

Beautiful, and we have Edward W Marx, who’s the chief information officer at the Cleveland Clinic. Hey, Ed. How are you?

Edward W Marx [00:01:51]:

I’m very happy and pleased to be on the program with everyone.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:54]:

Thanks again, and I have Thomas Barnett, CIO, University of Rochester Medical Center. Hey, Tom. How are you?

Thomas Barnett [00:02:01]:

I’m doing well. I’m glad to be here.

Sanjog Aul [00:02:04]:

Thank you. So similarly I’ll start with you. So since I mentioned we are always looking at digital to explore those uncharted territories. That’s the natural gut for anyone who says if I’m gonna invest I’m going to look what’s ahead of me and find out what I’ve not covered yet, but what is the mindset of business leaders and corresponding the CXOs who could be including CIOs and Chief Digital Officers, are they even looking at what has been keeping the lights on and fixing that or making that unprecedentedly better?

Samuli Savo [00:02:43]:

I think there’s both sides of it always. At least if I think about what we are doing, we, of course, are looking for the legacy elements of it as well and how we can do some incremental changes, but we’re increasingly looking for transformational things. How we can introduce new business models. Look for totally new type of revenues. Whether it’s in a platform this is something else. So I think that they need to be both. You need to look for the incremental innovation and improvements at the same time you can’t just stay on there otherwise somebody else will leave for you.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:18]:

And so to that end, Ed, you already must be trying to do things to look ahead and try to innovate, but are there certain strategies that you’re planning to introduce keeping in mind the competition? Are you trying to just run faster than competition or just compete with yourself? What’s the mindset?

Edward W Marx [00:03:40]:

I think the mindset over a 100-year history has really been about competing against ourselves. So we have extreme respect for others who provide health care and kind of take a humble position on it, and at the same time, we are all about how can we continue to move the needle on patient safety and quality of care, and so for 100 years, especially if you look back over the last 50 years, the amount of innovations that have come out of the Cleveland Clinic is just mind boggling. So I would sort of answer it like this: We’re bimodal. Meaning, on one hand, of course, got to take care of the basics, got to make sure everything works, trains run on time, and on the other hand, at the same time, in concert with both strategies, is what’s next? How do we move that needle on patient safety, on quality of care, on access, on mobility, on voice, those sorts of things. So it’s really both.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:33]:

So, Tom, when you look at having a competitive advantage, what’s your view about that? Is that something new, more or different you gotta try and which has not been tried by anybody else before? Or I will not say building a better mouse trap, but kind of the same where you look within and say, is this I have optimized, and can this be a value creator or something which will differentiate me from the competition and let me go and look inward versus only trying to look outward?

Thomas Barnett [00:05:04]:

I think it’s a combination type of answers. So particularly, as you look to build the better mouse trap, so to speak. Generally, in health care, it hasn’t been as cutting edge per se, as some of the other digital industries if you think more like Uber and some of the more mobile apps, that are out there. However, those apps do tend to create a certain expectations amongst all of us as users. I know I can get that car here within four or five taps from my phone, and then as I work with other industries and in some areas within health care, it’s more complex than just calling that car over to the curb. So what we’ll do is we make sure that your competition comes from two ways. It’s not only the existing relationships you have with customers today, analyzing, mapping, taking a look at what are those pathways with which they engage you today and then employing kind of the digital tools, the digital strategies that are out there that are, again, part of that common experience that we’re all used to in terms of everything being easier, faster, more quick to get from point a to a finished task so to speak, but the nature of competition within health care is also changing and I completely concur with that. We are all in the same industry and we’re all working for the same goal, from a health perspective. However, there are also new competitors that we didn’t necessarily have to think about as much before, and I’m sure we’ve all read the health care investing that’s going on by Google, by Apple, by Amazon. These are competitors that we didn’t necessarily have to think about as much before. So I think getting to that cohesive, as easy and streamlined of an experience with our patients not only cements that relationship between the health system and the patient in order to provide that consistency of care, but it also helps to establish oneself particularly as new competitors begin to stalk you from other areas of the marketplace.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:19]:

So similarly with your role as a chief digital officer, are you obligated to see everything through a digital lens or first you remove any lens whatsoever? Look at competition in its raw form, see their fundamentals and where they’re trying to go, look at their strategy and then see how to adopt digital. What’s been the approach of your role? What should be the approach of your role?

Samuli Savo [00:07:45]:

Yeah. So basically, how we see digital is it’s part of our core business actually. Our core business in the pulp and paper and renewable materials, and then we are trying to use digital basically as a part of that. I mean everything what we do both look for new business models and look for the efficiencies. I’m not looking at digital alone. I’m more looking for the whole context how it works, and maybe one thing I would like to add. I mean, that was mentioned in, like, a 100 years history. One thing we can claim, we are actually the oldest company in the world. So our history stretches over 700. Stora was founded like a 1,200-something, which means that we have been piloting quite a lot in the last 700 years, changing business models and the others, and it is part of our DNA how we work so we’ve changed businesses, we’ve changed models and we look for new businesses to do.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:41]:

Now Ed when you look at delivering value, of course, your organization has earned a reputation that you always are wowing people with the way you deliver, and there’s also something to be said about how you manage the perception of how the value was created and how much the value was created. In that context, do you think you’re gonna be able to use digital effectively to increasingly improve the perception and the creation of value, which will get you automatically a competitive advantage?

Edward W Marx [00:09:21]:

Yeah. Value defined in healthcare is largely, at least in the West, is largely about delivering the highest value of care, patient safety and quality at the lowest price, and so we really focus mostly on the safety and quality side. So the only way to really enhance that value is to leverage what we would call digital tools, and so we’re very much about full on seeking new capabilities, new technologies, and how does that impact safety and quality, while at the same time, keep costs reasonable. Let me give you a really quick example because it’s very personal. So I’m a huge believer, huge evangelist in terms of digital. About a year ago, I was in a race competing for Team USA at the national championships in a sport called duathlon, which is run, bike, run, and in the last run, I suffered a heart attack known as a LAD or otherwise, known as a widow maker because usually people who get this type of heart attack die immediately. I was fortunate and I could actually still run. Not really knowing for sure what was happening to me, I decided by the time first responders would get to me on a very busy race course, it could mean death, and I knew all about door to balloon time if indeed I was having a heart attack. So I decided to keep running. I saw the finish line ahead about 1.5 miles. I just ran to the finish. I checked in to the medical tent at the finish, and they had some technology that worked with the iPhone. They immediately did an EKG, sent those results to the nearby hospital, and on my way I was. Now while I was traveling there, that hospital in South Carolina was sending the images to the Cleveland Clinic, to the cardiologist there. So by the time I showed up at the hospital, Cleveland Clinic was reading the images as well as the very, very capable physician that took care of me physically. So I then had a stent put in. I recovered. I was sent back to Cleveland Clinic one day later, and because of technology, modern digital technology, the ability to interact with my clinicians on a daily basis through Bluetooth, through blood pressure, through heart rate, all the different things you could talk about. My clinicians were adjusting my medications in real time. So not 6 weeks later or 8 weeks after the event where I would come in for a post follow-up checkup, but daily. As a result, 90 days later, I was running in the World Championships in Odense, Denmark. I only tell that story and not say, Wow, look at digital technology and how far we’ve come. That’s value creation, that story right there, and that happens 1,000,000 times a day. That’s value creation. Very low cost and amazing clinical outcome. Much lower cost than any type of medicine previous to this day and age, and the outcome is unparalleled. So that’s an example of creating value that’s real and personal.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:16]:

That’s a great example, very motivating. Now taking that example as a baseline. So, Tom, if you were to deconstruct this, the digital played its part, but what created the advantage? The competitive advantage for all the health care providers there or the way in fact, I let’s remove the competitive advantage from the equation, the value the way they created. Was the onus on Ed because he took the initiative to keep running and using the phone and doing the digital technology? Or there was something that was made available to him or he was educated or something which created that value?

Thomas Barnett [00:12:58]:

I think it’s twofold and hats off, Ed, to your experience there. That ability to finish that race and be able to get to, in this case, the first responders that were connected digitally to be able to tie together those components of that care team, in that instance made all the difference in the world. It’s a combination of both the patient in this case having that knowledge of how that process could play out as well as the tremendous form factors both through cell phones and other mobile technologies that have digitally connected the people who can respond and make the appropriate real time diagnosis. Those two blend together, in order to create that kind of an exceptional outcome.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:50]:

So similarly, you may not be in the same industry, but Ed’s example is a great one where you move yourself out of the domain that you work in, but wear the hat of a chief digital officer. How would you think organizations can create similar, unprecedented, extremely high value by leveraging and deploying the tools where they absolutely can create the most value versus having a tool for the sake of a tool?

Edward W Marx [00:14:18]:

Yeah. I guess it was

Samuli Savo [00:14:19]:

a great example that so thanks for sharing it. I mean, but basically, I think it goes back for the information which we are collecting by different type of means. I mean, in our industry, basically, it means that, for example, we’re using RFID tags. So when we are filling packages, typically, our customers can buy, like, 1,000,000 or, let’s say, 10,000,000 packages, and we can then actually implement an RFID tag on those, and that way, make it possible to actually share information across the whole logistical value chain coming from the very manufacturing down to the retail and then help customers to optimize the whole value chain and know exactly where their stuff are when they should be arriving in certain places, and that may then change the whole logistical equation totally which is then creating quite a bit of value for our customers by using digital tools on top of very traditional packages and that’s one of the examples how we do it.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:16]:

So Ed, let’s talk about the mind share. So that’s very traditionally seen as a marketing function that somehow people start thinking about you but there’s also an organic way of doing it that you always deliver so much value through different touch points that they say, if I have to go to someone, these are the top people I would go to. So how do you, of course, combine the high quality of delivery, but at the same time engage them in the first place so they get to try your delivery and then later on after the delivery is done besides what the impact that delivery had on them, how do you retain their attention so that their top-of-mind recall doesn’t dwindle? You continue to stay in those 3 or 4 people or entities who they’ll think of when it comes to health care.

Edward W Marx [00:16:09]:

Well, I’m fortunate to serve in a very progressive organization just like Tom does in Rochester, and our approach to the patient experience or customer experience is really called differentiated lifelong care. So we’re happy to take care of you on an episodic basis. So if you have a heart attack or you break your finger, we’re happy to see you that one time and you will get the same high quality and safe care as any other patient, but what we desire is this differentiated lifelong care. We want to be your partner in health and wellness. We don’t want you to ever have to come to a hospital, but when you do, we’re there for you, but when you don’t, we want to help you by giving you advice on nutrition, on exercise, and so we’re very focused. So I work very closely. Probably the whole three of us do the same thing with our C suite. Work very closely with marketing. Work very closely with business development, with strategy, with finance, with everyone to ensure that we can create this experience, and so one of the practical ways we do this is not just a portal, which is important because everyone wants access to their clinical data and should have it, but a single point of entry, you know, health care is a very complex industry, so how do we simplify the complex? And so by having a single point of entry where this app takes care of you, not just your medical information, which again is important, but the wellness, the tips, the tricks. Because again, our interest is about people being healthy and our communities being healthy, both in Cleveland and in other locations where we are around the world, and so that’s how we do it, is through this differentiated lifelong care. We, again, we care about you on that one time that you might ever need us, but ideally, we want to care for you through a lifetime, and so the way we do that is through those various modalities I just mentioned.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:05]:

So talk about information overload and so many different sources of education and knowledge that are available. People are drinking from a fire hose if they open their mouth. Right? Now that said, Tom, like what Ed mentioned that they would have a good process of lifelong education. How would you ensure that if you put it out there, they will eat it up?

Thomas Barnett [00:18:27]:

So I think a couple of different approaches to it. The first would be certainly doing patient focus groups and so forth. So really understanding your market and understanding what patients are looking for can translate into things. I wholeheartedly concur with Ed’s point. So rather than being an institution that you come to where things are wrong, being part of that well person journey, we want them to be front of mind with the health system, even when there isn’t anything wrong, and to make that a little more focused, a lot of us will go to a search engine and type in various symptoms, and we want to look up, if I’m suffering from this, what could that possibly be? And you can end up with a myriad of different answers, some right, some not so right. So getting patients to kind of engage back with both the mobile app, as well as your website, to look at those symptom checks, to get those well tips and so forth — anything from sunscreen to whatever folks may encounter on a day to day basis, but at least bringing folks back to the same portal helps when they’re doing a symptom check or looking to see what something could be driven by. You’re reinforcing that brand and you’re also just providing that continuity because you fall on a scale even from a marketing perspective: too few touch points you’re not top of mind and mind share but too far the other direction you can become noise. So striking that right balance is critical, and I think engaging the patient appropriately and digitally, where and when they’re looking for that kind of assistance, is absolutely key.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:23]:

So similarly, when you wear the hat of someone who is essentially owning the digital, how are you making sure with the same engagement of people? Because when you reach out to anyone with digital now, they feel, oh, yeah, whatever because they’ve heard so many different flavors. There is almost a trust-building required before somebody will swallow what you tell about digital. It could be your internal people or even your customers. So how do you engage them? And then how do you retain their level of engagement so that you are able to create the impact that you were hired to do?

Samuli Savo [00:21:01]:

Very fair point, and actually, I rarely speak about digital anymore. So I typically use use cases, so different type of real reasonings for the emerging technology we use. As an example about the customer engagement, we have been creating virtual showrooms, which are very real showrooms, which our customers can then experience by using virtual reality pedals and then a different type of label haptics. So they can actually test those packages and materials in the well, how it feels and how they would be working. In a similar manner, we have also provided this kind of a mixed reality solution where our operators can help our customers’ operators actually making decisions about the materials and how to use those. We also have been providing some other remote diagnostic type of things where we use sensors and then machine learning and artificial intelligence to basically analyze it. So typically how we approach it both internally and externally is that we first identify some business people, some people who do something tangible, something real, and then we are trying to actually find a way how we can help this person in the task what he or she is doing to make it better with some emerging technology. We rarely approach it from a, “Hey, this is digital. This is cool. That’s why you should be doing it” perspective.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:31]:

So, Ed, when you look at the two topics that we discussed, one is how do you create value? And then, of course, even in the first place, you have to engage someone and then you have to retain their engagement before they bought something from you and then you create value and then you have to retain their engagement so they keep remembering you. All of that in isolation is good. Your strategies are fine, but guess what? You’ve got competition all along. We can choose to ignore it, and we can say that, yes, we compete with ourselves, but is there one side of you and or your business leaders who is always keeping an eye on competition? And if you are, how do you make sure you are staying ahead?

Edward W Marx [00:23:12]:

Yeah. Absolutely. You’d be wise and prudent to always look to your left and right and ahead of you and behind you to see what others are doing, and I think Tom made the point earlier, not just necessarily in healthcare, but in other industries as well. Especially since healthcare is a little bit behind other industries, it’s really important that Tom and I look around us and make sure that we’re leveraging all the digital capabilities. I think the other thing is just to be — I always go back to you need to be — and I’m not a big fan of the word digital, but because that’s what we’re using and everyone seems to sort of understand it, we’ll stick with it, but I always say that if you want to lead digital or make sure that you’re staying competitive with digital, you need to be digital. So you need to adopt the latest tools, the latest things out there in consumerism to make sure that you’re staying ahead, and even if they fail and don’t materialize, it’s still good that you try them and learn from these other industries. So I always challenge myself, my team, my executive peers to always look out and see what other industries are doing. How can we harness the same thing? And that’s another reason I spend 20% and maybe a little bit of a stretch of my time outside of health care with other peers learning what they’re doing in shipping, in finance, whatever the industry is. Because you can always find something that they’re doing better. So I think that’s one way that, yes, you have to acknowledge that we are in a competitive environment, and you know, finally acknowledge it and then do something about it, and the final point, and again, Tom touched on this a little bit, is another area. Not just what the tech giants are doing or trying to do and disrupt health care and getting involved, but what are the other companies in health care doing as well? So, you know, there are concepts of the digital front door that we’re seeing from CVS and Walgreens now. They’re not just your local corner pharmacy store anymore. They’re much more than that, and they are trying to disrupt health care as well and definitely trying to take part of the primary care capabilities away from traditionally from hospitals and into their environment. So you have to be very astute, eyes wide open. You can’t rely just on your past and your history, but you’ve got to continue to build and make progress and move forward, and again, lead. So take what you learn from other industries, other companies, and lead.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:35]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back, and when we come back, so Tom, let’s build upon what just Ed said is we have to lead, look around us, and be able to keep doing what we do best, but should it stop there? Would there be a risk of you if not taking a quantum leap and instead just taking an incremental step is going to eventually create a slowdown? Can we afford it as an organization? What else could you do to get ahead in a quantum way, a quantum leap ahead of your competition? What would it take to get that going? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

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Speaker 0 [00:28:09]:

You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:22]:

Welcome back. So Tom, as I had mentioned that we got a lead. Look left and right and behind us and ahead of us to see what the competition is doing, but still we have to keep charging ahead. Now that said, my challenge to that approach in a healthy way is how much of that leading should be with the mindset that I’ll keep moving forward versus I’m gonna take a leap forward, and if you were to take a leap forward, what kind of leading does that require?

Thomas Barnett [00:28:56]:

I think from that leading perspective, definitely looking left and right will keep you abreast of technology such as the diagnostic space. So, getting inbound information data feeds, being able to reach out and engage patients digitally is one thing, but now to be able to — so what’s really going to advance? What would be a game changer, from that perspective? As I alluded to earlier, engaging those patients when they’re well, to really take some of those leaps forward, particularly from a health care perspective. They’re now moving into personalized medicine and genomic health. So when you have that patient’s DNA, for example, now we’re getting into a wealth of area that can really be transformative and a catalyst, particularly from a health perspective is getting that data and being able to run analytics on it. Being able to not only know what’s actually happening with a patient, but the leading or the more cutting edge would be being able to predict what’s about or what is likely to happen with that patient and being able to intervene earlier. That requires a lot of that left and right looking because you’re accumulating that data, but now you’ve got to start looking for those patterns on it and that starts to marry analytics and algorithms along with those digital devices to create that new experience and bring the industry forward as well as leading from that perspective.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:35]:

So to that end, Tom, I’m gonna ask you this. What you just suggested as an example of looking deeper and trying to be proactive doing the genomics, etc. That will improve the clinical outcome, but will that increase your top-line revenue? Because as I mentioned, Walgreens was able to move into the primary care physician space, which is kinda eating into your revenue. I’m just talking dollars and cents for a second, and if you have to do even leveraging digital or even otherwise, if you’re looking at your domain, the health care domain saying I’m just gonna do absolutely best or even a deeper research, get more proactive, but still stay within the same space. Or are you gonna start going into some other space to expand the revenue stream? What is the innovation here? What is the quantum leap here?

Thomas Barnett [00:31:27]:

I think particularly from the point of view that Ed and I are in along with a lot of others in health care, there’s also another component to it that’s kind of changing the industry, which is the payer mix. So how health care has been largely paid for over the last 70 years or so is beginning to change as we go to a more capitated or an at-risk kind of model. So now it’s evaluating patients and figuring out where’s the most expensive stage or where’s the most expensive setting that they’re gonna be receiving care. So for example, if we’re kind of at risk at a firm fixed price, let’s say, for a year’s care for a patient, it makes sense for us to keep intervening with that patient ahead of time. Let’s take a diabetic example. We know that the emergency room would be the most expensive setting to deal with somebody who’s having a diabetic episode. However, through digital technologies and monitoring, if we’re able to intervene with that patient and be able to alert either interventions or other care interventions to head that patient off before they enter that setting, we’re really lowering the cost for the overall health system and that ends up potentially freeing up dollars to keep investing into those future technologies. So I think that complicating factor is just how the entire payment model is affected; that’s kind of changing right under our feet as well as the technology competition.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:04]:

So similarly, when we come to your ecosystem, right, and I’m sure there is some sales to happen, and for that, you need to be able to get ahead of the competition so that your potential prospects buy your stuff over your competitors, but at the same time, these competitors, the customers themselves or the prospects themselves are coming very well informed. So how do you get ahead of that customer to wow them, to intrigue them, to inform them, to impress them, to bite on your proposition, and actually take them through that decision making journey so that they can close? Now all of that leveraging something new, something more, something different that digital has to offer.

Samuli Savo [00:33:56]:

So basically, how we are approaching innovation in order to make sure we can impress and press ahead is that we have made two quite big decisions in the company. One of them is that we have established a central funding for experimentation. So basically, we have five business divisions, and I am actually funding all the innovation activity in a group when it comes to the digital, and if they want to experiment with something, if they want to try something new to a business model, leveraging, say, a platform or some kind of new type of delivery mechanisms, there’s a way to do it in this kind of fail-fast approach, which I’m then funding, and that has been very helpful because we have been completing over 100 projects in the last few years around this, and it’s really changing the equation because people are really testing these new ideas which are popping up from their business centers, from their people. So that’s one thing: central funding for experimentation. Another big thing is that we engage heavily with the startup ecosystem. So we have been dealing with something like 600 startups in the last few years from 35 countries. We are really trying to find small startups who are very good at something and then bring that innovation closer to us and work with our own people so that we can combine what we know about our industry with what this startup knows about their solution and that way actually create something totally new. So combining these two — a heavy approach for experimentation and a very open attitude for external innovation with startups — I believe is creating something that then can surprise our customers and even competition.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:39]:

So to that end, Ed, I’m not sure to what degree do you truly compete. Yes, you compete with, as you mentioned, Walgreens getting into primary care, but you may also have other hospitals or healthcare systems that you may compete with. Do you really have to do that type of approaching, courting, prospecting, and so-called closing a customer, or do you just wait for whosoever enters the door is the one who you will thank the almighty that this is revenue for us?

Edward W Marx [00:36:10]:

So our revenue is described as the number of people or the number of lives we touch. So revenue is important obviously, we’re a company, we have payroll, those sorts of things, but we’re about how many lives can we touch because we believe, and this is said with humility, we believe that our product, the quality and safety is something that we have a moral obligation to share as far and wide as possible. So our financial goal is actually in the next 5 years to double the number of lives touched. That’s our currency. We believe everything else will follow. So if we’re to double the number of lives touched, certainly there has to be strategy largely fueled by digital in order to achieve that. I’ll give you one example. Our five year goal, so the main one I just shared with you, double number of lives touched, but we have these things called OKRs, objectives and key results. One of them is that in 5 years, 50% of our outpatient touches will be virtual. Meaning, today it’s about approaching 2% and we’re the leaders. It’s only 2%. We believe in less than 5 years now it’ll be 50%. So the other objective related to that is that 25% of our inpatient days will be at home. Meaning, health care is moving out of the hospital into the home. In the home, it’s less expensive, the quality is higher, and the patient experience is much, much better. So just to go back to your question, so how do we prospect for customers and things of that nature? One is our product. We have to make sure that it speaks for itself and that people know about it. So it’s all about the brand, and so that’s why we’re hyper focused on patient safety and quality. So with that said, we then know we want to double the number of lives touched and the way to do it largely is through virtual mechanisms, and so we invest a lot. Our strategy is heavily tilted towards digital so that we can meet those very big objectives that I just stated, and so that’s how we court, if you will, the customer, the consumer is by making it so easy to interact with the Cleveland Clinic and have access through mobile, through voice, through whatever mechanism so that you don’t need to go any place else.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:42]:

So you are essentially banking on the virtualization of health care delivery becoming, creating the inbound effect, which will increase the total number of prospects, if you will, to enter your virtual premises to get the health care taken care of, and that’s going to lead to the growth that you’re thinking.

Edward W Marx [00:39:06]:

That’s a big part of it since we’re kind of focused on digital in our conversation. Those are the main anchors related to digital. There’s more to it than that, but certainly from a digital perspective. Imagine if you’re a patient in another country and you don’t have access to high quality care and you can go online and very simply connect with — and again, all respect to other providers, everyone’s doing great — but connect with the Cleveland Clinic, then we can enable that, and I believe that there are people around the world that, if they have a choice, and if they have the capabilities, they would want to connect. Whether it’s Rochester, another fine academic health institution, or the Cleveland Clinic, there’s many. We’re not the only ones, but that is, from a digital perspective, our primary way for those patients to access the care and delivery of the Cleveland Clinic.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:08]:

So Tom, let’s build upon this. So Ed has a good point. Now there may be other competitors who would be vying for the same prospect base if you will, and then there would also be nurturing done by them to be able to woo them and can offer them things which they cannot refuse, given the quality of care is comparable. Then at the same time, you would be able to see these customers coming with a lot more knowledge than they ever had, and they sometimes analyze things to no end which in a way could also prevent a quicker close. So I’m purely talking in the sales terms. How do you battle this so that the end goal of you growing your organization is met?

Thomas Barnett [00:41:07]:

So I think, to camp on to Ed’s point, it’s one of my favorite phrases is, technology is always at its best when it’s invisible. So if you’re too aware of the technology, if it’s too prevalent, it’s not really facilitating it. It’s hindering. At its core, the business model that we’re engaged in within health care, whether in Cleveland or here in Rochester or anywhere, is typically the relationship between a patient and a physician. It can break down into a few different categories. There are some that just need to see a physician, don’t really care who it is. I’m more transaction based. There are some that have more of a relationship due to the nature of their health condition or so forth. By using digitization and these tools, and tools that probably aren’t even on the market yet, it will be coming out soon. You want to make that connection. You want to reinforce that connection. So regardless of whether it’s coming from overseas or within the country or within the state, reinforcing, facilitating, and helping to nurture that physician-patient relationship and outcomes is ultimately — we can digitize and make anything high-tech as much as we want to, but people still respond to relationships, and that’s kind of what it comes down to. So as long as you’re viewing, from our perspective, what is going to be the experience to that patient’s eyes and what they are going to be expecting, and yes, they can get obviously a wealth of information on the Internet, but as they come into that conversation, with certainly a more educated background, being able to help them decipher the signal from the noise, help them determine which of those relevant facts are most pertinent to their case just helps to reinforce that relationship over time, and again, back to affecting lives over time, that becomes an ongoing lifetime type of relationship that ends in higher quality patient satisfaction and ultimately from the marketing perspective, stickiness with your customer, in our case, patients.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:39]:

So similarly, if I were to look at the term digital, while, yes, you could say it, it’s an umbrella for a bunch of different technologies, but it’s also an idea. It’s a way of thinking. It’s a way somebody wants to experience service delivery. Which on the ground level, at the execution level, down to the brass tacks and the field staff level, we have seen that a lot of companies suffer from lack of cohesiveness and lack of homogeneity in the way they have put their processes in place, the way they’re executing, the morale of the people etcetera. So the outcome is a very choppy or disjointed experience given as digital. So with your role, which you play, while, of course, you will paint a great digital centric go to market, how do you help or your group’s executive management is making sure that it gets delivered to that end because that’s where rubber meets the road, and that’s what’s gonna give you the competitive advantage? I think it’s all about the structure in a way. Even if we, of course, we deliver in an agile manner. We do location and some ad hoc things, but basically, it’s all about the whole innovation structure that you put in place, and I think what is critical is that there’s a clear guidance for the people. What they’re trying to achieve with, say, digital or emerging technology, so they can understand what it is and why we do it, and second, there needs to be a way how they can express their ideas and actually come up with, “Hey, this is something where I could use it.” And then a transparent process how you take those ideas and how you turn those into decisions. Because in a big company, the decisions are occasionally hard. So there needs to be a very clear process how you make it, and then when things start to roll on, how you actually are communicating it and making it clear that there is a good success, there’s interesting cases, there’s interesting experimentations, and promote those heavily. That’s something we have been investing quite a lot in the last few years. So basically making sure that people are aware of digital. They are educated. They are trained. We do a lot of training around that, and secondly, they see the time. If there are ideas that are realized, and when they are realized, we are also promoting them, and then they can see the good, and I think that has been creating the momentum that is taking the whole ship in the right direction.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:03]:

So Ed, at the top, you are expected to help give the direction, motivate the team, bring them together, and drive results. In all three, the one where you have to build a good team and motivate them to be working at the top of their game is usually seen as one of the top challenges, and bringing digital into the mix which was already more than a spilling plate, it’s not really helped. So what as a leader have you tried to do to clear the space a little bit, give them a little more breathing room, have them understand that what’s new, more or different that they have to do for us to compete in this new space for you to be able to get them to feel motivated and not burnt out?

Edward W Marx [00:46:54]:

Well, a couple of things. One is, like my colleague in Rochester, we’re both from academic medical institutions full of researchers and educators as well as practitioners, and that mix creates an environment where they push us in terms of digital. So we have what I would call pop-up digital communities, which I completely support. I hang out with them and I learn what they’re doing. This would be like there’s one called BrainX. It’s a bunch of doctors who during the day take care of patients and at night they program, and they’re very interested particularly in machine learning and augmented intelligence. They create things that would sort of blow your mind and really challenge you. It makes you wonder, am I moving the organization fast enough? I run into this all the time. That’s just one example of these pop-ups, but there’s others that are always bringing something new to the table and really challenging us. So the nice thing in our organization is we don’t really have that issue about having to sort of educate people, but what we do instead is we create what I call a digital platform. So if there’s no platform and you have all these digital leaders trying to do their own thing, then it becomes chaotic and disorganized, and even though you might be doing some great things, it’s still complex and you haven’t removed the complexity from a patient or customer point of view. So instead, we create these platforms. We have what’s called a digital platform and it has six different arms. I won’t go into the detail of it, but it’s a platform so everyone knows, here is where this fits in, and as long as we’re on this platform, everything is integrated, it interoperates, it’s seamless, and it provides for the optimal patient or customer experience. So that’s sort of the approach we take. One, since we have the reverse problem, we’re more about creating that platform to make sure that we all are together and focused on the organization mission and vision.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:07]:

So Ed, what you just mentioned is a great thing that you got people motivated, but that doesn’t take away more than a spilling plate. How do you create breathing room for them to be able to think fresh?

Edward W Marx [00:49:21]:

Well, Dan, we do multiple things. So we convene individuals who have these great ideas to come together and have one cohesive strategy. If you were to ask our organization leadership, do we have a digital strategy? We do. We have an enterprise-wide digital strategy where all these individuals with great ideas could come together and engage in it. While I led it, there was no IT person involved outside of myself. So it was our customers, our internal customers, our HR, supply chain, finance, but about half of the members were clinicians, nurses, doctors. From their perspective, we put together this digital strategy. Then we created that platform that I just spoke about. So that gave them an opportunity, a place where they could bring their ideas. The other thing that we have, as well as our European colleague, is we have an innovation center. Not only do we have a very well staffed and funded innovation center, I think we’ve launched over 80 companies and certainly hundreds and hundreds, if not in the thousands of patents, I don’t know the exact number, but we also have a ventures fund. So we will fund startups. We will fund some more mature companies as well. We do all this and some of these companies, whether it’s the start up or maybe a more mature company, are created by our employees or what we call caregivers. So they have a great idea. We have this environment where we will partner with them. We will fund them and let them try their great idea. Sometimes it turns into a company that launches on its own, becomes independent. So we have multiple mechanisms. One is the inclusion I spoke about with having a cohesive digital strategy that’s undergirded by a digital platform, and two, we have this innovation center and venture center that enables these great ideas to be funded and actualized.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:18]:

So one last question for all three of you. This is where the real leaders shine is when they look at themselves and say, what am I going to fix in myself so I can lead the troops in the way I should for the organization to benefit and displace competition using digital? So let’s start with you, Tom. What would be that 20 words or less type of insight you will get? What would you fix in yourself as a leader?

Thomas Barnett [00:51:48]:

From my perspective, it’s gonna be, I’m always keeping an eye out from an IT perspective of keeping the operations running, and I think from my perspective, it’s to make sure that we are providing that ability for folks to be innovative and that we push more for efficiency and operations from an IT perspective to free up those resources so that we are entertaining the what’s-next perspective because you can get into a constantly looking left and right perspective as was alluded to earlier. So I think it’s making sure pushing for streamlining operations so that we’re staying nimble and agile enough to consider what’s possible.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:30]:

Samuli?

Samuli Savo [00:52:33]:

Well, we have been delivering quite a lot of good stuff, and I think that the organizers really can execute it in digital. Personally, I think what we should do is target yet higher ambition moonshots. So basically, that’s maybe one thing for personal, raise the bar and go for that very ambitious moonshot.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:57]:

Ed, 30 seconds.

Edward W Marx [00:53:00]:

For me, 3 things. One is I’m paperless and challenge all those that I serve with to be paperless. Number two, I volunteer 1 hour a week to understand the patient or customer perspective, and number three is I spend 1 shift per week in a clinical setting as an anesthesia technologist to never forget my internal customers and what they go through as well as the patient.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:20]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, thanks so much, Ed, Tom, and Samuli for sharing your insights on this very important and interesting topic, which is how to displace competition using digital. Thanks so much for insights, all of you. Thanks so much, and, listeners, please like us on Facebook. Search for CTN, CIO Talk Network, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn group. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care and God bless.