Boston Children’s Hospital

Jen Doorly Magaziner’s background reflects a journey dedicated to revolutionizing healthcare through innovation. Beginning in global health, she championed patient[1]centered care. Armed with a dual MBA and MPH degree, she transitioned to consulting, gaining diverse industry insights. Now at Boston Children’s Hospital, Jen’s leadership drives digital strategy and innovation adoption, weaving her rich background into a tapestry of transformative healthcare solutions.

In an interview with Healthcare Business Review magazine, Magaziner shares her insights on the challenges and emerging trends in the telehealth industry and the experience she has gathered in the domain.

What Are Some Of The Challenges That You Have Encountered As The Vp Of Digital Health?

The biggest challenge that drives all of our work is access. Numerous hurdles prevent patient families from accessing essential pediatric care. Patients with rare or complex conditions can be on a diagnostic odyssey for up to 7 years before identifying the care and treatment they need. The behavioral health crisis reminds us of the terrible downstream effects when children can’t get help early as issues emerge. We have a shortage of pediatric sub[1]specialists across many clinical areas, and while digital alone cannot solve any of these challenges, it can certainly help. And families want and need digital connections- to help them triage symptoms to determine whether or not they should seek further care, to make sure there is nothing else they should be doing to care for their loved one. Many patients and families ask for greater digital connection, but barriers still prevent us from connecting.

One is the limitations imposed by state-based medical practices and regulations. These create barriers for pediatric providers who want to help and patients who need a specific area of expertise that may not exist locally.

Another is the variability in coverage for some of these virtual services, which disincentivizes health systems from leaning further into virtual care, hampers innovation, and wastes a tremendous amount of time for everyone.

All of these challenges can make us collectively more risk-averse at a time when the one thing everyone in healthcare can agree on is that we need to do something differently.

Given These Challenges, How Do You Develop Strategies That Align With Your Hospital’s Goals? Specifically, How Do You Choose The Appropriate Technology?

Our digital innovation priorities reflect the enterprise’s priorities- to advance pediatric health. Our innovation team collaborates extensively with leading institutions worldwide and advises on and develops digital innovations to identify emerging health needs and bridge care gaps. Our other two focus areas are creating more connected care for our patients and partners and greater digital empowerment for our teams here at Boston Children’s. Connected care means driving innovative digital engagement models to transform pediatric access and care globally. We leverage digital basics like text-based engagement, emerging technologies like smart devices enabling families to monitor health from home, or augmented reality that helps patients experience an MRI machine before they step on site. Our digital empowerment portfolio aims to ensure our Boston Children’s Hospital teams are as digitally proficient and empowered as the patients and families they serve. Our focus lies in harnessing emerging innovations like generative AI to alleviate the administrative burden on clinicians, streamline documentation, personalize care, and enhance overall system efficiency. The people at Boston Children’s are so mission-driven.

They are here because they want to help children and their families. Given our complex systems in all hospitals, a better digital experience for families has sometimes put additional strain on those serving them. We are eager to remedy this as much as we can. 

Essentially, we serve as an internal incubation group that assesses how new and emerging technologies can address the challenges faced by our care teams. Technology selection is conducted in close partnership with IT and begins with identifying problems we want to solve first. We engage patient families extensively, gathering insights through family advisory councils and user surveys to understand their needs. We work closely with our clinical areas to understand challenges and areas of opportunity.

As we transition to Epic this summer, we seek to maximize core systems as much as possible and are selective in who we partner with.If gaps remain between the desired patient experience, clinical or business needs, and existing technology, we bring together a diverse interdisciplinary group to define the technology requirements collectively. When we launch a new technology, we measure impact early to determine if we should “scale or sunset .”We establish a baseline and define short-term success criteria, typically within the first quarter after launch or within the fiscal year. We closely monitor and analyze data to share with interdisciplinary committees across the hospital, helping us decide whether the initiatives are worth further scaling.

"The Best Technology Cannot Fully Compensate For Poor Processes; Often, The Addition Of A Digital Offering Illuminates Opportunities For Operational Transformation, And That Innovation Only Occurs When There Is As Much Focus On Selecting New Workflows As On Choosing A New Technology"

 Finally, selecting the technology is only the beginning of the work, and the best technology cannot fully compensate for poor processes. Often, the addition of a digital offering illuminates opportunities for operational transformation. Ideally, we would always revisit how things work before wrapping a digital experience around it. Often, this redesign happens in parallel, or sometimes retroactively, as we learn more about what a great experience can be. Digital innovation occurs when there is as much focus on selecting new workflows as on choosing a new technology.

What Is Your Advice To Peers And Colleagues In The Healthcare Technology Space?

Every digital health leader is trying to determine where to invest and where to divest. In this era of rationalization and streamlining, it has become increasingly crucial to center the perspectives of patients, families, and care teams and to learn from one another. We are in a tough spot where we need to streamline and integrate tech, but not at the expense of a consumer’s digital ease of navigation. Health systems are complex enough to navigate today. Consumer and user data is critical here - to challenge our assumptions of who we are reaching and not reaching.

Look for tech companies willing to be a partner rather than a vendor. Our innovation team has always sought partners willing to co-develop, as the complexity of pediatrics requires this.

Finally, ensure you have the right clinical and operational partners before bringing any more technology into our crowded systems, and start small rather than not starting at all.