Pipeline Health System

Vincent Green works as a Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Pipeline Health, which is a Hospitals & Physicians Clinics located in three states, Illinois, Texas, and California. He is responsible for serving to serve underserved hospitals. Since its inception, he has been held with numerous titles throughout the time. Since 2001 after finishing his residency, Justin still continues his emergency physician training. He holds 21 years of post-residency experience.

What are some of the major challenges and trends that have been impacting the healthcare industry?

Security is the most significant challenge that healthcare faces today. Several hospitals have stated that the security service providers they are affiliated with have been attacked and hacked. As a result, I believe that security is something that everyone is attempting to grasp and ensure that it is actually robust. There are several levels of security, and achieving the highest level of security demands a significant amount of effort and attention. Another major challenge is how healthcare responds to pandemics and their consequences. We've seen a lot of regulatory things that happened immediately before or during the epidemic but didn't. Now the question is when they will begin working on those projects. As a result, all of the projects that have been put on hold due to the pandemic, whether internal programmers to improve the hospital or regulatory projects, must be revived and engaged in some way.

Tell us about the most recent project you've been working on and how you used some of these technology developments or any process factors to make it a success.

Firstly, one of our major projects is improving the security system. As a CMIO, I try to focus on upcoming regulatory requirements. I feel there are certain challenges in obtaining physician compliance due to the nature of their profession. How do they maintain quality and regulatory standards while being short-staffed and coping with the pandemic situation? To make their lives easier, we provide faster and more efficient ways to document compliance. For example, there are requirements for sepsis, which is a fundamental measure and must be met. To accomplish that compliant, we've built a template in our voice recognition software. I use Dragon at my Cerner hospitals and M*Modal at my Paragon facility. Our security team is putting in a lot of effort to ensure that we're not only compliant, but the folks we're working with are as well.

The second project on which I've been working has been quite beneficial or useful is the development of a custom report that many hospitals do not use correctly. Rather than having one's own set of reports, one should build a report that everyone may use. 

Not only to communicate on the same page but also to highlight and use artificial intelligence (AI) or excellent programming rules to attract attention to subjects that are vital to them. We can utilize color-coding to quickly identify patients' requirements that need to be addressed and fixed those issues while they're in-house.

What do you think the future looks like in 12 to 24 months down the line for the healthcare industry?

Innovation and technology, in my opinion, are the keys to the future of healthcare. The biggest promise is the use of AI and ML. The AI-enabled products are now on the market, and while they appear to be promising, it is unclear whether they will be actual game-changers. But I would say in the coming years; these technologies will become more cost-effective. Earlier, it used to be expensive since it required a large number of programmers, data scientists, and other experts to help you comprehend how to accomplish it. My expectation is that more vendors get into this market, and more people pay attention. I can see the improvement, but hoping healthcare IT stuff to be more cost-effective and functional rather than just a promise. 

Any piece of advice that you want to give for the upcoming professionals to be successful in this field?

Having an understanding of technical as well as the clinical aspect is very important for any upcoming professional. One of the problems that most hospitals face is that they have smart technical and clinical people, but there is some communication gap between them. For some of the stuff that humans can do, machines need to be very specifically programmed. In order to program it, we need raw data. Anyone who wants success in this field should understand two sets of cognitive processes: how to think like a clinician and how to think like a programmer. On top of that, try to understand each and every aspect of the business, such as the regulatory aspect, documentation aspect, and quality or safety aspect. Understanding one aspect of the business and mastering it may take months or even a year. Each of these distinct components has its own vernacular language and thought process that makes it more important for young peers to be successful in the healthcare space.