The Edge of Healthcare: Bureaucracy vs. Innovation: Who Wins in Healthcare?

Martin Cody: Welcome to The Edge of Healthcare, where the pulse of innovation meets the heartbeat of leadership. I’m Martin Cody, your guide through riveting conversations with the trailblazers of healthcare. Tune in to gain exclusive access to strategies, experiences, and groundbreaking solutions from influential payer and health system leaders. This isn’t just a podcast, it’s your VIP ticket to the minds shaping the future of healthcare right now. Buckle up, subscribe, and get ready to ride to The Edge of Healthcare, where lessons from leaders are ready for you to use today.

Martin Cody: Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Edge of Healthcare: Lessons from Leaders to Use Today, and today, we have got a jam-packed opportunity to learn from one of the foremost consultants in the digital health space, certainly around AI advisor to AI startups. But it didn’t always begin there. And so I’m excited to jump right in. So, I will introduce you to Sudipto, I apologize, Srivastava. Hopefully, I got at least one of them close. Sudipto, good to see you.

Sudipto Srivastava: Yeah, good to see you. Glad to be here. I’ve been following your podcast and listening to some of the episodes that you’ve had. I have learned a lot myself, so I’m excited to be a guest today.

Martin Cody: We’re delighted to have you. Thanks so much. We, with you now involved, I think our listeners are up to five, and that includes three family members and yourself, and, but we’re growing. It’s going in the right direction. I was thrilled to get introduced to you, because one of the areas that you consult in and basically spent a great deal of time in is digital health. And digital health is just a massive umbrella that covers an endless array of topics, modalities, information, processes. But I’m wondering if you, from your lens, if you could distill digital health down to what it means in a bite-sized piece. What is digital health to you?

Sudipto Srivastava: Yeah, I think that’s a good question and very abstract question. There’s an answer which is very abstract because you talk to ten people, and you’ll get 75 definitions of digital health. Exactly. And I think back to a time that HIMSS, the organization, came up with the definition for digital health. And you could tell it was done by a committee because it was like at least a full year paragraph long. And it was like just a gobbledygook of synergy and this and technology and so on. So, I simplify it a lot. You know, I’ve helped a couple of large health organizations in digital health digital transformation. And the way I look at digital health is really, it’s a proxy for change using technology, and in some ways I even extend that to AI. It’s basically doing things better, faster, cheaper using technology. And I know you also talk and your listeners also learned a lot about leadership and so on, and leaders need to recognize what is the change that they’re looking for, and it’s important for that. And then they can apply the various sundry of tools that are available in the digital health realm towards the change that they want. Do they want change in operations? Do they want change in patient care? Do they want change in clinical outcomes? What, and again, I’m hospital-centric, so I think a lot like hospitals do, they want change with data. Do they want change with an electronic medical record? So it’s all digital. It’s really the application. And what’s your appetite for change? What you want change? That’s how I look at it.

Martin Cody: No one wakes up one day and says I want to get into digital health. At least they have it for the past 50 years. They might in the near future because it’s such a burgeoning field. But walk us through, you know, your time at stern prior to that, how did you get started in healthcare and when did that interest, who planted that interest?

Sudipto Srivastava: It’s fascinating because, again, I’ve been listening to some of your podcasts, and it’s inspiring to hear some stories where, you know, people were born and they had like family members who were doctors and people who were surfing. I think recently who sort of, you know, got into this sort of instance and so on. I think for some of your listeners who may be more like me, who didn’t have that sort of epiphany or so on. For me, it was a very structured and planned process. It was a well-thought-out move. I was working for one of the big four accounting firms, one of the four big ones in the country, in the world, frankly speaking. And then it was great. I mean, I loved that time. We can talk about consulting and what people think about consulting, but I love that time that I had over there. But at some point, it started clashing with just like work-life balance. I mean, my wife and I, we were balancing two careers. She’s got an impressive career herself, and we were just expecting our second child, and we were like, this is just not going to work weekends and late nights and things like that. And while I love the people that I work with, it was just not that. So I methodically sat down and I said, what are the industries that appeal to me? What are the industries that my heart says? Ah, there’s something something there. Healthcare was one. Education was the next and sustainability was the third one. And this was many moons ago. So this is going back in time. And I strategically looked at each one of them. I did a little analysis like a classic consultant would into each industry, what the growth patterns were and so on. And then what I did, which I advise everybody to do, is to talk to people. I just went to my network, my network’s network, my network’s network’s network like I would meet people, get input, and say, in the end, hey, is there another person that you recommend that I should speak with around this? And I found that people are extremely, extremely helpful in a one on one situation when you ask for help, and that led me down to healthcare. I mean, the final calculation that I did was people will need healthcare throughout education at that time still showed the same signs of being stayed. There was not a lot of innovation happening there. Some podcasts that I listened to call it education, has become like a luxury industry where only the people who have a lot of money, and some can say healthcare is kind of becoming like that too. But it was very methodical. And then I went and joined a nonprofit organization that was responsible for building the health information exchange for the state of New York, and I took on responsibilities for them. That led me to, through networking, connections, and so on, led me to Mount Sinai Health System in New York City that I worked for several years, where I built a digital strategy. I had a team of developers. Just fascinating time, the best people that I worked with. And then, that led me to hospital for special surgery again through networks and connections. So that’s kind of the journey that I took. But it was sort of very planned out. I wanted to be deliberate about sort of my career paths, career goals, and I was lucky enough to have enough people who bet on me, as well as a strong network of people who supported me.

Martin Cody: …, you mentioned big four accounting firms, and I remember going through college, and it was the big eight accounting firms for a period of time. So, did you leave college with an accounting degree?

Sudipto Srivastava: Oh, no. This was so these were accounting firms, but I was doing management consulting for them. So, if you look at accounting firms now, a big portion of their work comes from advisory. They were birthed as accounting firms. I had to do some audits so I can pretend to be an auditor in certain days. But these were technology audits. My undergrad is in physics and computers, and after that I wanted to balance it again. Some of your listeners may appreciate that or not. I wanted a path. I think of myself as a translator. I’m a translator of tech to business, business to tech strategy, to tech tech to strategy. And as a result. So, enough of geeky stuff with physics and computers. Then I got my Masters in Business Administration. And then a few years ago when digital and data and everything else was colliding. I got a master’s in science, in data analytics, machine learning, and so on. That would allow me to be in that space to understand data. AI, analytics, building models. I had to relearn coding and things like that again, which was fascinating and scary at the same time. But that’s how it transpired.

Martin Cody: And I like that. And I’ll get back to the consulting aspect in a second, especially the pursuit of the master’s. Where did you grow up?

Sudipto Srivastava: So I grew up in India, actually in New Delhi, which is the capital, millions and millions of people. And then after my undergrad in physics and computers, which I finished in India, I came to the US to study my masters in business. I actually came to the great state of Ohio, believe it or not.

Martin Cody: Excellent. I love that path, if you will. When you were in India, I mean, computers in physics, that’s impressive. One of those would be impressive. And this is, you know, computers have exploded. There’s not a person over the age of two that isn’t influenced by computers for the, you know, whether it’s a screen time or what have you. How did you know, and what appealed to you from the computer side? But then, why physics?

Sudipto Srivastava: Yeah. You know, so I, my, even in school, I had an interest for the sciences, and both my parents were professors, one in history, one in philosophy. So I was like, I’m going to do something that is as far away from history and philosophy as possible, and sciences were it. My brother had pursued a line, at least at that time, more on the biology side of things, to be doctors and so on. And I was like, I don’t want to do that. So it was that and then, you know, consistent theme that you’ll see. And hopefully, a lot of people have the same thing in their careers is they seek advice, and they are lucky enough and fortunate enough to get good advice. So even at that early age, not that I knew the concept of Mentors or sponsors, but I had some good friends who were focused and driven, and they were, you know, they talked about sort of physics as a line. Now, I had always liked physics in high school as well, because it seemed real and tangible to me, unlike chemistry, which I couldn’t see, or biology, which was like too much memorization for me. So physics seemed real. I could see projectiles going up, like, you know, things forming through equations. And my math was a very favorite topic of mine. So it kind of aligned very well with physics. And then, as I was thinking of pursuing higher degrees in the US, physics extended to computers a little bit because I needed to learn a combination of physics and computers, because my master’s in business, even though it was MBA, it was focused on information systems at that time.

Martin Cody: So, leveraging that today. And it’s interesting, I find it fascinating that you kind of narrowed it down to three areas healthcare, education. And was the third one, sustainability. Yes. And all three noble pursuits, in my opinion. I think I may have leaned myself more towards education. I think that teachers are the most unsung heroes in America today. We regale the billionaire hedge fund manager, but yet we don’t pay any attention to the fourth-grade school teacher. That has to keep the children motivated every single day for the entire year. I think there’s something misaligned. I love the leveraging of business intelligence, AI, and what you’ve learned from the applied computer physics and stuff like that. On the consulting aspect, when you were with one of the big four firms, was there an aha moment where you saw textbook material and theorems and that sort of thing that you could apply to real-world struggles that a business org was having and say, I have a solution for you. And it was something that you learned in school. I’m interested in how you were able to walk that line, if you will. Or here’s the material that I’ve learned, and here’s how I can apply it in a real-world scenario. And then there’s a little bit of sales involved in that, because you have to be a good storyteller. You have to, you know, win over from a conference standpoint and trust. How were you able to accomplish that?

Sudipto Srivastava: Yeah, I’ll answer it in two parts, actually. So the first part is, and many other subjects do that too, but physics and computers allowed me to swim in complexity. These were complex things. And then, when you pair that with an MBA, there is a storytelling. There is a explanation of complex facts part to it, an analytical thinking part to it. So when I was working with my clients as a consultant, I could see and there’s a third parallel to this in where the healthcare industry is going that will come back to perhaps later. I could see that there were people who had business ideas, but they just could not translate that into bits and bytes, they could not translate that into what they needed. They could sort of articulate a few things in words. So I feel that the complex understanding of physics and computers helped me understand them, and then take that and translate it back to the geeks who were, you know, hands on keyboards and programming this. I mean, back in the day, there was like COBOL and other things and, you know, C sharp and things that were Java that people were programming in. And to be able to take the business language and explain it to people who never wanted to speak to business at all, right? So that was sort of one part of it that I believe sort of helped me. I think the second part, which was interesting, that you talked about sales and perhaps some of your listeners may feel how I feel about sales or I used to feel about sales. I thought sales was classic. Hey, I got something like the classic car salesman, like pushy and aggressive and so on and so forth. And then, I was fortunate that one of my partners at the consulting company that I worked with, I expressed this to him, and he said, that is not how I see it. Yes, there are certain people who have success that way, but I have success through relationships. I talk to people, understand their problems, and if they have, if I have something to sell to them, I’ll tell them about an offering that I have. It’s based on relationships and trust, and nobody buys anything unless they really want to buy something. So if these are your friends, don’t feel bad that they’ll say yes or no or the other, but understand what the problems are. Build a relationship and establish trust. That is sales. You don’t have to walk into a room and be the smartest person, and so on and so forth. And this person was, you know, you could, like they didn’t have all the classic display characteristics for salesperson. They were soft-spoken. They weren’t like a tall, gangly person or something like that. And that resonated with me all the time. That sales is not just like, hey, I got to sell something to you. It’s, what are you? Like, how can I help? Like, what are you struggling with? And so on, and I try to bring that to many of my conversations even now, working within teams or with internal stakeholders when working with hospitals, doctors, and surgeons, and so on. Because, in a way, we’re also selling technology solutions to them and they’re like top of the line in their field. But, you know, they don’t know a lot about tech. And they’re like, well, how do I trust that I’ll make the right decision through your advice anyway?

Martin Cody: I think I can trust me. I can talk about sales forever. I love the profession, and you’re absolutely right. I think the best salespeople are the ones that solve the most problems. And you solve problems by doing what you said. You ask questions people buy from who they like and for them to like you. That takes time and trust. And thankfully, there’s no app for that these days. You know you have to have positive interaction after positive interaction, solve problems, ask great questions, build the relationship, and if you have a solution, then that’s usually when it can be deemed appropriate to introduce the solution to some of the problems that are happening. Love the profession. Obviously, one of the things that I love, what you mentioned, was you, and I’ll crudely analogize it to there’s book smart people and street smart people, and oftentimes those two don’t mix because the book smart people that are hammering away at the keyboard, they don’t have the ability to articulate in the business sense, the conversation, the dialogue, the language, if you will. And I think sometimes they struggle with that, even though they’re brilliant. You somehow bridge that gap. And I think it’s an important lesson that if there’s people out there that are gifted in the business speak and acumen, that you better start working on some of the computer or physics or the data analytics side of the conversation to be able to communicate some of the effective business strategies that you want to have imparted or learned about. And conversely, if there’s technical people that are squirreled away somewhere in a cubbyhole, which they usually are. Type of thing. It’s okay to come out of your shell and say, hey, I think I have a good idea. I’m not certain how to articulate it. You manage to do both, and I’m curious how you did that and how others could do it as well.

Sudipto Srivastava: Yeah. You know, I think, and as your listeners are processing this, I also want to start by giving a little state of the state of where I believe the industry is going, and then I’ll bring it back to really sort of your question, because I think it is important to understand that I feel my read and study of the industry is and this is healthcare. Healthcare is the only industry I know very, very well, as there was a time when you could be in your technology silo and then tell the business folks, doctors, clinicians, nurses, administrators, strategy officers, and so on, this is what you should do. This is what technology should do. Or they would tell you what they need, and you would go in your hole and do your stuff and take care of things. I think those words are merging a lot for people who are listening just on audio. I’m joining two hands almost think of like two streams sort of meeting together, because a lot of people in the business world, the clinicians, the administrators, the strategy officers, and so on. Technology has become easier for them. You know, with AI and the way things can happen with AI, with digital tools, and they use technology a lot more in their lives, with their kids’ life, with everything else. So it’s not a mystery for them anymore. Yes, maybe programming in Python or something else might be complicated, but it’s not. So they are swimming downstream into the tech world and understanding more and more and asking better and better questions at the same time. There’s a new breed of technologists that are swimming upstream to understand more of business, because they know that to meet business challenges and to solve business challenges, you have to speak their language. You have to know how to translate that. So that trend has been continuing. I think I just got sort of always felt drawn towards that middle. I used to call myself the bridge earlier in the day, partly because of my consulting, because I had to translate to multiple people, and I was like, if you guys could just speak the same language, you know, wouldn’t that be so great? So I’m like, oh, well, there’s a business here for me to speak that language, and there’s an opportunity here. And I think the world is moving closer and closer towards that. So, as young people in your audience or others even are looking to things, being that translator is important because you got to do all of the above. You got to understand business, you got to understand strategy, you got to understand operations, and you got to understand technology. You got to understand the trends, etc., etc. So that’s my two-part answer to your question.

Martin Cody: I like it. It’s funny you talked about language, and I’ve said this for years, and I’ve yet to see an instance where it hasn’t proved true, where every whether it’s a very special discipline has its own language, whether it’s music, whether it’s law, whether it’s wine, whether it’s geography, whether it’s sailing, whether it’s sports and the minute and language is the common connector in each of those areas of subspecialty, if you will. And the minute you start learning some of the frequent nomenclature in that area of subspecialty, from a language standpoint, a whole world opens up to you. And so I applaud you for bringing it back to language. And I also think it’s important to if someone is uncomfortable, you know, if a tech person coding Python has a business idea, they should be comfortable enough and they should have an environment in the culture where that business idea can be shared. And I don’t, and I would be curious: do you still see that happening in organizations where there is scheduled, if you will, time for employees to generate ideas that they know would make the company better and float those up the flagpole? That used to be common practice in IBM and some of the big firms in the 70s and 80s. I don’t know if it’s happening like it is, and I think it might be to firm’s own detriment because of the knowledge base within their employees.

Sudipto Srivastava: Yeah. So that’s an excellent question. And I’ll again talk a little bit about this at a macro level and then bring it down to a specific answer. And for once I’ll just take a slightly negative twist and then bring it back to positive. Of course I think the negative part is over the years. And again, speaking of healthcare and mostly provider-based healthcare. Over the years, what ended up happening was that this silo, this separation of tech and business started separating, and technology started becoming so complex that the effort to keep it alive, to keep it working, to keep it upgraded, that KTLO as it’s called, to keep the lights on mentality, burden the technology team so much that they needed a way, they needed a bureaucracy to say no to all the business people who were making demands, because the business people didn’t understand technology. So they were like, why can’t you just do this in like 20 minutes? Why does it take you six months? It’s like, well, because you have to go back and do all of this stuff. And I think as a result of that, they became almost like lawyers and nothing like lawyers. But a lot of lawyers and compliance folks generally think of the risks and more ways to say no than to say yes. And as a result, there was a big chasm that came between these two areas where business was like, oh gosh, every time you go to IT and technology, they say, fill out this intake form and do this and so on. And then six months later, gosh, I’m done with it. And that happened because they were so burdened, and they spent 80% of the time on like support activities and that exact thing that you talked about, the creativity part, like every function has a support function and a drive function, as they call it. There was a Columbia professor who coined this term. That this drive and support drive is new ideas, generation of solutions, and whatnot. And support is just keeping the lights on. And over time, if you see the spectrum increase where there was more and more support and less of drive, I think the trend is shifting where organizations are starting to do that because they’re merging more strategy and business functions in tech and bringing people more tech people into the conversation. And I see organizations doing that, but we still have ways to go where it’s happening a lot. And now that I’m advising a lot of startup companies, I see that this is happening a lot in the startup field. Product managers, they are exactly the people that I’m sort of talking about who understand business, who understand tech and come up with solutions and ideas and so on. And with AI, hopefully, more people will be product managers because they don’t have to spend all that time coding and building and so on, because I will do that.

Martin Cody: It’s pretty interesting. And it’s funny because you mentioned legal. Legal is sometimes referred to as the Sins Prevention Team. But, and there is that chasm of language, communication, and legal is another one, right? When you talk about another subspecialty, if you will, they have their own language. I love the idea of tech, learning to speak business, and business learning to speak tech from that standpoint because there’s so much potential productivity gains, operational gains, insight that the employees have that are living, breathing, eating this every single day that I think administration would benefit from tapping into. I want to talk a little bit now about we’ve talked about digital health means from your perspective, but what are you seeing? You’re an advisor to several startups, and I think the disruption that’s going to occur in healthcare in the next five years is going to be like nothing we’ve ever seen, and a lot of it’s going to be driven by AI, but also a lot of it’s going to be driven by me. I’ve said numerous times on the program that healthcare is single-handedly keeping the fax industry afloat.

Sudipto Srivastava: Yes, I’ve heard that from you.

Martin Cody: You know, 1999 called it. That they’d like their technology back.

Sudipto Srivastava: Exactly.

Martin Cody: So you have the opportunity there. If you were going to advise someone on a career in healthcare, where would you point them?

Sudipto Srivastava: Yeah. Well, so next year I might be teaching a course on for a masters in healthcare sort of program healthcare management program. So I’ve been thinking a lot about this because there are so many pockets of healthcare service delivery, support, of course, you know, nursing doctors, and so on. Like that’s one line of business and there’s a whole sort of support function that serves them. I want to answer that question again by talking about something that I see at a macro level, at least for the next three-plus years, within the healthcare delivery industry. And here I’m talking about hospitals and providers and doctors and nurses and so on. The word, and perhaps there was a consultant that coined this word that’s been circulating the industry for the last 1 to 2 to three years and will circulate going forward, is operational efficiency. And that also means a lot of things to a lot of people. But what operational efficiency means to me and the way I translate that is, geez, over time, we have built a lot of fat in this industry, and the doctors and the nurses who are in the delivery of healthcare are now struggling through a molasses of bureaucracy, process structure, EMR and so on, where they are unable to do their jobs and are actually quitting in large numbers, right? So that’s where the industry is going, as I see it. It’s going to be operational efficiency, and it’s going to be helping the doctors do what they do best, which is take care of patients and try to slash as much of the bloat, bureaucracy, middlemen, etc. that are in the system. So now I come back to your question about what would you advise people to do is I would pick those lines where you see someone making an honest attempt to knock down and improve operational efficiency. So, it could be startups that are in a line of business. You interviewed a few startup companies. I enjoyed those conversations, but they were like, you look at small doctor. I think this lady was looking at small doctor practices and finding like where the bottlenecks are, helping them sort of figure things out so that it’s all about it was costing us $100, and now can we do that in $80, $70, $30, $15? Every other industry when it goes through transformation reduces cost. We’re the only industry besides education that increases cost. So I think that is where the I believe the puck is going. And as you’re, as people are choosing industries, think of who is solving that problem. If it’s in the PBM world, you know, pharmacy benefit managers were so many middlemen in the insurance world where, oh my goodness, you know, the back and forth that happens. Hospital stays, the payers, the payers hate the hospitals. You know, they’re like, well, you’re charging us for random things. Why does this person need a third stent? Blah, blah, blah, and so on. And they’re saying no. Well, this need and I’m a doctor. I get to decide like operating that. Of course, I’m biased towards technology. So, I feel that technology can offer AIDS and solutions to make that better. A problem that we have created, unfortunately, also through technology, you know, the the burden on physicians right now is because they have to spend so much time typing into sort of things and so on. So I think the advice would be to look at and of course, people can hit me up on LinkedIn if there’s speakers. I’m happy. I spent a lot of time mentoring folks as well, and I’ve been lucky enough to have great mentors myself that look at where the puck is going from operational efficiency perspective for the next 3 to 5 years, whether it’s AI, digital tools, and so on. It will be towards that goal or efficiency. Nursing workflows, how to optimize this bloated environment into something that is lean and can deliver at a reasonable cost.

Martin Cody: Agreed. And you’re right, every industry is doing that on a perpetual basis. How can we do it better, cheaper, faster? And healthcare is long overdue for that. And I think there is too many middlemen to a degree. And I also happen to co-chair the provider information sub workgroup at an organization called Wedi. So I work with providers and provider information all the time, and we have to stop burdening providers with non-clinical administrative tasks. I think prior auth is an example of that. And I think, don’t get me started on the fact that the fox guarding the henhouse gets to determine when the hens eat, at what time, what they eat, that sort of stuff. So we could have a whole program on the alignment and incentives in healthcare, which I believe introduced some of this bloat, but that will be a program for another time. But I love the answer because I think from a disruption standpoint, you know, you look at what digital health is going through. And it brings me to kind of the next segment I want to talk about, which this is the word association segment. And this is one where I’ll mention a couple of words or a sentence or a single word, and you tell me the first thing she pops into your head, good, bad, or indifferent. So no filters. Yeah. Okay. Well, the first one is you mentioned this earlier, which is kind of funny. HIEs, good idea or a bad idea?

Sudipto Srivastava: Good idea in concept, but culturally, they just did not understand the marketplace. Trust me. I spent many years trying for the naive task of trying to connect all hospital data together. Multiple providers talking to each other in this beautiful ecosystem of all information is flowing back and forth.

Martin Cody: Choir of angels. There’s some harp music low in the background.

Sudipto Srivastava: Digital health companies would tap into it almost like electricity, and they would be like the TV systems and refrigerators working on and bulbs powering on this thing and so on. What the rude awakening that I had was when I realized there was a very high incentive for people not to participate, for hospitals not to participate, for EMR companies, not to participate for technology vendors, because the problems that they created ended up putting more money in their pocket. I mean, there are so many companies. I mean, you talk about APIs right now, like companies were like, oh no, we’re not going to share data. Who owns the data? Well, the hospital owns the data. No, the EMR owns the data. Doesn’t the patient own the data? Well, we need consent from the patient to do that. So I mean, it gives me PTSD from that time of working through.

Martin Cody: My apologies for bringing that up, but.

Sudipto Srivastava: No, no, it’s, it’s funny, but I take lessons from that, especially as we’re now thinking of AI and digital tools and so on. You have to think back at what is the incentive of the person on the other side of the table. Why will they do this? And if this impacts their livelihood, guess what? They’re not going to embrace it.

Martin Cody: Biggest mistake hospitals make regarding digital health.

Sudipto Srivastava: So many. It can be a whole podcast because over the course of my career, I’ve reviewed about 800 or so startup companies, looked at multiples of technologies. I think the biggest mistake they make is they are not really clear about what they’re looking for. They tend to go to conferences, they tend to go to meetings, and they, there’s this shiny toy syndrome that they get into and say, oh, if it works for them, it can work for us. They never go back to say, well, is it a technology solution that we’re looking for? Or is it just our desire that some knight in shining armor come and rescue us because we are unable to confront our problems? Back in consulting, I learned this concept called ESIA, which is when you’re looking at a process or problem, you know, you either eliminate bottlenecks, you simplify things, you integrate stuff, or you automate stuff. I think people jump, always to the automated. They’re like, oh, digital tool shiny toy, hospital X used it. They never took it well. Hospital X took eight months to do it and only 2% of their users are actually using it. What is the problem that you’re trying to solve? I think they really have trouble articulating that partly because of culture as well, because it’s not nice to point problems at your own sort of self and say, oh, this could be a problem because our process sucks. As opposed to, let’s throw these five digital tools, and it’s going to magically solve the problem.

Martin Cody: Yeah, and that gets back to what you’ve heard me from a consistent theme. I think we have a crisis of leadership in healthcare, because an effective leader would not make that same mistake and go pursue the shiny object. Second to last one. Epic software.

Sudipto Srivastava: So, because I do not want to get fired by my future employer, I’m going to say Epic is amazing, and it is the best EMR out there.

Martin Cody: All right. We’ll put an asterisk under that.

Sudipto Srivastava: No, no, no. But I’ll give you the answer. I’ve had my own evolution with Epic as an EMR on the pro side of things. If you look at it, it hasn’t gone down. It has served its customers very well. It is generally delayed in bringing out features and products and so on, but that’s what people want. Like people are not clamouring for the next iPhone version and next software to come through. They’re fine. And the users, the end users, the doctors and the nurses, they get used to some things. There are so many times that I’ve gotten and brought amazing solutions to them, and if that’s not launched within Epic, they don’t use it. So I think it’s a yin-yang kind of a story that Epic has. At the same time, I feel that Epic has an EMR because of its size and the number of hospitals that it serves. It’s, you know, it’s like the old Clay Christensen sort of rule of innovation. And the dilemma there, you know, they’re unable to move at a speed that the industry requires. You know, there are frustrated administrators and clinicians who are like, gosh, you know, I know that this is going to be in a module three years from now. Can it be there tomorrow? Can it be there like in the next quarter release or something? So I think that’s what a lot of organizations are battling with. I think where smart organizations and I speak to a lot of CIOs who are sort of friends in healthcare systems, a lot of smart technologists are trying to maximize Epic the most and really finding the gaps that need to be filled, as opposed to replacing aspects of epic that somebody just chooses not to use. So that’s the balance that people are striking.

Martin Cody: Yeah, I agree, and they were API resistant for a long, long time, right? They they didn’t share anything. I mentioned something earlier about.

Sudipto Srivastava: Opening up APIs that we owned. Like these are private APIs that we own. Can we have access to that. Like, oh, let’s talk.

Martin Cody: And I think unrelated but related, you’re going to see some serious questions in industry analysis around data provenance in the very near future as it relates to AI. I think the AI consent, or I agree button is going to go away because where does that? Who owns that data? And ultimately, I think it’s going to be the patient’s data. Last question living or deceased, anyone in healthcare or your professional circles that you would love to sit down and have an adult beverage with? Who is that individual, and what are you drinking?

Sudipto Srivastava: So one of the people that I’ve admired a lot is this gentleman by the name of Clay Christensen, and he’s written many books. You know, one of them that I actually give to my teams all the time is this one called he, Innovator’s Dilemma. And he is well, you know, he unfortunately sort of died in January 2022. And he had written a lot about disruption in healthcare as well. And, you know, he had all these thoughts about innovation, getting rid of middlemen, value-based care, and so on. And if you think about it, January 2020 is when he passed away. COVID hit after that, and the world has completely changed. I would love to sort of sit down with him, to have him sort of assess the last several years and project where the industries. It was such a brilliant mind in the way he thought. And so I’d love to sort of sit down with him, of course, like in terms of what we’d be drinking beer, of course. You know, I brew my own beer, I love beer, I love trying different beers. It’ll probably be a Belgian. My current Belgian favorite is a brewery in Quebec. I think it’s Unipro makes beer called Laughing Demon. I’m probably messing up the French pronunciation of it, but it’s, you know, a beautiful beer, a little orange in color, a little sort of spicy, a little hints of, of course, a Belgian hops make such a big difference. So that’s my drink of choice.

Martin Cody: I love it. I’m going to have to sample some of your creations at some point in time in the future. That would be outstanding.

Sudipto Srivastava: Yes, I’d love to.

Martin Cody: I love the answer as well. And I certainly like the content and the knowledge you shared. And I do want people to get in touch with you should they want to pick your brain a little bit more. LinkedIn, obviously, is a great platform for that. And you can look up Sudipto Srivastava just like it sounds. Srivastava on LinkedIn, the platform for all executives and professionals. By the way, LinkedIn is not a paid sponsor, neither is IBM. Those were just off-the-cuff names. Sudipto, thank you so much, sir. It was outstanding to learn some of your knowledge, and we appreciate you sharing it with us on The Edge of Healthcare.

Sudipto Srivastava: This was lovely. Thank you. This is you know, you do such a great job informing your audiences. I love it, and I’m a follower, and I’m glad to be a participant.

Martin Cody: Awesome. We will catch up soon. Thanks a bunch. Everyone, have a great day!

Martin Cody: Thanks for diving into The Edge of Healthcare with us today. I hope these insights will fuel your journey in healthcare leadership. For more details, show notes, and ways to stay plugged into the conversation, head over to MadaketHealth.com. Until next time, stay ahead of the curve with The Edge of Healthcare, where lessons from leaders are always within reach. Take care of yourselves and keep pushing the boundaries of healthcare innovation.