As ViVE 2025 kicks off in Nashville, health system and hospital leaders are faced with a challenging path toward innovation. Can they agree on what works and what doesn’t?
Amid the uncertainty of the Trump administration and the hazards of winter travel, ViVE 2025 kicked off this week in Nashville with a focus on digital transformation and innovation. The four-day event is expected to draw about 8,000 attendees.
Co-produced by HLTH and CHIME (the College of Health Information Management Executives), ViVE boasts a busy agenda—and a refreshing number of panels that feature health system and hospital executives, who are making up roughly one-quarter of the attendees this year.
And despite the goings-on in Washington and the wintry weather, the focus of this week’s conversations will fall squarely on figuring out how to make transformation work.
At a time when the healthcare industry is struggling, healthcare leaders have to find a way to make things better. And while new ideas like AI might seem like the solution to much of what ails the industry, many are finding they can’t just plug in technology and watch it make everything better. The industry as a whole is reluctant to change, shrugging off disruptors with the admonishment that “healthcare is hard” and stubbornly clinging to a status quo that isn’t working.
In fact, it’s almost as if “innovation” is becoming a dirty word. Execs are wondering if the idea is just a lofty concept, suitable for high-minded discussion but not implementation. Where are the concrete examples of healthcare innovation that are pushing the industry forward, demonstrating both sustainability and scalability?
We’re going to find out this week.
The answer may lie in how the industry identifies value. Hospital leaders often approach a new program with two different goals, playing financial ROI against clinical improvements. But one doesn’t have to counteract the other. Sometimes the measurements just need to be redefined.
During a Sunday afternoon panel on care collaboration, Bonnie Clipper, DNP, MA, MBA, RN, CENP, FAAN, a nurse futurist and founder and CEO of the Virtual Nursing Academy, pointed out that healthcare is changing whether we like it or not.
“Just consider the visual of a robot inserting your catheter or a robot doing your surgery,” she said.
Transformation, she explained, is inevitable. And it’s up to the healthcare industry to set the goalposts and define the ROI. Instead of being told how innovation will happen, healthcare leaders, from the C-suite on down to doctors and nurses, need to embrace those changes and mold these new technologies and ideas to fit their needs.
This week, healthcare leaders from a wide swath of organizations across the country will discuss what innovation and transformation mean to them, and how AI, virtual care, digital health and other technologies and ideas will work for them. They will be defining the value.
They might not even agree on that value, but if something works for them, that’s moving the needle forward. Best practices and common goals might sound nice, but transformation doesn’t have to mean everybody’s following the same blueprint.
Perhaps some are shooting for goals that are too high. Allen Taylor, MD, FACC, regional chair of cardiology for MedStar Health’s Washington DC region, pointed out that doctors and nurses may have a different perception of innovation than the C-suite.
“Yoga mats don’t solve [physician burnout and] wellness,” he said, referencing one of the key pain points in healthcare. Clinicians, he said, want to have tools that will improve their ability to care for their patients, whether it be an AI algorithm that reduces their time on the computer or a device that enables them to gain better insight into their patient’s health condition.
And while many might be looking for that splashy program that saves millions of dollars and countless lives, Taylor added, doctors and nurses just want something that moves the needle a little bit forward. They don’t necessarily want to be faster, just better.
“Small things will work for us,” he said. “Solve a problem for us and we will redeploy the assets elsewhere.”
CNOs need to lead through relational change to make major organizational changes run smoothly while maintaining a high standard of patient care, says this CNE.
HealthLeaders spoke to Stefanie Beavers, chief nursing executive at OU Health and HealthLeaders Exchange member, about how CNOs can handle change management processes and streamline times of organizational transition. Tune in to hear her insights.
The HealthLeaders Exchange is an executive community for sharing ideas, solutions, and insights. Please join the community at our LinkedIn page.
Mass General Brigham and the Huntsman Cancer Institute are joining a federally funded program to create an all-purpose mobile vehicle to deliver hospital-level care in rural and remote regions of the country.
PARADIGM "aims to address the current challenges in rural health by creating a scalable vehicle platform that can provide advanced medical services outside of a hospital setting," the project’s website states. "Building on recent developments in fields ranging from satellite communication to medical device miniaturization, this mobile care platform will allow health providers to meet rural patients where they are."
"If successful, PARADIGM hopes to develop a mobile platform capable of delivering many different types of cutting-edge services – including multi-cancer screenings, hemodialysis, perinatal care, and much more," the website continues. "With medical technology no longer tied to a specific place – but instead available on a platform that can travel to even the most remote locations – rural patients will thus be able to access the care that they need within their own communities."
The five-year project is split into five areas:
Designing distributed hospital-level care;
Producing an integrated care delivery platform;
Harmonizing diverse medical device data within a single system;
Building a miniaturized, ruggedized CT scanner; and
Creating intelligent task guidance software to help health workers perform activities beyond their usual training.
David Levine, MD, MPH, MA, clinical director of Research & Development at Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home and director of Ariadne Labs’ Home Hospital Program, will lead a team developing the DEMOCRATIZE mobile clinical platform for rural care delivery, designed to operate independent of the physical location of rural home hospital programs.
Julian Goldman, MD, FASA, an anesthesiologist, director of the Medical Device Interoperability & Cybersecurity Program at Mass General Hospital and medical director of Mass General Brigham Biomedical Engineering, will lead a team tasked with creating a scalable platform, called PARADIGM-ICE, that will integrate data from medical devices and EHR systems into a secure, standardized ecosystem.
Rajiv Gupta, MD, PhD, vice chair of Clinical Operations in the Department of Radiology, an associate radiologist in the Divisions of Neuroradiology and Cardiovascular Imaging, and director of the Advanced X-Ray Imaging Sciences (AXIS) Center at Mass General Hospital, will lead a team developing a compact, lightweight, rugged and self-shielded CT scanner for use in resource-restrained environments.
The Huntsman Cancer Institute, meanwhile, will be modifying its Huntsman at Home program, a Hospital at Home care model for rural patients in cancer treatment programs, to operate through a mobile medical vehicle that includes advanced imaging, testing and treatment capabilities.
The other organizations participating in the PARADIGM program are:
The University of Michigan, which will use its VIGIL platform to equip care providers with AI-guided task support for specialized services;
The Mission Mobile Medical Group of Greensboro, North Carolina, which will integrate its care delivery platform, a pod-based modular health service that can be dropped into remote locations like cargo containers on a train to deliver remote care services;
Homeward Health of Kentwood, Michigan, which will develop a mobile care model using community engagement, human-centered design and partnerships;
10XBeta, of Brooklyn, New York, which will develop an interchangeable modular care infrastructure to support multiple uses cases;
Planned Systems International (PSI), of Columbia, Maryland, which will leverage a multi-purpose vehicle platform and unique "arm and rack" design to facilitate rural clinical workflows;
SRI International, of Menlo Park, California, which will use both its POET medical interoperability platform, designed to integrate diverse medical devices in resource-constrained environments, and its Multi-Tags system, which uses machine-learning and large language models to support clinicians across multiple tasks; and
Micro-X, of SeaTac, Washington, which will use its lightweight, carbon nanotube-based CT scanner, designed for mobile imaging care in underserved communities and radiology deserts.
Mouneer Odeh, the health system's inaugural Chief Data and AI Officer, says it's important to understand how data works before putting AI to use.
AI may be all the rage these days, but Cedars-Sinai's new Vice President and Chief Data and AI Officer says there's a reason "data" precedes "AI" in his title.
"The fuel for AI is the data," says Mouneer Odeh, MA, who was appointed to the new role ithis past December. He points out that for AI to work as intended, it has to be based on good data, and so healthcare leaders need to understand all about data management and analysis before they dig into the potential.
Ai is all about "leveraging the power of data through its full spectrum," he says. And at its heart is the "continuum of data-driven intelligence."
Odeh comes to Cedars-Sinai—and the West Coast—from Virginia's Inova Health System, where he served as vice president of analytics for four years. Prior to that, he was the vice president of enterprise analytics and chief data science at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health and, before that, a director at Quest Diagnostics.
Odeh's role is pivotal, as the healthcare industry moves to both embrace and govern the fast-moving AI landscape. Health systems and hospitals are piloting AI tools and services at a pace not seen before.
"There is a recognition that in the future, computational biomedicine will become increasingly important for both research as well as clinical care," he says. "It's almost like a new technology of clinical care that's being layered on top of all the other things that we've done over the last 100 years."
Mouneer Odeh, MA, VP and Chief Data and AI Officer at Cedars-Sinai. Photo courtesy Cedars-Sinai.
"It's also so incredibly important for streamlining operations [and] for improving the experience of our caregivers, nurses and doctors, as well as for our patients."
Getting a handle on AI means addressing many moving parts, a challenge that some health systems have assigned to a committee and others to an executive. In the press release announcing Odeh's appointment, Cedars-Sinai officials praised him as a "change agent" with a grasp of data analytics, data science and health information, and noted that he—as the health system's first-ever data science and AI executive—"will lead enterprise-wide efforts to harness data analytics and AI to drive innovation across care delivery and administrative functions."
The health system sees Odeh as a facilitator, overseeing "a diverse team of professionals spanning advanced analytics, research, infrastructure, governance, data science and business intelligence" and collaborating with departments throughout the enterprise to forge a comprehensive AI policy.
Odeh says that collaboration will be important. He wants to see a health system that encourages its clinicians to use AI, but to also be comfortable and competent when they use it. That means carving out some time for them to sit back and learn.
"Our goal is to empower" clinicians to use AI responsibly, he says. "Channel that positive energy and give them a way to do it in a productive way that actually is appropriately governed, and with safeguards in place."
That also means making sure everyone is on the same page about what AI can do and where it is going.
"We are looking to make sure we have a cohesive ecosystem so that we're not doing one-off little AI solutions here and there," he adds. "We're really trying to build it in a scalable way that will allow us to deploy dozens and hundreds of use cases."
Odeh acknowledges the hype surrounding AI, and says he understands how that can affect a health system's efforts to maintain and monitor the technology. But he also notes that AI is different than past innovations, like the electronic medical record, because it's being embraced and used by consumers at home and elsewhere. It's more like the internet or the smartphone, two ideas that took time to develop and expand.
The real challenge, he says, is not in the technology—advanced data and predictive analytics tools have been around for a long time—but in how it can be used. The pressure is on the industry to improve outcomes, reduce costs and stabilize a stressed-out workforce, and that pressure will intensify as workforce issues continue and the growing population of seniors demands better care options.
"You have the capability to do something amazing, but you also have the pressure and the urgency," he says.
"AI is just one of those where we think the world has changed, you know, within a year or two," Odeh says. "And then we realize it's a lot harder and it takes a lot longer, but we probably don't even realize just how transformative this truly will be."
"People tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short run and underestimate the impact in the long run," he adds, citing Amara's Law. "But I think over the next 10 years what we will achieve in the healthcare space will be truly amazing. It will be probably 10 times what we've been able to do with data and analytics in the last decade."
CNOs should work on communication and aligning their organization's identity in times of transition.
Mergers, reorganizations, and restructurings always take a toll on the workforce in any industry, but especially in healthcare.
Periods of rapid change in an organization can leave staff feeling confused, anxious, and unsure about new responsibilities and reporting structures. However, in healthcare, there's an additional variable: patients.
Robust change management processes are essential for CNOs to implement to help nurses, since they play such a large role in patient care in health systems.
According to Stefanie Beavers, chief nursing executive at OU Health, and HealthLeaders Exchange member, here are three tips for CNOs who want to streamline their change management processes.
If CNOs weren't at the table, the C suite would lack valuable perspectives and information, says this CNO.
On this episode of HL Shorts, we hear from Gay Landstrom, senior vice president and chief nursing officer at Trinity Health, about why CNOs are a critical part of the executive team. Tune in to hear her insights.
Executives from six health systems will participate in two hour-long virtual panels on Wednesday, discussing how AI services and tools will evolve to be sustainable and scalable.
AI is still top of mind for nearly every health system and hospital across the country, but many have moved beyond the initial stages of piloting a new service or tool and are looking for sustainable and scalable uses.
Executives from a six health systems will talk about those next steps in HealthLeaders’ AI NOW virtual conference this Wednesday. Subtitled “Where Do We Go Next?”, the event features two hour-long panels, which take place at 10 a.m. and 11:10 a.m. ET.
The discussion will focus on how healthcare executives are factoring sustainability into their AI strategies. What goes into determining whether a new service or product can maintain value beyond that first one or two years, and how do executives ensure that it keeps its value (or evolves) five or 10 years down the road? How is value measured, and how is governance handled?
This discussion will take a more in-depth look at how AI will evolve in the clinical space. With health systems and hospitals looking to maximize the value of new technologies, it’s imperative that executives look beyond the initial ROI of AI and understand how it can scale outward to address more used cases. What will a particular tool or service look like in five or 10 years, and how can it be designed now to ensure that value down the road?
Together, these panels can act as a blueprint for health systems and hospitals looking to move beyond the cool new use or tech toy and create sustainable, scalable programs that truly transform healthcare delivery.
Crisp, clear communication is key for CNOs who are trying to handle their change management processes, says this CNE.
Mergers, reorganizations, and restructurings always take a toll on the workforce in any industry, but especially in healthcare.
Periods of rapid change in an organization can leave staff feeling confused, anxious, and unsure about new responsibilities and reporting structures. However, in healthcare, there's an additional variable: patients.
Robust change management processes are essential for CNOs to implement to help nurses, since they play such a large role in patient care in health systems.
According to Stefanie Beavers, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, chief nurse executive at OU Health, and HealthLeaders Exchange member, a key focus of the change management process is solidifying organizational identity. In 2018, OU Health became a locally owned and managed nonprofit. They began integrating hospitals, clinics and physicians into a united health system, living into the role of an academic health system while building an inaugural executive team to lead the enterprise.
"So much change was happening within this health system, and there was really a need to solidify the identity," Beavers said. "We had a lot of change in executive leadership across the organization, and we went on a journey of cultural transformation."
Aligning identity
After becoming the chief nurse executive at OU Health in the spring of 2023, Beavers learned the importance of aligning identity within an organization.
"It was really important that I took some time to pause and reflect and understand, where have our teams been on this journey? What has been their experience?" Beavers said, "and then, what is the identity and true north of the organization as we move forward, and how do I intersect that in the most purposeful manner for our nursing frontline care delivery teams?"
Beavers noted that OU Health was developing and identifying what its mission and vision were, and its identity as an academic health system. So, Beavers focused on what this could mean for the nursing workforce, and how to combat confusion about policies and expectations.
"You've got to make sure that there is a strong connection to purpose for our frontline care delivery teams," Beavers said, "because one thing that does not change when you go through reorganizations, acquisitions, and mergers, is there are still patients to take care of that are in need of our services."
Transitioning with patients
According to Beavers, CNOs need to lead through relational change to make major organizational changes run smoothly while maintaining a high standard of patient care. The most important focus should be building strong relationships with patients, families, and the community, while maintaining access to care. Nurse leaders must also emphasize that patients are at the center of everything that goes on in a health system.
"No matter your industry, I will say everything boils down to people and process," Beavers said. "So, how do we wrap around our people and our workforce to make sure that they have processes that they need to deliver that high quality of care?"
Beavers also emphasized that nurse leaders must understand their data during times of transition. CNOs should identify data points and metrics that have changed between the prior organization and the present one.
"You've got to go back to the basics sometimes of looking at your core quality measures," Beavers said. "It's an intersect of that professional practice and professional identity for nursing, but also making sure you're driving through data and metrics that are measuring your performance with patients."
Beavers also believes that being present for the workforce is critical during organizational changes. CNOs should be clear about messaging, and what nurses can expect from leadership and the revamped organization.
"How are we present for the workforce? How is the voice heard of what they're experiencing?" Beavers said.
Communicating clearly
Crisp, clear communication is critical for CNOs who are trying to handle their change management processes, according to Beavers. Teamwork is another key component.
"I am very fortunate to be part of a very strong executive leadership team of remarkable human beings with experience from all over the country, all different backgrounds," Beavers said, "and it takes that element and being part of a strong team and how we manage each other up, [and] how we recognize how every different division is sitting within the organization."
At OU Health, Beavers prioritized how to disseminate new policy and priority information to the nursing teams in meaningful and purposeful ways.
"You can have strategy all day long, but you have to be able to articulate it and communicate it clearly to your teams and make sure they know the end goal," Beavers said.
Successful nursing programs take the entire organization and help from all disciplines to uplift nurses and make them successful at the bedside and in all aspects of care delivery.
"I'm also very fortunate that I have an amazing dyad partner in our chief medical officer," Beavers said. "I think it's important that our workforce and our team see us as a unified leadership team so that we're leaning in and leading together, and we're wrapping around and we're recognizing what's a challenge."
The HealthLeaders Exchange is an executive community for sharing ideas, solutions, and insights. Please join the community at our LinkedIn page.
Kaiser Permanente and Tufts have launched a resource for best practices in developing a food is medicine strategy. Highmark Health and Geisinger are among the founding health systems.
Healthcare leaders looking to launch or refine Food is Medicine strategies now have a center of excellence to explore best practices and other resources.
Kaiser Permanente and Tuft’s University’s Food is Medicine Institute at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy have officially launched the Food is Medicine National Network of Excellence. The center’s founding members include Highmark Health, Geisinger, Elevance Health, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, CVS Health and Devoted Health.
The network addresses a fast-growing innovation in healthcare: The idea of using food and nutrition in care management. Providers are finding that the right diet can improve clinical outcomes and are developing programs and partnerships to help patients access the food they need.
Last year the Food is Medicine Coalition, comprised of community-based non-profit food providers, released a 32-page accreditation standard aimed at giving providers and other organizations guidance on developing medically tailored meals and meal plans.
“Each year, suboptimal diets and food insecurity cause more than 500,000 deaths and cost the U.S. economy $1.1 trillion in healthcare and lost productivity,” Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute, said in a press release announcing the Network of Excellence. “By working together, we can scale evidence-based nutritional interventions that are driving change, improving health, and reducing disparities.”
Kaiser Permanente has long been at the forefront of this strategy. The health system launched a collaboration with grocery technology company Instacart during the HLTH conference in 2023 to study how California residents living with chronic conditions and enrolled in the state’s Medi-Cal Medicaid program can access food and resources on healthy eating.
"We know food and nutrition insecurity is felt by people in the communities we serve, as well as for by millions of Americans nationwide," Pamela Schwartz, MPH, executive director of food security at Kaiser Permanente, said in a press release. "Identifying best practices to address these inequities is essential to building healthier communities."
Kaiser Permanente and the other organizations involved in the new Network of Excellence will focus on three priorities:
Members will develop frameworks to assess the impact of Food is Medicine interventions, measuring health outcomes and cost-effectiveness.
The network will share insights and identify opportunities to optimize program design and delivery.
Members will promote the effectiveness of Food is Medicine through industry engagement and communication with policymakers and the public.
CNOs must act as translators and bring the clinical perspective into the C suite, says this CNO.
HealthLeaders spoke to Gay Landstrom, senior vice president and chief nursing officer at Trinity Health, about why it's important for CNOs to have a seat at the table, and what aspiring CNOs should learn before beginning their leadership position. Tune in to hear her insights.
