Don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal.
For CIOs, who have spent the past six months scrambling to implement tools that enable providers to practice care, all while establishing a remote workforce and ensuring the lights are kept on, keeping an eye toward the future may seem impossible. Or at the very least, counterintuitive. But if the organization is to thrive — and not just survive — it’s precisely what needs to happen, according to Robert Eardley, CIO at University Hospitals.
Taking inspiration from author Jim Collins, Eardley believes leaders who are focused mainly on completing the next project on-time and under budget are at risk of missing the big picture. On the other hand, those focused on making “a series of good decisions build on top of each other” can help their teams achieve success.
During a recent interview, Eardley spoke with healthsystemCIO about why it’s so critical to think long-term, what he considers to be the top qualities in future leaders, and the keys to successful change management. He also talked about the evolution of consumer engagement (and the role IT plays), how UH is working to keep healthy patients at home, and his thoughts on the power of ‘need.’
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Key Takeaways

* By implementing video-based temperature scanning, University Hospitals was able to “fill the gap” using technology when nurses returned to the bedside.
* One of the key components in improving patient access (specifically, computerizing physician directories)? Getting operational practice design and IT systems to align with each other.
* Sometimes the best strategy is to identify the end goal, then work backwards.
* The biggest challenge in migrating from phone-based discussions to online scheduling isn’t the technology itself, but the “comfort level” of users.
* Remote-monitoring tools can play a critical role in helping patients recover at home while still under the care of physicians.

Q&A with Robert Eardley, Part 2 [Click here for Part 1]
Gamble:  One of the initiatives I read about was the use of AI and facial recognition. Can you talk about what you’ve done there?
Eardley:  We have a partnership with a company called TensorMark in which we supply COVID test results to them. They use facial recognition to marry up who the person is, and then query whether there is a negative or positive value in the recent past.
On their side, they owned the conversion of sports venues and restaurants where they were going to try to implement this tool. We were party to this because if we had the consumers’ approval — which is its item to focus on — we could release the lab results out to this company to be able to give someone a negative COVID test result in the last 14 days. We’ve been working on that together; most of the facial recognition was on TensorMark’s side.
However, we did move forward with video-based temperature scanning at our front entrances. For instance, now when I walk into our building, I stand in front of a video camera, pull my face mask down, and the camera takes about 1 or 2 seconds to analyze the heat of my forehead and cheeks. It will ding positively if I’m under the threshold (about 97.8) and will make a different sound if I’m over the threshold (somewhere around 100 degrees).
The security guard themselves would be able to have a pretty quick visual so the...