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The Cleveland Clinic has a history of being on the bleeding edge of health IT and its new CEO Tom Mihaljevic has made it clear that the Ohio-based health system will keep pushing ahead as a medical technology pioneer.
“Most of our plans for the future will depend on digital platforms: telemedicine, data analytics, artificial intelligence,” Mihaljevic said during the State of the Clinic address in late February. “Digital technology will allow us to deliver smarter, more affordable and more accessible [care]. The Cleveland Clinic has always been an early adopter, beginning with our electronic medical records. But now, we have to take technology even more seriously. We have to go for even more transformational technologic adoption.”
Mihaljevic, who took over for former CEO Toby Cosgrove at the start of the year, laid out the ways that digital tools and research into new health IT areas will factor heavily into the Cleveland Clinic’s future plans.
With the clinic reporting more than 25,000 virtual visits in 2017 through its Express Care Online portal, Mihaljevic says that telemedicine is the fastest growing clinical option for the provider, which will continue to be a priority going forward.
What might be the most impactful, however, is an even tighter relationship with IBM that seeks to investigate how AI, cognitive computing and data analytics can improve care. Mihaljevic looked ahead to a continued five-year partnership with IBM Watson, which aims to dig deeper into how Big Data and cognitive computing can help providers to handle “the rapid expansion of knowledge in healthcare,” and eventually augment clinical decision-making.
“Now, the day will come when our decisions are supported by data from wearables, imaging, implants, genetic profiling, along with insights from global help trends and published research. And care through that will become more individualized and personalized than ever,” Mihaljevic said.
Via Dominique Godefroy
