Introduction
This week I’m joined by Jason “JJ” James who is the CIO for Optima Healthcare Solutions. JJ is also the author of the upcoming book “Make IT work: Practical IT guide to mergers and acquisitions.”
In our conversation, JJ outlines how the CIO is similar to an anthropologist and must be a study of human tools, culture and development. We also discuss JJ’s perspective on how innovative technology is impacting the healthcare industry. During our conversation, JJ details his perspective on data including data toxicity and the value of data over time. Closing out our conversation, JJ talks about why hype is valuable and the role the CIO plays in the changing landscape.
Speaker Profiles
Jason “JJ” James Twitter: https://twitter.com/itlinchpin
Jason “JJ” James LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itlinchpin/
Optima Healthcare Solutions: https://www.optimahcs.com
Audio File
Featured Hashtags
#CIO #Healthcare #IoT #AI #Edge #Data #DigitalTransformation #CIOitk
Podcast Transcript
Tim Crawford 0:05
Hello, and welcome to the CIO in the Know podcast, where I take a provocative but pragmatic look at the intersection between business and technology. I’m your host, Tim Crawford, a CIO and strategic advisor at Avoa. This week I’m joined by Jason JJ James, who is the CIO for Optima Healthcare Solutions. JJ is also the author of the upcoming book, Make It Work: Practical IT Guide to Mergers and Acquisitions. In our conversation, JJ outlines how the CIO is similar to an anthropologist and must be a study of human tools, culture, and development. We also discussed JJ’s perspective on how innovative technology is impacting the healthcare industry. During our conversation, JJ details his perspective on data, including data toxicity and the value of data over time. Closing out the conversation, JJ talks about why hype is valuable and the role the CIO plays in the changing landscape. JJ, welcome to the program.
Jason “JJ” James 1:10
Hi, Tim, thanks for having me today.
Tim Crawford 1:12
JJ, you’re the CIO at Optima Healthcare Solutions, and in a space that’s really interesting and going through a lot of change today.
Jason “JJ” James 1:21
Absolutely, and so when you think of healthcare and the space we operate in, which is post-acute care, which is everything outside of the hospital, there’s so much happening in that space. You know, I think about my own mother, who is in assisted living, that’s the space we operate in. She needs care, she needs additional care, but it’s not care that would come from a hospital, and it’s also not care that would come from perhaps myself, that ability to have physical therapy, that ability to be transported to ensure her medicine is being given to her. As we look at an aging populace, more and more care will be brought into the post-acute care space being able to serve the elderly that’s outside of the hospital.
Tim Crawford 2:06
I love that, and I’ve often said healthcare is probably the most ripe industry for disruption by technology than anything today.
Jason “JJ” James 2:17
Absolutely, it was also one of those areas that I hadn’t worked in previously, and when I was approached to work in healthcare, I was, I was reluctant, you know. I believe I told the CEO, as well as the executive recruiter, I said, ‘Why are you coming to me? My entire background has been built on transformation. I said, ‘No offense, but you know, healthcare is where innovation goes to die, and they laughed, and they said, Well, why do you say that? I said, Well, in my experience, and you know, this is not derogatory for all the CIOs that work in healthcare, but one of the things I often see is compliance leading to complacency.
Tim Crawford 2:55
Yeah,
Jason “JJ” James 2:55
I’ve supported data projects that were FIST, FISMA, and NIST and PCI data is data, the compliance piece is important, and obviously we focus on securing patient data above all else, but at the same time I was not going to let complacency fit in with compliance, and so when I sort of gave that message and said look, you know, innovation can be brought to bear. I would only be willing to do this if I could take all the transformation, all the enterprise experience, and bring it to bear in healthcare in a way that could revolutionize the business. And they said, “Okay, that’s why we want to talk to you. And so that’s great. We are today,
Tim Crawford 3:39
so before we kind of dive into technology fitting in healthcare, I want to set the stage first, because you have a really interesting background and perspective on the modern CIO and the concept of the modern CIO as an anthropologist, and how the role of storytelling fits in. So, maybe we could start there and kind of delve into your perspective.
Jason “JJ” James 4:05
Sure, so when you talk about anthropology, anthropology is the study of human culture tools and development that fits perfectly in when we talk about the modern CIO or the modern technologists. If you think about the tools that are empowering our lives have become the daily aspect of our lives. They could be compared to maybe not in a primal sense of hunting and gathering what ancient man did, but you know, last night I used my smartphone as I held my four month old child and ordered DoorDash and had food show up at my door. The idea is I still use those tools to empower my daily life, you know. Think about the first time you held a smartphone and how that felt, that convergence of technology with this personal adaptation, and how it fit into your life. I mean, think about it, how it fits in our modern lives, you know, even as a guy, you know, we. In the bathroom, we used to read shampoo bottles. Now we don’t have to do that because of the smartphone, but the idea is it is now part of our lives. And if you are a CIO, where you understand the tools that are being used, you’ve got to understand that they’re being consumed by humans. So, what does that cultural adaptation of that tool, look like, how do you use it? You know, when we talk about user experience, it’s about getting people excited, it’s about getting them passionate, it’s about getting them to adapt and adhere to the tool they’re using. And so, when we look at anthropology in a modern sense, we’re in this new dawn of anthropology, where our tools are evolving at such a fast rate of human development. They’re affecting laws and how cities are built, and how we collect data, and how we share data, and how we move from place to place. How often, you know, you travel quite a bit. I travel quite a bit. We book our travel through our smartphones, our tablets, you know. You know, I haven’t spoken to a travel agent in the last decade, you know, but we’ve used our tools to adapt to that, and it’s, it’s a really interesting aspect. So, as a CIO, you have to understand the human condition. How are humans going to use these tools? How is it going to fit in their lives? And, you know, for us from a healthcare perspective, how will it serve humans? How will it improve their overall health care plan?
Tim Crawford 6:28
And if I think beyond just the tools, it’s not just about the tools, but it’s about the people too.
Jason “JJ” James 6:34
First and foremost, it’s always about the people. Without that, we have nothing. This idea of, you know, humans thought of the tool that they would use. They refine the tools that we use. They adapt to the tools that they use. At the core of everything we do is a human element, and we can’t forget that. You know, we talk about user acceptance. User acceptance, you know, is a fancy way of saying human acceptance. I want everyone from a CIO to understand. Let’s put aside the technology for a moment and focus on the human use of the tool.
Tim Crawford 7:10
What about the people that helped you get to this point? Is you kind of think about understanding the anthropology of it, which is a concept that I, as well, have actually presented on for several years, but if you think about the concept of the people, and you think about the people that have helped you get here, how has that impacted you?
Jason “JJ” James 7:36
You know, I was just talking to a group the other day about that, so I live and work in Metro Atlanta, but I grew up a couple hours south of here, small town in Alabama called Opelika, so right around Auburn University area. I am the first generation in my family never to work in a cotton mill, and so at 15, when people were mowing grass and working in textile mill and working in a grocery store, I was laying out fantastic networks and doing PC upgrades, and so I’ve always been drawn to technology, but early on, when I started looking for people that could help me and mentors in technology, they were far and few between. What I was finding at the time is that many of the technologists that I knew, they were holding on to that knowledge, close to the vest, like it was some magical thing, and they knew where the dragon was hiding the gold, and they knew the spell to let him release the gold, and it was one of these things they just didn’t want to share. And I got really disappointed at the time, and so I turned to my father, who was not a technologist, and he was HR director, and I said, ‘Dad, I was like, I want to learn more about this, but I’m just not finding those opportunities. And he said, ‘Well, why don’t you go and find people who you trust, respect, and admire their career, regardless of industry, and ask them for their insights. And so I did. And so, you know, I continued that journey. I moved to Atlanta 19 and a half years ago, and even then I was looking at people who were successful in their career, who were passionate about what they did, regardless of what they did. I have a lot of friends that work in the film industry. Atlanta is a huge film market. In fact, you know, the majority of the blockbusters filmed within the last couple of years here were filmed here, and so you know, I will speak to those friends and people successful in those industries, and so as I ascended from, you know, director into VP, I started looking for more CIOs that were willing to really share insights, and one of the CIOs that was really receptive of that is a person you’ve had on your show, and you know a person we both know mutually very well, and that’s Jay Farrow, and so Jay, at the time, by the way, little side story, because I go off on these weird tangents, he and I just shared the stage earlier this week for an event where we sat down and had a fireside chat. At and discuss technology and digital transformation, and what was interesting about that, Jay reminded me, as part of that, that he and I met four years ago this week at the Masters, and so we had both known each other and knew of each other, but didn’t know know each other, and so you know, Jay and I became friends during that event and started hanging out and discussing ideas more, and Jay asked me to come work for him at Earthlink, and Jay has a great eye for talent, and I say that because apparently he’s found this great talent to really make him look good. I joke with him about that. I’m like, holy hell, that is brilliant, you know, to
Tim Crawford 10:40
be clear, Jay’s not the talented one. It’s the people that he brings to work for him that are talented that makes him look talented.
Jason “JJ” James 10:48
I can neither confirm nor deny, but I will say he does find people that make him look good and can power his job, and maybe that is a talent. So I want to
Tim Crawford 10:56
learn more. Listen to episode five of the CIO and the No Podcast. That’s right,
Jason “JJ” James 11:02
I joke with Jay, but he’s been great. He’s been a great mentor. He’s been a great friend. And when we’re working together at Earthlink, you know, there was so much I learned from him. He has an amazing track record. You can’t deny it. You know, the last six lieutenants of his, their next role will CIO, and that’s
Tim Crawford 11:18
awesome. That’s awesome.
Jason “JJ” James 11:20
I got the opportunity to take this role, which was my next role after working with Jay. I called him, I said, ‘Hey, bud, just to let you know, you know that track record of five, it’s now six.
Tim Crawford 11:31
That’s awesome.
Jason “JJ” James 11:32
And he was extremely supportive.
Tim Crawford 11:34
Let’s kind of get into the meat and potatoes of the technology conversation a bit, and healthcare, I want to kind of get your, your take on innovation and how it’s kind of hitting healthcare, because this is a hugely disruptive opportunity in a good way, and that has to do with IoT and edge. Where do you see these kind of fitting into helping both the industry, but also the patient?
Jason “JJ” James 11:58
Well, it’s it’s long overdue, and it’s long coming. What you’ve got is an aging populace that you know that there’s so much information that can be gathered on the patient and patient improvement, and so when you look at edge and IoT, one of the things that you see happening is the disruption is coming by gathering more of that information, so whether it be blood sugar monitoring, fall detection, blood pressure monitoring, and being able to report on that in real time and analyze that is providing massive patient improvement. So, let’s take the Apple Watch, for instance. It was the first smart watch to be approved by the FDA for echocardiogram, and so people are noticing abnormalities in their heart, just from a smartwatch, and reporting it to their doctor. You know, there’s a couple instances you can look at, and people have it saved their life. And so, what we’re seeing is that same kind of data being brought to bear within hospitals, within doctor’s office, and it will continue to occur as we start to get the younger baby boomers and the older generation X that are a lot more comfortable with technology, they want data that can be gathered from them in a way that is less painful. If you think about collecting that data at home, there’s less needles involved, there’s less procedures involved, and it can be fed to healthcare environments. Edge is important because the ability to transmit that faster, be available, secure that information, and give it back and forth from patient to doctor will continue to improve. If you look at all these IoT endpoints, which these smart devices would be, it’s feeding data at an alarming rate. If you’re in a large metropolitan area, you could have 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s, of patients’ data being collected and fed to you on an ongoing basis.
Tim Crawford 13:48
That’s actually something I wanted to ask you about. You know, when we look beyond just the devices themselves and IoT and edge, and how that, that will provide a lot of new opportunities for patients, which from a personal standpoint, I love that concept, because needles is actually one of my, like, big fears, you know, everybody has fears, whether it’s spiders or whatnot, needles are mine, and so I like the idea of that, but I’m also concerned about data and privacy, and you know, we talk about this concept, I call it the buzz phrase, not the buzzword, but the buzz phrase of data is the new oil, is it, or is there a downside, especially when you think about things like healthcare data and patient data.
Jason “JJ” James 14:34
Absolutely, and so it’s both, right? We have to balance this idea of data being the new oil, as in data being the new wealth, and the flip side of it, which is data toxicity. This idea of capturing too much data, data you don’t need, data you’re not going to use, retaining data then longer than you need, putting the patient at risk, putting just personal data at risk, and at the same time putting. Putting undue burdens on the infrastructure resources, you know, most organizations I’ve yet to go in an organization that didn’t contain multiple files, meaning you know you’ve got the same database replicated 100 times, you know, because someone made a copy and another person made a copy and another person made a copy, so that puts, of course, an undue burden on the IT team. It puts an undue burden on the infrastructure, but at the same time, each one of those become a risk factor. It becomes a risk factor in the sense of each one of those could contain personal data that could be exploited, each one of those could contain data possibly that’s not even necessary, you know. One thing, if you look at whether it be HIPAA or PCI, it’s you only gather data that should be relevant, and having too much of that can become, to my point, you know, toxic.
Tim Crawford 15:55
If you think about toxicity, is a concept for a moment, is this a matter of we then need just a new truckload of policies, or is this more about governance, or is there something else that that helps kind of guide us through this, because it seems like just having a black and white discussion about this is data you need, this is data you don’t need, this is how you protect it or don’t protect it? That seems a little draconian, and
Jason “JJ” James 16:26
right, it becomes challenging. I don’t know if the fact is it becomes draconian, because when you look at the flip side of it, which becomes risk to the patient, it becomes risk to your own organization, should that data get breached, but it also becomes this this idea of you’re retaining data as a legal risk, so anytime within any organization, data can fall under e-discovery. So the longer you contain data, the longer you serve data, the more it can be brought into scope. That’s not a reason to do it. The reason to do it is just the sheer protection of personal data, so when we look at this, it takes more than just policy, and especially when we talk about the emergence of IoT, because data is going to be collected at such an alarming rate, policies perhaps won’t contain it all. It has to be automated in the fashion that you create a data lifecycle. How is data born? How does it live? How does it age out, and how does it die? Much like the patient continuum, this idea of it ages with the patient and eventually fades out, but this life cycle has to be brought to bear from a responsibility standpoint when we talk about just the protection of data containing too much, especially if an organization is not using it. You know, there’s always information that will be generated by IoT and other systems that companies analyzing big data, looking at analytics, can use, but even with that, it has to be brought into a scope that’s manageable and also serves the patient the best, but the same is true and can be applied to the enterprise. How much data becomes too much data, and when does data become a liability instead of a potential source of income?
Tim Crawford 18:18
Yeah, and I think this is a challenge, even for those outside of healthcare that might be listening.
Jason “JJ” James 18:23
Absolutely, this is
Tim Crawford 18:23
a challenge because you’ve got data policies in place, but they aren’t necessarily adhered to, which creates a liability in its own right, because now you’ve got data that’s outside of the policy that starts to negate the value of the policy from a data discovery standpoint, should you have to go down that path, but then the other piece is you get the proliferation of data just because people don’t know what the value is, or there’s a perceived belief that it’ll be more valuable in the future than it is today. So, let’s hold on to
Jason “JJ” James 18:58
it, right? But in doing so, obviously the longer you hold on to it, the greater the risk, not only from the risk of losing or compromising personal data, and let’s take off the healthcare hat, that data could be personally identifiable data, which could be a risk, and at the same time, the idea is it leads itself to a host of other exploits, not only within your own organization, but that personal data, and at the same time, a legal risk. You know, I encourage everybody, it’s spring, it’s time for spring cleaning. Go back to your infrastructure team and say, “Hey, look, you know, what are we storing? How long are we storing it? Be aware of that. That might be one of those projects that you move into an organization and you just don’t think about, but it’s there, and the risk is there,
Tim Crawford 19:43
you know. Again, maybe from a personal standpoint, you know, I talk about needles, but on a happier note,
Jason “JJ” James 19:49
one
Tim Crawford 19:50
of the things that I actually find liberating, and I don’t see this happening as much within enterprises, but what I personally go through and do a little bit of. Digital detox, but a little bit of digital housekeeping to get rid of that old stuff that might be sitting around, you know, kind of collecting dust, if you will, collecting digital dust, if you will, and maybe that’s a cultural thing that that we need to infuse more within the enterprise process,
Jason “JJ” James 20:21
you know, the question is, do you equate it to the modern philosophy of, do you hold the data? Does it bring you joy? If not, let it go, so to speak. I’m not that minimalistic, especially when it comes to data, but at the same time, start with it to your point, start with your own system, you know, start, you know, at home, and do that digital house. Yeah,
Tim Crawford 20:42
so if we look a little further out, we think about the crystal ball of innovation, and I’m going to ask you to look at your crystal ball, that you know, we think about things like artificial intelligence, and there’s a lot of conversation about AI, and AI is going to solve so many problems that we have today, and driverless cars are going to be the wave of the future. How much of this is reality, and how much of this is potential in terms of the impact specifically to healthcare and patients?
Jason “JJ” James 21:15
Well, I think what we’re seeing right now, some of it is hype, you know, but hype is important. Hype makes us understand that the idea is possible, whether it’s there yet or not. And so, let’s take the hype. There’s nothing wrong with that. The reality is it’s coming. If you look at, let’s talk about driverless cars for a second. Every major automotive manufacturer is spending over a half billion dollars investing in driverless cars, because it will change society. I think about my own daughter, who’s four months old today. She may never own a car, it just may be a service, much like Lyft or Uber, or things we haven’t even foreseen that she can call on demand. Where I get excited about that is how it plays into healthcare. I think about my own mother, she’s in assisted living. You know, I do a lot of the care in taking her to the doctor and making sure she gets where she needs to go. You know, having driverless cars means it could pick her up, drop her off. You know, think about that from a patient health care perspective. You have a lot of patients that live in areas where public transit is lacking, and I would say, unless you live in New York City, every city in America has lacking public transit, and so the elderly have a hard time, you know, arranging getting to the doctor. Some don’t drive anymore, some can’t drive anymore, and so bringing that to bear allows them to get there. If you look at AI, for example, that will touch every part of our lives, and you’ve got people that are really scared about it, because they can’t foresee what that means, you know. If you look at a researcher at Shoah University in Japan, he’s using AI to more accurately identify and early detect colorectal cancer than traditional physicians have been able to do in the last 10 years, you’re talking about months to a year earlier, that that saves people’s lives. But if you take the whole AI approach and people get really scared about what that means, and it’s because they can’t foresee how it will change, would it eliminate their job? It might, you know, but if you go back to the 18th century in America, really early 18th century, 90% of Americans, their jobs supported the farming industry. If you move into today, that’s less than 2% but if you go back in time and told the economists of the day, hey, by the way, 88% of your jobs will be done in 200 years, it would have scared the hell out of them, you know? They would have been panicked, they would have thought Armageddon is Armageddon is an eye, you know, and so the idea is we don’t know what jobs it will create, we don’t know what services will create. The hype that is today will become the reality of tomorrow,
Tim Crawford 23:53
you know. I had this conversation on the previous episode where we talked about how innovation and technology over the years has disrupted the jobs and workforce, and the examples of that one was the automobile, going from the industry of horses and drivers to automobiles, and then another was the assembly line, and then a third, and probably something that you directly think about your family could apply to is the tractor, think about the disruption that the tractor brought to farming and how that changed things, but in the wake of all of these innovations and all of these disruptions were an increase in jobs,
Jason “JJ” James 24:38
absolutely,
Tim Crawford 24:40
and an increase in opportunity. I feel like we just haven’t had that part of the conversation yet, but I think that would be a great piece to go with.
Jason “JJ” James 24:49
Yeah, and I think it goes back to the idea people are afraid of what they don’t know. I am very optimistic about the future. I don’t think AI. Is going to be, you know, this Thanos, so to speak, that comes and wipes out half the population. I think what it’s going to do is become this new innovative driver in our economy and our culture from an anthropological perspective that enables us and frees us up to do things that we’ve never done before. You know, if you even look at the low hanging fruit with automation and orchestration, when it comes to AI, even within the data center, you talk about provisioning and monitoring and reporting, you know that will be, or be done from an AI perspective, and empower capacity planning like we’ve never seen.
Tim Crawford 25:39
I love it. Is we kind of wrap on this episode, what excites you most about the role of the CIO, and where technology is headed?
Jason “JJ” James 25:48
You know, what excites me is this idea is it’s ever changing. This is what got me into technology, this what keeps me in technology, but it’s changing at an alarming rate. You know, one of the things I think of all the time, and I sort of argue about with the old CIOs, much older than myself, is that I think the job is harder today than it ever has been, from the sense that it transforms an alarming rate. I feel like if you were CIO in the 80s, and you know the days of data processing, you know you didn’t have disruption coming every few months, you know all the best hardware, all the best computers were in the office, and you know, if you look at the consumerization of it, and how that’s changed the enterprise, and how it’s changing healthcare, you know, this idea is, you know, I’ve got a device, and it’s collecting data, I want to use that data, I want to use that device, you know, it’s driving it at a faster pace than ever before, so we have to adapt, we have to understand again, back to the whole anthropology analogy, that the tools that we’re using are in a constant state. If you’re a CIO that is not embracing constant disruption, ongoing disruption, and disruption happening at a faster pace, then the role is no longer for you. And it excites me that it is changing that fast. You know, if you look at it, what we’re seeing right now is a convergence of science fiction into reality. You know, how far off is our smartphone from a Star Trek communicator or recorder?
Tim Crawford 27:11
Yeah, no, you’re, you’re right, you’re right,
Jason “JJ” James 27:14
but it’s happening. It’s happening, you know. Driverless cars, you know, I think about that all the time. I live in Atlanta, it takes me over an hour to go 20 miles most days, and so this idea of getting in the car, yeah, I could get more work done, but you know, I’m also having a newborn, I could sleep a little bit longer, that’d be Los Angeles
Tim Crawford 27:30
traffic,
Jason “JJ” James 27:31
and
Tim Crawford 27:31
traffic’s bad here too,
Jason “JJ” James 27:32
yeah, absolutely. So
Tim Crawford 27:33
you know, before we do wrap, I want to bring up your book, and I’m hoping you can kind of give us just a, just a quick teaser about it. It’s called Make It Work, it being the play on it, practical IT guide to mergers and acquisitions. And I know you’re in the final stages, but just give us a quick teaser on it.
Jason “JJ” James 27:53
Sure, so hoping to debut by Q this year. It is a practical guide for it to identify a merger and acquisition that may be happening in their own organization, the data and due diligence needed, how to look for synergies, and how effectively to not only handle merger and acquisition, but also how to survive one.
Tim Crawford 28:14
That’s great, JJ. We have to leave it right there. Thanks for joining the program today.
Jason “JJ” James 28:19
Thanks, Tim.
Tim Crawford 28:20
Looking forward to having you back and continuing the conversation. I always love the conversations that we’ve had since we met just recently, and I’m looking forward to many more in the years to come. Me too. Thank you, sir. For more information on the CIO in the No podcast series, visit us online at CIO itk.com or you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Don’t forget to subscribe, and thank you for listening.
Unknown Speaker 28:48
Thank.
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