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The world of technology has expanded rapidly over the past few years, from video chatting to generative artificial intelligence. And while it's all become part of our day to day lives, it's also directly influencing how we receive our medical care.For our 8th topic in our Toughest Questions in Health Care series we’re asking – "How is technology changing health care?"  Randy Gaboriault, ChristianaCare's Chief Digital and Information Officer, and Dr. Tim Shiuh, ChristianaCare's Chief Health Information Officer discuss what it takes to utilize new and innovative technologies that positively impact patient care while also simplifying the work of those providing care.Randy Gaboriault, MS, MBA, has been dubbed an “exceedingly rare, triple threat CIO” by media. IT initiatives that Randy has spearheaded have garnered numerous distinctions, which include Information Week’s “Twenty Great Ideas To Steal,” Computerworld’s “Premier 100 IT Leaders,” a four-time awardee of CIO Magazine’s “CIO 100,” and one of Becker’s Healthcare 20 Chief Digital Officers to Know. Timothy Shiuh, M.D., MHCDS, FACEP, leads the development and implementation of a comprehensive enterprise digital health and clinical information strategy that facilitates effective, value-based, “high tech-high touch” health care delivery across the continuum of care and promotes digitally-led clinical transformation.LinksHealth & Technology Innovation Center at ChristianaCareTransformational Leadership Awards Honors ChristianaCare for "Trailblazing" InnovationIntroducing Digital Forms, Appointment Reminders and Check-In   Thanks for listening and subscribing! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The Toughest Questions in Health Care: How is Technology Changing Health Care?

Randy has been dubbed an “exceedingly rare, triple threat CIO” by media and is highly sought after for interviews.

IT initiatives that Randy has spearheaded have garnered numerous distinctions, which include Information Week’s “Twenty Great Ideas To Steal,” Computerworld’s “Premier 100 IT Leaders,” a four-time awardee of CIO Magazine’s “CIO 100,” and one of Becker’s Healthcare 20 Chief Digital Officers to Know. HealthTech Research Alliance & Council nominated Randy as “Healthcare Innovator of the Year.” Randy is an inductee into the CIO Magazine Hall of Fame and has earned degrees from Temple, Dartmouth and Oxford.

Medical technology

Innovation

Strategic Development

Health Information Exchange

Health Information Technology Power and Potential

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Virtual reality used in ChristianaCare's cancer center.

How ChristianaCare scored a ‘Most Wired’ award for the fifth time

ChristianaCare is one of Computerworld’s ‘Best Places to Work in IT’

ChristianaCare is rolling out a telehealth service that allows patients at home to access personalized care management information through an mHealth app on Amazon Alexa.

ChristianaCare Designs its Own Telehealth Platform for Amazon Alexa

20 hospital and health system chief digital officers to know | 2020

Randall Gaboriault named to CIO Hall of Fame

ChristianaCare earns Most Wired designation for tech expertise

Health care is about more than broken bones and blood pressure readings. Join For the Love of Health hosts Megan McGuriman and Jason Tokarski every other Thursday for engaging conversations about fascinating treatments, innovative programs, groundbreaking research and cutting-edge technology. Learn how medical experts are creating health today and delivering the care of tomorrow.

For the Love of Health

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National innovators and thought leaders speak to the power of AI at ChristianaCare’s inaugural Innovation Summit

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Imagine a world where AI doesn’t just support health care providers, but anticipates their next move — detecting diseases faster than human eyes, analyzing patterns and patient data that humans might overlook and revolutionizing health care decision making at every level.

 Driven by data, AI can identify which patients are most likely to have repeated emergency department visits or thrive from personalized medicine.

With the power of robotics enhanced by AI, people with medical needs can gain more independence, managing daily tasks such as taking medication, monitoring their health and receiving personalized care, all from the comfort of their own homes.

And this is just the beginning.

“AI is transforming – and is going to continue transforming – every industry, especially health care,” said Bharat Rao, a notable figure in the fields of health care, technology and AI.

 Rao himself has made significant contributions to artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics, particularly in health care innovation. His current start-up, CareNostics, uses AI technology to identify patients at increased risk for chronic disease.

“We take this for granted,” he said, “but it’s like what I used to see on Star Trek as a kid. The opportunities are limitless.”

Rao was a keynote speaker at ChristianaCare’s inaugural Innovation Summit, a two-day conference at ChristianaCare’s Newark campus in Delaware, in fall 2024. During panel discussions and keynotes, more than 200 attendees heard about current and future health tech from national innovators and thought leaders, as well as technical advice for inventors who want to patent ideas and protect intellectual property in a world where “AI Is Everywhere,” the conference’s theme.

Speakers emphasized that it’s not just technologists, but also researchers, clinicians and other health care professionals who play an essential role in implementing AI-based health care solutions. “There’s no AI without HI, which is human intelligence,” said Catherine Burch, MS, CXA, CUA, vice president of innovation at ChristianaCare. “You want to help shape the future, not wait for it to shape you.”

How AI helps improve patient care “AI is incredibly good at reducing noise in images,” said speaker David Lloyd, a technical leader at Amazon, who discussed the use of AI in radiology. “It can detect anomalies, and it can automate radiologist reports, which saves time for radiologists.”

 Data informatics is another example of the power of AI to help health professionals determine which patients are at an increased risk for falls, malnutrition or recurrent asthma attacks, enabling them to optimize patient health and prevent hospitalizations.

“Some patients with asthma go to the ER repeatedly because their treatment plan isn’t working,” said speaker Vikram Anand, head of data at CareNostics. When patients have uncontrolled asthma, data-rich platforms like CareNostics can provide treating physicians with guidelines and other support to improve patient care, which may lead to evidence-based medication changes or other therapies, he said.

Using robots as part of the health care team in patient homes may sound like science fiction, but speakers discussed the current evolution of consumer robotics, like Amazon’s Astro. Astro follows patients around their home, interacts with them and supports their care. When ChristianaCare tested Astro’s impact on HomeHealth patients, they found that it reduced feelings of isolation by 60%.

“Astro is like Alexa on wheels,” said speaker Pam Szczerba, PT, MPT, CPHQ, director of ChristianaCare’s HomeHealth quality, education and risk management, who studied patients’ experiences with Astro. “People like interacting with Alexa, but they can only interact in the room they’re in. Astro’s mobility lets it go to the patient.”

Based on early successes, health professionals are assessing robots as an extension of clinicians in the home. Early results show that patients with robots show improved activation with their care plans. This may lead to more widespread distribution of household robots to newly diagnosed patients to help prevent disease complications, avoidable emergency department visits and re-hospitalizations.

How AI helps ease provider burden  Speakers also discussed the potential of AI to improve health care delivery and patient outcomes by handling more administrative work for health professionals.

“We can reduce some of the redundancy of work to free up time for people to be creative,” said speaker Terrance Bowman, managing director at Code Differently, a company that educates and prepares people to work in technology-driven workplaces.

“AI should be taking the ‘administrivia’ – administrative trivial tasks – out of your life,” said speaker Nate Gach, director of innovation at Independence Blue Cross. “When you want folks to do the creative part of the job that takes brain power, have ChatGPT respond to easy emails.” Other examples shared included the power of AI to record meetings, create summaries and send participants automated meeting minutes.

 Benefits can be seen across industries. Specific to health care, eliminating the need for note-taking during visits enables more personalized and attentive provider-patient interaction. With the evolution of ambient speech apps, clinicians are no longer just dictating notes into the electronic health record. Now AI is listening to the conversation and creating the notes and associated recommendations.

“The physician is no longer spending ‘pajama time’ doing catch-up work, at home late into the evening,” said speaker Tyler Flatt, a director and leading expert in AI and digital transformation at Microsoft. “Especially as we’re dealing with burnout, it’s better for patient and physician satisfaction.”

AI may also help caregivers uncover details that they hadn’t noticed, helping them diagnosis patients with subtle symptoms. “We feed a large quantity of data and have it suggest commonalities about patients,” said speaker Matthew Mauriello, assistant professor of computer and information sciences at the University of Delaware. “Some things are very insightful, but humans miss them.”

AI has also been used for patient engagement, including chatbots that can assist with tasks like scheduling clinical appointments or acknowledging patient questions. “One of the things AI is great at is natural language understanding,” said David Lloyd. “You can alleviate a lot of the burden if you have something that can talk to your patients, especially if it’s an administrative task.”

Creating new health innovations  “The key is to think of something you’ve done that’s original and non-obvious,” said Rao, who holds more than 60 patents in AI. “The process of writing about it will help you flesh it out.”

Turning breakthrough ideas into game changers is just the start — protecting these innovations is what ensures they shape the future, rather than fade into the past.

“Keeping it secret and internal to your organization until you know what you want to do with it is important,” Greg Bernabeo, partner at FisherBroyles, LLP, said. “Otherwise, the opportunity is lost, and you can’t get the genie back in the bottle.”

Benefits of non-obvious thinking  People who pursue “non-obvious” ideas are often on the cutting edge of technology in and out of health care, said keynote speaker, Ben DuPont, while discussing innovative ideas with Randy Gaboriault, MS, MBA, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer at ChristianaCare.

 “Amazon was not founded by a book retailer; Airbnb was not founded by somebody who was in hospitality,” said DuPont, author, entrepreneur, and co-founder and partner at Chartline Capital Partners venture capital fund. “Before Uber, the founders were running around Paris and they couldn’t get a taxi.”

Innovative ideas often arise when people consider non-obvious points of view while thinking about solutions, DuPont said. Non-experts have the ability to cut through the clutter and find the frustration, which can lead to innovative solutions, which DuPont explores in his book “Non-Obvious Thinking: How to See What Others Miss.” Health providers, for example, may discover ideas when they move out of their comfort zones.

“If you want to be a better doctor, go do something that has nothing to do with medicine,” he said. “Innovation happens at the collision of seemingly unrelated disciplines.”

Diversity in the workplace is necessary, “but it’s not just diversity in the way people look: It’s diversity in how people think,” DuPont said. “There are people that think in dramatic and different ways. We need those people around the table. They might say: ‘If we just move this little thing over here’ … and it starts an avalanche that changes the world.”

Involving the future generation  During the Innovation Summit, students with an interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) from St. Mark’s High School in Wilmington, Delaware, competed against one another at ChristianaCare’s inaugural HealthSpark ChallengeTM.

 Twenty-six high school juniors and seniors were divided into five teams, then challenged to brainstorm ideas for solutions to address the negative mental health effects of social media on teenagers. Each team created a concept poster and pitched their ideas to Summit attendees. The attendees then voted for their favorite solution.

The winning solution, Editing Identifiers, is designed to help minimize negative feelings about body image among teens. The solution would use AI technology to identify altered photos on social media. The goal would be to show teens that photos of “perfect” people aren’t real and alleviate the feelings of body dysmorphia.

Looking forward Summit speakers highlighted many ways that AI is already incorporated into health care, as well as ways that health tech, AI, and robotics may improve care for patients in the coming years.

“We are just scratching the surface,” Rao said. “It’s like laparoscopic surgery – years ago, it was considered experimental or dangerous. Today, surgery is commonly done laparoscopically, with better outcomes and less infection. AI can help identify care gaps and get the right treatment to the right patient. It’s going to be good for the patient.”

In a rapidly evolving landscape, the integration of AI into health care not only enhances patient care but also creates opportunities for innovation and collaboration, said ChristianaCare’s Gaboriault.

“As AI continues to advance, the health care industry stands on the brink of a revolution, one where the possibilities are as vast as the data that fuels them.”


AI Everywhere: Where Artificial Intelligence and Health Care Intersect

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Award jointly given to President and CEO Dr. Janice Nevin and Chief Digital and Information Officer Randy Gaboriault  ChristianaCare has earned the Transformational Leadership Award for excelling in its development and deployment of transformational information technology that improves the delivery of care and streamlines administrative services.

Presented by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the American Hospital Association, the award is jointly bestowed to Janice Nevin, M.D., MPH, ChristianaCare’s president and CEO, and Randy Gaboriault, MS, MBA, ChristianaCare’s chief digital and information officer and senior vice president.

“Their trailblazing commitment to rapid transformation has set an example for the entire industry in how to pursue a leadership vision with determination, brilliant planning and courage to overcome all challenges,” said CHIME President and CEO Russell P. Branzell.

Under the leadership of Nevin and Gaboriault, ChristianaCare has created and deployed new organizational, digital capabilities for both patient and caregiver. Using voice-enabled technology, ChristianaCare HomeHealth patients can interact with an internally developed Alexa capability to guide them through their personalized daily therapy regimens. Similarly, ChristianaCare recently launched the ability for in-house postpartum patients to use an Amazon Echo device to ask questions, request help or communicate with their care team. Taking voice and digital capabilities further, in February 2022,  ChristianaCare deployed an innovative tool called Moxi, a collaborative robot – or “cobot” – that can assist in the hospital by making deliveries and performing other non-clinical tasks so that nurses and other clinical caregivers can spend more time focused on what they do best: caring for patients.

“Randy is a phenomenal leader, with a relentless focus on creating a culture of innovation for impact, solving for the most complex problems and delivering significantly improved outcomes,” Nevin said. “His work has made ChristianaCare a model for how transformative technology can help to create health so that every person can flourish.”

ChristianaCare continues to be recognized for leading innovation in the health care industry. The organization was recently recognized by CHIME’s Most Wired program with Performance Excellence Awards in its acute and ambulatory categories. That level is reserved only for organizations that are considered leaders in health care technology who “actively push the industry forward” and are “realizing meaningful outcomes, including improved quality of care, improved patient experience, reduced costs and broader patient access to healthcare services.”

“Under Dr. Nevin’s extraordinary leadership, we have made an intentional commitment to placing technology at the center of all our initiatives to enable our caregivers to best serve our patients,” Gaboriault said. “That commitment, reinforced by our organization’s core behavior to continuously look for new ways to innovate, means that we are able to introduce and leverage robotic nursing assistants in a way that drives meaningful value for both patients and providers. And because our caregivers embrace change, we are confident that we will be using our cobots to assume more tasks in the future, and enable our nurses to devote even more of their precious time to direct patient care.”


ChristianaCare Earns Transformational Leadership Award from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and American Hospital Association

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For the seventh consecutive year, ChristianaCare has earned the “Most Wired” designation from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), which assesses how effectively health care organizations apply core and advanced technologies to improve health and care in their communities.

Among the more than 38,000 organizations surveyed by CHIME, ChristianaCare ranked above peers in categories such as analytics and data management, population health, infrastructure and patient engagement. The survey assessed the adoption, integration and impact of technologies in health care organizations at all stages of development, from early development to industry leading.

“At ChristianaCare we are curious and continuously looking for ways to innovate,” said ChristianaCare President and CEO Janice E. Nevin, M.D., MPH. “Embedding that behavior in our organization has led to brilliant planning and extraordinary execution of new, technology-enabled models of care as our patients demand greater service and convenience, including greater access from home.”

 ChristianaCare was recognized with a Performance Excellence Award for Most Wired’s acute and ambulatory categories. That level is reserved only for organizations that are considered leaders in health care technology who “actively push the industry forward” and are “realizing meaningful outcomes, including improved quality of care, improved patient experience, reduced costs, and broader patient access to healthcare services.”

“We are on the cutting edge of health care innovation, yet we have only scratched the surface of digital care,” said Randy Gaboriault, MS, MBA, chief digital and information officer at ChristianaCare. “We have embarked on building a digital distribution network of health care that strengthens every day. And we are guiding a digital thread that weaves together all the components in and outside the walls of the hospital and provider’s office to improve the health of every person we touch.”

The Most Wired recognition highlights ChristianaCare’s success in the launch of the Hospital Care at Home program, which is transforming the very nature of how acute care is delivered, as well as the creation of digital platforms that radically improve the patient experience.

Launched in December 2021, ChristianaCare’s Hospital Care at Home program offers the highest level of in-home acute care in Delaware. The program combines virtual and in-person care provided by a team of physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and other providers, and has to date cared for more than 200 patients.

These in-person and virtual visits from the health care team mean that a patient doesn’t need to leave home to get better. Virtual technology and home health equipment brought into the patient’s home ensure around-the-clock monitoring and care that mirror a traditional hospital setting.

ChristianaCare’s digital patient engagement capabilities have streamlined nearly every aspect of the patient experience. Through these digital tools, the registration, check-in and intake of patients are becoming more streamlined, improving both patient experience and efficiency at ChristianaCare practices. The digital platform also enables patients to self-schedule appointments, easily complete their medical histories and check in to appointments by simply scanning a QR code with their digital device.

 “These digital offerings have placed our patients in the driver’s seat,” said Lynne McCone, MBA, chief applications officer and vice president of IT at ChristianaCare. “The benefits of a conducive, consistent patient journey and experience in turn improves practice operations and efficiency and dismantles administrative burdens for both patients and caregivers. It’s a huge win for consumers, patients and providers.”

The Digital Health Most Wired survey and recognition program serves as a comprehensive “digital health check-up” for health care organizations across the world, according to CHIME.  As success in digital health increasingly determines the quality of patient care, the scope of the CHIME Digital Health Most Wired survey reflects the progress of leading health systems, like ChristianaCare, as they reinvent health care for a new century.

“We are proud to honor your team’s exceptional dedication to excellence in digital health,” said CHIME President and CEO Russell P. Branzell of ChristianaCare.  “Your pioneering performance in the industry inspires other organizations by example. Patients in communities around the world receive better care when you drive change through digital transformation, as you have proven through your success in this rigorous program.”




ChristianaCare Named a Most Wired Health Care Technology Leader for 7th Consecutive Year

The world of technology has expanded rapidly over the past few years, from video chatting to generative artificial intelligence. And while it's all become part of our day to day lives, it's also directly influencing how we receive our medical care.

For our 8th topic in our Toughest Questions in Health Care series we’re asking – "How is technology changing health care?"  Randy Gaboriault, ChristianaCare's Chief Digital and Information Officer, and Dr. Tim Shiuh, ChristianaCare's Chief Health Information Officer discuss what it takes to utilize new and innovative technologies that positively impact patient care while also simplifying the work of those providing care.

Chief Infection Prevention Officer Dr. Marci Drees walks you through the proper way to wear and remove your mask.

Properly Wearing and Removing Your Mask

Randy Gaboriault is the chief information officer and senior vice president of Innovation and Strategic Development for Christiana Care Health System.

He is a 2019 inductee into the CIO Hall of Fame by major tech company IDG.

Three Questions with Health Care CIO Randall Gaboriault

In the spirit of serving together, the team at Christiana Care's Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute team partnered with the Innovation Center to bring virtual reality to patients for a more relaxing chemotherapy experience. This pioneering approach earned Christiana Care 2018 American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet Prize at the National Magnet Conference.

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