Oliver Degnan Podcast Transcript
Oliver Degnan joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Dr. Oliver Degnan. Dr. Oliver Degnan is a pioneering technology executive and leadership coach specializing in AI and healthcare innovation with over 20 years of experience, including roles as senior vice president for IBM Watson Health Chief Architect for Intuit and CIO for leading healthcare organizations.
He has driven transformative changes in patient care and operational efficiency. Dr. Degnan’s expertise extends from startups to Fortune 50 companies. He is a prolific inventor and patents cited by Silicon Valley Giants, such as Apple and Google. Dr. Degnan works with organizations to design the team and leadership structure that instills and preserves balance and promotes focused long-term performance.
Over the past 15 years, Dr. Degnan has led diverse engineering teams and private equity startup, family owned and Fortune 100 companies. He has led more than 1600 employees worldwide making a significant impact in disrupting the status quo and healthcare innovation. His efforts not only helped prevent physician burnout, but also improved people’s health globally.
Well, good afternoon, Oliver. Welcome to the show.
Oliver Degnan: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time. We gonna talk a little bit about technology today, of course. Maybe a little bit about healthcare and, and where you’re going. But Oliver, I appreciate you making the time.
Hailing outta Milwaukee. I’m in Kansas City and so we’re just gonna do a local podcast, as I call it, same time zone. So, jumping into your first question, your journey spans roles from Chief architect to Intuit to Senior Vice President at IBM Watson Health and CIO at various healthcare organizations. How have these diverse experiences shaped your approach to integrating AI in healthcare?
Oliver Degnan: I. Yeah, it’s been quite the journey for me. And, uh, so, you know, whether it’s from Intuit and all the way to IBM Watson Health and various healthcare CIO roles, such as for, you know, Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, or Genmed, which is a, you know, a hundred percent Medicare advantage provider, has been like building with different legal sets.
That’s what I kind of like to call it. So basically each experience added a new piece to my toolkit as a technology leader in healthcare at Intuit, for example. I learned how technology can simplify complicated processes and really understanding, you know, the user experience a little bit better and developing a delightful experience.
And so basically I like to think about how tool Botax makes taxes less intimidating. That same approach can also work for healthcare. I. And then at IBM, Watson Health taught me the power of big data and ai. And we’ve done, you know, Watson AI 10 years ago, and that was true AI with a true reasoning engine and all these kind of things that we take for granted today in the gen AI era.
But imagine having a super smart assistant that can spot patterns in millions of patients records that humans just miss, right? And so AI can definitely, you know, has its purpose there. And then as a healthcare CIO. You know, I’ve seen firsthand what patients and doctors actually need. This kind of real world perspective really was crucial because AI in the world isn’t helpful if, if it doesn’t solve real problems.
So it was really critical to look at the human condition, the human component, and how can we infuse AI in a way that is not as visible, it shouldn’t get in the way. Not one of those technology popups that constantly challenges you to are you sure are you really wanna do this? Right? So we used AI to predict what might come next in a, you know, physician workflow.
And then, so the big lesson there really for me was that successful healthcare AI needs really three things, right? It must be. User friendly. So technology can’t get in the way. AI can’t get in the way, and it should also not show how smart it really is. It should really just be a, like a companion, not a tool, but a companion that is, you know, there all the time and powered by good data to solve real world problems.
And so over the years, right, between Intuit and IBM Watson Health. My diverse background really helps me to kind of balance the technical, can we build it with the practical, should we build it? Question. And just because we have the technology and ai and it can do lots of fancy things, that might sound good in our mind, it might look, oh, this is, this is, uh, from a technology point of view, it’s worth doing.
But from a human point of view and from a true business point of view, does it actually make sense to do that? And oftentimes, and I have to say this, oftentimes the answer is no. And it really, really depends. On the actual result and the outcome you want to have in terms of how AI is being used.
Brian Thomas: Thank you.
Appreciate you bringing that all together. Obviously your experience, you’ve got a great background in the technology and healthcare arena and that’s where really I cut my teeth is healthcare and technology most of my career. So I appreciate that. And you shared some great examples and I, I just love your analogy of your experience each place you were, each career.
That you had is like building with Lego sets. I think that was pretty cool. So thank you. And Oliver, having led transformative projects in healthcare, what do you see as the most significant advancements AI has brought to patient care and operational efficiency in recent years?
Oliver Degnan: Well, for me personally, the most exciting AI developments in healthcare are the ones making life better for both patients and healthcare workers.
It’s easy to forget about either the healthcare workers. I mean the entire staff, not just the providers. And sometimes it’s easy to forget about the patient experience. And so for me it’s really about developing solutions that connect the to much closer together. So one of the first things I like to think about is that AI is becoming amazing at spotting things in medical images, for example.
So imagine having a, like a super tentative assistant, right? Somebody who’s also there with the radiologist in front of those. Very expensive monitors with those millions of pixels who can help flag potential issues and X-rays or MRIs. So making sure that doctors don’t miss anything important. They’re busy already.
They’re spending a few minutes every day on these patients, on these images to try to get through these images really quickly. So AI can really help you to not miss anything. It’s like having. An extra set of eyes, right? That’s the way I, and maybe not just one pair of eyes, probably 20 pairs of eyes. And then second, AI is transforming how we predict patient needs.
So we can now actually analyze patterns to identify which patients might need extra attention before they even get seriously sick. And this goes back to a better understanding of the onset. Better understanding of the medical history and even behaviors in terms of are they taking the medications on time and not, and things like this.
And, uh, really watching out for the patient to make sure that they stay activated, that they stay managed really well. And so AI is a fantastic mechanism to actually do this. So it’s like weather forecasting, but for your health. And then lastly, you know, AI is. Basically tackling like a mountain of paperwork.
When you look at the medical chart, it used to be all papers until we got those EMRs and the EHRs, and now I call ’em the, you know, glorified billing systems because they oftentimes don’t really help the doctors. It’s more about just coding everything all the time so they can bill and collect the, you know, money all but there’s a mountain of paperwork that basically bur healthcare professionals and that’s not good.
So I think smart AI systems can now handle. Those routine, you know, documentation, appointments, scheduling, and even insurance questions. So this means that healthcare workers can spend more time with patients and less time typing. And that’s what it all comes down to. You want the doctor to have more face time with a patient so they can actually truly keep this patient activated and even take some time to educate the patient instead of.
Turning away from that patient and just typing into that EMR into, whether it’s Epic, hyperspace, or Cerner, what have you, and just constantly typing things in, that’s not a good use of their time. Right. So for me, the real breakthrough isn’t just what these technologies can do, especially ai. It’s how they’re becoming more accessible and trustworthy.
And that’s another thing we have to trust or learn to trust ai. So we’re moving, we are really moving from like. Wow, that’s cool. To more like, wow, that’s actually helping people every day. And when I say people, I mean patients and the clinical staff, healthcare workers, very, very important.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome.
Again, what you’re speaking, speaking really to truth here, I witness this as a healthcare CIO as well. So thank you. I love the examples you used. AI is truly about making life better, not just for the patient, but also the healthcare providers, which is so important with this burnout rate. But I think my favorite thing I took away was AI is like a weather forecasting for your health.
I think that’s awesome. So, uh, appreciate that. Oliver, you’ve been instrumental in developing solutions to combat physical burnout. Can you discuss the strategies or technologies you’ve implemented to address the critical issue?
Oliver Degnan: So burnout is something that really started interesting me many, many years ago, and, uh, I’ve seen it firsthand.
My wife is a medical provider and it’s easy to get burned out and physicians burnout. I mean, imagine if you have a panel size of 1200, 1500 patients and you spend a. Seven to 15 minutes on a patient visit, and you’ll see 15 patients a day between Monday and Friday. You don’t even have time to take a breath anymore.
I mean, you don’t even have time to triage anymore properly. So it’s, it’s really, really not good. And so physician burnout is real. It really exists. And um, so to me that’s a huge challenge, right? So imagine being so overwhelmed with all the stuff that they need to do. Basically, doctors no longer enjoy really their work.
It’s just, you know, coming in and try to just catch up all the time. So for me, one of the most effective strategies, you know, I’ve implemented in using AI powered like voice assistance that act like a doctor’s personal describe. So basically the doctor kind of just talks in the exam room and the notes are being taken automatically and they’re being coded properly and being moved into the EMR so that the doctor actually doesn’t even have time, doesn’t need to spend time anymore to, you know, look for the codes and things like this, and in those fancy dropdown fields and everything.
And that’s not good. That’s not a good use of the doctor’s time, right? So these systems, they listen in and they basically do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So because of that. I remember that some doctors went from spending two to three hours on just documentation after work. After work, right? Which is also a security issue.
You really want to do it when you’re in front of the patient, but because they’re so busy, oftentimes the doctors do the clinical notes after work, and now I. Good luck remembering who is who, right? So then all of a sudden, those notes, they’re not as tailored and targeted to the individual patient anymore.
They sound all very, a little bit more general high level on the safe side, right? So there’s no harm being done and that’s not good. And so by using AI dictation and this, this, this real time scribe, some doctors were able to shave off up to three hours of just doing documentation, uh, work after work and ba basically, those documentations are completed instantly.
Another game changer for me personally has been. Redesigning the electronic health record experience, and not from a technology point of view, but the experience itself. Right. One of my mentors always told me, Oliver, every click counts, right? And it better be damn fast that system, right? So we created personalized dashboards that show doctors exactly what they need at the point of care, you know, when they needed.
So no more digging through digital file cabinets and, and just try to find out where the data isn’t going from screen to screen. It’s like the difference between searching through a. You know, messy garage or, you know, versus having everything organized, you know, at your fingertips. You, you want it to be there, right there at your fingertips.
You don’t wanna dig for that data. And then we’ve also implemented a wellness tech. And so those are simple tools that remind doctors to take breaks. Practice mindfulness, or even just drink some water sometimes. Right? Sometimes the most powerful technology isn’t the most complex. So the key, you know, takeaway for me personally, when it comes to, you know, helping physicians with burnout, technology should serve the doctors not the other way around.
It’s not good to design an EMR. That has a lot of popups and uh, a lot of forms and it challenges you to put a lot of information in many different places, right? So that’s why I’m a huge believer of like every solution that we build should start by asking, will this make a doctor’s day easier or harder?
If it doesn’t make things easier, we go back to the drawing board. We just shouldn’t be doing it. And I see a lot of technology solutions, especially in the AI world today. They’re all focused on data. I think it’s a missed opportunity. There shouldn’t be focusing on data. Data is a given. Everybody has lots of data these days, and AI is a given.
We have it now. We are in the AI era. Go back and focus on the fundamentals. Focus on what helps doctors and the care staff to enjoy their job because when they enjoy their job and they’re not burning out, guess who’s gonna benefit from that? The patients.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Really did unpack quite a bit there about physician burnout, healthcare provider burnout.
And you’re right, they no longer enjoy what they used to do. But I love with this age of ai, uh, AI has really improved to the point that healthcare providers can now just dictate during the time with the patient and save a lot of documentation hours and. Some of that stuff now will automatically get coded correctly too, because of the power of ai.
But lastly, I think always most important, no matter where you work, is focus on that customer experience. In this case the providers, and you are definitely, you’re on the right track for sure, and I appreciate that. So Oliver, last question of the day, transitioning from lending large teams to coaching executives, what common challenges do you observe among tech leaders today and how do you guide them towards effective leadership?
Oliver Degnan: Yeah, so it’s, I can tell you from my own experience, um, coaching tech leaders is a completely different way of coaching and thinking and approaching that than coaching administrative type of leaders. Because a lot of the technology leaders, they came from the trenches. They started out as, you know, software developers, architects, and uh, things like that.
And then they’re moved to the upper echelon at some point. And because of that, they naturally love solving complex technology problems. And they love to be part of the solution finding process. However, once you have fiduciary duty and administrative duty, you somewhat have to really think about enabling your teams to come up with powerful, creative solutions without micromanaging them, without getting in the way, without being the main approver for everything that goes out.
And that’s really hard for some of these technology leaders that came up from the trenches. So in my coaching work with executives, you know, I’ve seen these kind of challenges pop up, pop up again, right? And so many leaders really struggle with that. Also, that that tech tunnel vision, right? Getting so excited about new technologies that they forget to ask if these solutions actually solve any real problem.
And so my advisor was this, always start with the human need, not the tech. And that’s something that can be coached, right? And then, you know, even the coolest AI in the world isn’t helpful if nobody wants to use it. So it’s again, critical to remind technology leaders that just because you have access to the tech and you could do it doesn’t mean it makes good business sense to do that.
And also the language of business is something that technology leaders really need to learn. They are masters in the language of technology. But they have probably not invested enough time to start developing the translation from technology to business impact business outcome. And then, you know, because of that, there’s oftentimes these communication breakdowns between technical and non-technical teams.
I. And they’re super common in the business. So I guide leaders to become tech translators, basically, who can explain complex concepts without the jargon, the tech jargon. It’s about basically building bridges, not those walls. And it’s critical for those technology leaders to understand that. Same with, you know, other soft skills such as emotional intelligence and compassion, and just being able to.
Self read, self interpret their own actions, not be triggered too easily into saying yes to everything that comes across. Oftentimes, you know, CEOs have great ideas and that’s their job and they think out loud. But just because a CEO says something to a CIO doesn’t mean that becomes a marching order.
Matter of fact, it’s a CIO. It’s your job to actually protect the CEO from him or herself. And it’s critical to learn that a master, that scale of masterful technology, leadership and strategic execution. And then finally, many leaders really struggle with balancing innovation and stability. And healthcare can’t afford downtime or errors.
I mean, imagine if I. If healthcare stuff doesn’t work, you’re go back to pen and paper at that day, or an MRI machine fails. I mean, it would be horrible, right? So I got leaders to basically make sure that, that they know that they can’t, you know, stay stuck in the past. They have to really think about these kind of things and the stability in healthcare.
What really worked well in regards to innovation is to create innovation zones. So I help technology leaders, CTOs, CIOs, VPs to create these innovation zones where they can safely experiment. While keeping, you know, basically critical systems rock solid, and that’s critical. It’s hard to experiment within production systems, and there’s a patient safety issue of that, as you can imagine.
And so where do you innovate? And when you innovate, I don’t think it’s as easy to just buy innovative tech and bring it in house and start bolting it on what’s, you know, already working. That’s one way, but I think another way, I always enjoyed this, like when I was a CTO at Marshy Clinic or the CIO at Genmed, I always enjoyed innovating from within, innovating with the providers, innovating with the staff, being in those medical centers and creating this innovation zone.
Take my developers there, take my architects there, and really start observing the problem firsthand. And then right there and then. Come up with innovative breakthrough solutions that actually make sense, right? So my leadership philosophy is actually pretty simple. Technology leadership, you know, isn’t about being the smartest person in the room.
You know what they say. You know, always hire smarter. It’s about asking the right questions, listening carefully to the answers, and creating environments where basically both people and technology can thrive together. That’s critical. There should not be one mega decision maker when it comes to innovation, things like that.
And so when I coach technology leaders. I really coach ’em through my Level Up system, which helps them to first create some resilience, not burn out themselves. ’cause if they burn out, they’re pull, you know, everyone else down with them, which is not good. And then after resilience, we go into performance.
How do you actually perform? How do you optimize your time as a technology leader? How do you optimize innovation in the teams and help teams to level up? And then the third part of my Level Up system is growth. Leadership growth. How do you grow? Oftentimes people say, well, I’m a CIO already. How can I grow?
And even if you never want to become like a CEO or anything like that, even as a CIO, you can grow tremendously, especially in healthcare, you can grow every day. And so throughout the growth modules, I coach on how to actually do that. And guess what? When you grow as a CIO. You know how to share their growth with others, others will level up, and you have become the effective platform for somebody else’s success.
It’s an amazing, amazing gift that you can give to people, but you can’t do it yourself. I was not able to do it myself. I had multiple coaches in my career. They have helped me tremendously and I started as a coder and today I’m a doctor in business and, um, I would’ve not been able to do this with my executive coaches along the way.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. I know it’s a journey. It takes time. You know, starting out like you, I was a developer early on in my career, but I liked what you shared. Just a couple things I think would resonate with me anyway, but most likely my audience is coaching tech leaders is a bit different, right? A lot of these tech leaders have come from the trenches, engineers, architects.
They love to find solution to problems. On the flip side, as you mentioned, they do have that tech tunnel vision and really we need to start with that human need not tech. And we need to help people obtain those soft skills and grow that eq. So I really appreciate that Oliver, and you were just amazing today and I really look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Oliver Degnan: Awesome. I appreciate it. Thanks, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Oliver Degnan Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
