Author: Kim Belard

Some people say that if your company has a chief innovation officer or innovation department, it may not be a very innovative company. To be successful, innovation must become part of the company’s culture, widely accepted and practiced continuously.

Similarly, if your company has a chief digital officer, then “digitalization” is still seen as a novelty, an adjunct to the company’s “real” work. For example, “digital health” will not have much impact on the health of the healthcare system or the people who use it unless it becomes a seamless part of the system and their lives.

Strangely, what reminds me of this is U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report Regarding the desirability of Federal College-“similar to military academies”-to develop digital expertise for government agencies. As GAO pointed out: “A talented and diverse, digitally-ready, tech-savvy federal workforce is essential to a modern and efficient government.”

Hello boy; you can say the same for employees in a “modern and efficient” healthcare system.

GAO convened a group of technical experts from government, academia, and non-profit organizations to help evaluate problems and potential solutions. The team identified various short- and long-term needs for digital expertise, including updating legacy systems, applying advanced technologies (such as artificial intelligence), managing cybersecurity risks, and reimagining service delivery.

Once again, what are not applicable to any healthcare organization?

GAO warns that even if the government can attract the appropriate digital talents it needs, it will still be subject to major restrictions, including FTE restrictions, existing technological infrastructure, long-term career paths, the ability to provide competitive salaries, and existing laws and regulations . Unless it is a hot new digital health startup, perhaps even so, these apply to most healthcare organizations.

Despite the “military academy” analogy, the GAO team believes that the Digital Service Academy may be more suitable for graduate-level institutions, “because the organization needs employees with advanced skills in leading projects and programs, data management, and digitization.” That is, National War College Probably a better example than West Point Military Academy (and, in fact, if its graduates have the same accomplishments and extensive As a war college, Digital Academy will do well).

Even with such a digital academy, GAO suggests that other actions are needed to further support digital talent, such as ongoing training programs, relationships with academic institutions, and support networks. The latter is partly because “the work of digital service personnel may introduce Changes that have been resisted by existing employees.”

Been there and met.

Although our congressmen generally declare their love and admiration for the military academy, in today’s highly polarized political climate, we actually see that the possibility of creating such a digital service academy seems very small, and we regret it.

Healthcare also needs better digital talent pipelines and a wider range of technical talents. Starting from the national medical school (allopathy and osteopathy), there are many usual suspects who can be candidates for training such expertise. We have a lot of people like this. They attract very smart, motivated people, and doctors are definitely on the front line of most things that happen in healthcare.

But the problem is that they focus on teaching medicine. This task has been difficult, and as the knowledge base grows exponentially, this task becomes harder and harder. Yes, some doctors are tech-savvy and many doctors are innovative, but some people suspect that this is as much as their experience in medical school because of it.

Then, maybe the School of Public Health can become the home of digital/technical expertise. The pandemic should let us know the great potential of digital solutions to public health problems and the obstacles to making them really work. The problem here is that the pandemic has once again revealed to us how broken and fragmented our public health system is, and how isolated they are usually from the rest of the healthcare system. There should be no such separation, but it does exist.

If we are looking for technical expertise and innovation bias, we only need to look at business schools, especially those that provide health care. Their problem is that graduates tend to be business-oriented, you might say. Health care is of course a business, and it is a huge business, but if we only focus on the business side of health care, we may be dissatisfied with the health care system we get.

There is another candidate that may be meaningful.We have a National Academy of Medical Sciences After all, its mission is: “Improve the health of all people by advancing science, accelerating health equity, and providing independent, authoritative and trustworthy advice nationally and globally.” Although the name includes “medicine” and its members Chinese doctors have an advantage, but it considers itself to be an “interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field to advance science, medicine, technology, and health.”

Therefore, it may make sense for NAM to accept the challenge and help train healthcare leaders to master new technologies.^Yingshi Has brought/will bring and how to use them to improve our healthcare system and our health.

Twenty years ago, NAM (in its Formerly the International Organization for Migration) Released its milestone Who is not a sage The report staggeringly estimated 98,000 deaths due to medical errors, and asserted that “the problem is not the bad guys in the healthcare field — it’s the good guys working in a bad system that requires improved security.” It’s hard to say the healthcare system in 2021. It will be safer, but it does become more complicated.

What we need is not more reports, but a new generation of leaders who are familiar with a wide range of 21st century technologies and prefer action and innovation. It may not be NAM to train them, or it may be Federal College, but what we are doing now is not enough.

We desperately need technology-savvy government employees who can help governments at all levels to modernize outdated systems. But when it comes to this, the healthcare system should look at itself first.

Kim was the former head of e-marketing of the main Blues project and the late editor Tincture, Is now a regular THCB contributor.