AI in pediatric healthcare is often talk, not delivery. Joe Egan, CIO of Valley Children's Healthcare, walks through the three layers of AI his team runs today, and how each one turns clinician time back into access for kids.
In this conversation:
Joe Egan, Chief Information Officer, Valley Children’s
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live
00:00:00 Intro: Welcome to Digital Health talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't as we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Jenny Sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
00:00:30 Megan Antonelli: Hi and welcome to Digital Health Talks. This is Megan Antonelli, CEO of Health Impact Live. Everybody is talking about AI, but the real question is whether it is actually expanding access, improving care, and changing how healthcare gets delivered, or just optimizing what already exists. In California's Central Valley, one pediatric health system is not waiting for the answer. Valley Children's Healthcare is already operating AI across three distinct layers of care delivery and their outcomes metrics are beating industry benchmarks. Today, I'm talking with the CIO who is building the stack from the inside. Joe Egan has spent more than twenty five years at Valley Children's, rising from network technician to vice president and chief information officer. He led the first fully remote, epic implementation in the country. He holds a master's in information security, and right now, he is one of the most important voices in pediatric digital health. Joe, welcome to Digital Health Talks. Nice to see you. I'm so glad you could be on the show. How have you been?
00:01:33 Joe Egan: Megan. Pleasure to be here. Thank you. I've been fine. Uh, everything in California is going well.
00:01:40 Megan Antonelli: I know, well, the summer is off to a start, so it's a little hot where you are a little hazy where I am, but, um, you know, we're not too far away. You have been at Valley Children's there in Madera, California for over twenty five years. And, um, tell us a little bit about your journey, how you started there. And, and, um, you know, now as CIO what what that what that looks like.
00:02:02 Joe Egan: Sure. Yeah. So Valley Children's has basically been my home for most of my professional career. And starting as a network technician really taught me that technology adoption happens from the ground up too. And I started as a temp for Valley Children's Hospital back in nineteen ninety six or seven. It gets hard to remember when you're talking about that many years. Um, it started as a temp and then went into networking technology. I had the, uh, the pleasure of helping to design the first network for Valley Children's when we built the new hospital, which opened in nineteen ninety eight. And so, uh, nowhere, every little nook and cranny is in Valley Children's Hospital. I did leave for another organization in two thousand and eight, but came back, uh, in less than a year. But, uh, yeah, Valley Jones has been home for, uh, my most of my career.
00:02:56 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. Well, that. You know, I think, um, you know, what a great story. And I love that you started as a temp. I actually, when my one of my first jobs in healthcare was as a, as a temp at Kaiser up in Oakland and then, uh, went on to work in contracts there for a little bit. So, um, you know, amazing how, how we get to our starts. And I remember temp jobs. Well, I feel like we don't have them as much anymore right now. They now they all in turn and then, and then get jobs. Right. But back in the days, in the, in the late nineties, um, but tell our audience a little bit about Central Valley set the stage in terms of Madera County, what that looks like for those who might not know where it is there in the Central Valley of California.
00:03:39 Joe Egan: Sure. Yeah. So for Valley Children's, Madera County is our home, but our care environment is really the entire Central Valley of California. We have more than one point three million children across roughly forty five, forty six, zero zero Thousand square miles, and that includes many rural and other historically underserved communities. In our environment, families may have to travel for hours historically for pediatric specialty care. And so we prioritize technologies that help move our expertise closer to the kids and make it so it's easier to get to that care. Our CEO had a goal of care for children within twenty miles or twenty minutes, and so we've worked hard to build that by reaching out to partners and partnering with other health care organizations, uh, by having NICU that our Valley Children's NICU in, um, third party hospitals, uh, specialty clinics that are closer to homes. And so that's been a huge part of our efforts when it comes to technology too, is how can we bring access closer to the patient?
00:04:50 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. And I mean, I think for, you know, it can't be kind of understated how and where you are. I mean, you're about four hours from LA and probably maybe three hours from San Francisco, right. So it's so far, you know, kind of right there in the middle, hence the Central Valley. Um, but, you know, in terms of, of what's there and that you have Fresno, but that's a, you know, it's a city. But in terms of access, uh, California gets pretty rural pretty fast as you get out of those major metros.
00:05:20 Joe Egan: It does, especially in central California too. And, uh, where you might have a metropolitan area that has one point three million patients for an organization within a single zip code. Uh, we have, like I said, forty five thousand square miles. And so access is tricky for patients. And so that is one of our key focuses.
00:05:41 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, absolutely. And then, I mean, in terms of the physician and physician demographics and kind of keeping that and then, you know, sort of pediatrics, I mean, even just here in LA, it's hard to get pediatrics appointments when you need them. And then the ability to travel. We talk about it a lot on the show. Um, just about, you know, when you have sick kids that you don't want to travel with them, certainly not miles upon miles. And often you don't have to. So that kind of access that technology can bring is pretty is very important. So tell us a little bit about kind of what brought you to where you guys are now in terms of looking at these tools, um, both for, you know, efficiency, but also for, for access.
00:06:21 Joe Egan: Um, one thing that I've stressed to my team is the tools matter, but the trust in the tools, the workflows and the training and even leadership ownership matter more. And so when clinicians and operational teams help us define the problem and they take ownership of the outcome, that's when, in my opinion, technology sticks. And so if it simply installs a new tool or install something that usually doesn't. And so, uh, I've, I've found when it comes to these tools, uh, for access or whatever, the tool is meant to help us with people rarely resist the technology just because it's new. They resist it when they think it's going to make their work harder, or if they don't understand why, why this tool is being implemented, or why we're changing something, or if they don't feel heard. And so you had mentioned tools. That's that's one of the major pushes that we have is to make sure that there's operational ownership in all of these different tools. The tool is just a tool. And so it's really the workflow that the operational teams need to, uh, take ownership of and treat it and information technology services as a partner to improve those operational workflows. And so, for example, when it comes to access for Valley Children's Hospital, uh, telemedicine and remote access is a huge push that we've made in the last few years, especially since Covid. And so and we continue to this day having forty five zero zero zero square miles. Telemedicine is important for Valley Children's Hospital, both giving specialty care to other providers so we can have telemedicine providers helping, uh, other clinicians in other hospitals or clinics or meeting with the patients directly. And so we've spent a lot of time and effort on those types of tools for telemedicine, uh, both directly with the patient in mind, but also with other providers in mind.
00:08:24 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, I can't, I mean, I think the, the impact of the pandemic on sort of that need and also acceptance for telemedicine, particularly, you know, across pediatrics was, is so, um, you know, has been such a, an added benefit, a silver lining, if you will, to, to that and that adoption side of it. Um, you know, particularly in rural areas. But as I said here, here in, you know, um cities, urban urban areas too. It's, it makes a huge difference, um, around, you know, with, uh, the AI implementation, you know, your background is very much a technologist and it, and I think there's, you know, you mentioned kind of the, you know, that it's the technology is there and it becomes around the sort of the governance and the, the, the workflows and kind of getting the ownership and how important that is. But let's talk a little bit about the technology. I think, you know, we talked a little bit that you're operating the AI at kind of three levels. Walk us through the architecture a little bit. Where does, you know, how does this how does it start and how do the layers build on each other?
00:09:30 Joe Egan: Yeah. So I, I would not claim that Valley Children's is at the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence. We, we try to remain cutting edge, though as close as we can. Um, but we, we do see AI from three distinct distinct levels. Uh, first would be to assist our clinicians. The second is to inform. And then the third is to act. So for example, um, assist that a bridge. So we've recently installed a bridge, which is our ambient documentation technology to help providers document easier and be more, um, uh, detailed in that documentation to, uh, there's also epic AI features that we've implemented in box assistance and coding and administrative automation technologies. These, in my opinion, are there to assist our, our providers and workforce members, uh, to do the work that they normally do. Then there's the inform, uh, layer. So how can you use things like slicer Dicer, epic cosmos, or Microsoft Fabric, which is now one of the tools that we're implementing for, uh, Data and data analytics power BI. How can we integrate artificial intelligence and other technologies, data science technologies to help better inform the providers so they can make better decisions and help them with their process? And then, uh, how can we act? And so this is the squishy part for us. And we're not here yet, but the future is agentic workflows. And how could we use that to coordinate appointments and conduct outreaches and close care gaps and, uh, support our clinicians and operational teams, uh, with clearly defined human oversight, which is important. Uh, many organizations are starting to get there. There's just so much complexity to that. And you had mentioned governance, and that's the first thing that we did was put in a pretty robust artificial intelligence governance process and, uh, committee so we can make sure that we don't get ahead of our skis when it comes to the act perspective.
00:11:42 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, I think that I mean, that's great. I love that in terms of the way you've broken that out into those three levels. So just so I remember it is inform, write, assist, assist, inform and act.
00:11:56 Joe Egan: Yeah. And we look at it from a, how much risk is there for each one of these levels to so assist. That's, that's the lowest risk because you have the most supervision over artificial intelligence. It may be doing the work for you, but you're making sure that it did it correctly. Ambient technology, the providers use it to automatically create that documentation, but then they're reading it and making sure it says what they want. So it's completely supervised and forms a little bit different. Now you're trusting artificial intelligence a little bit more, uh, to give you recommendations. It's still clinicians making decisions and workforce members. But when you get into genetics, that's where it becomes a little bit squishier because you're giving it less supervision and more autonomy. And so, and again, I don't, uh, I don't pretend that we are there when it comes to that level. Uh, we are now just dipping our toe into that pool and starting to watch other organizations. And what are they doing? And how can we, uh, be as cutting edge as possible without being bleeding edge right now?
00:13:04 Megan Antonelli: Absolutely. The, the, the trade offs to the act are tough. And I mean, I, I find it even in my, you know, kind of low risk, more marketing, you know, world of it as you kind of hand over more. There's almost more work to do because you've got to double check and get more involved in that. Let's talk a little bit more about the ambient, um, deployment, you know, in that that was the earliest and I think that assist people lots. You know, we hear the statistics. There's no question that everywhere it says, don't take it away from my docs, This stuff is working. Tell us a little bit about what you saw in terms of, you know, the good, you know, positive or negative, but the adoption signals that said it was working and that, you know, that this was this was a keeper as far as tools go.
00:13:50 Joe Egan: Great, great question. And with any new tool that we implement, uh, there are there's one signal that I always look for. Do you have to push that tool or is that tool being pulled? And so for what I mean by that is there's often times when you just have to push out a new tool for various reasons. There could be your old, uh, technology is now end of life and you have to move to a new technology, uh, as an example. And so you're pushing that out. You might have some resistance from the organization for that technology, but if, if your organization is pulling it, if they want that technology and they're asking for it, that's a huge signal of success. And so, um, with ambient, There was a great hole, a signal where after our pilot, we had other clinicians that were asking for it. Matter of fact, we have a we have a wait list right now for clinicians who still want it even after our go live and production rollout. Uh, and we're just waiting to see if we could, uh, if we can add more physicians here in the future. Um, but, uh, the, uh, the fact that physicians are asking for it is, uh, is a great signal. There's also metrics that we look at too. So, uh, one thing that's called pajama time. And, uh, that's how many physicians are working after hours, either working from home, trying to document, uh, that is for the physicians that have these tools noticeably lower. And so going down, which is great. There's time and notes too. So, um, how much time a physician spends in the note documenting, uh, for our ambient providers is much lower than physicians that are not using it. And so that's a great metric too. That could translate directly into access. And so looking, looking at physician acceptance. Acceptance for ambient technology is great. But if we can move that into does this provide better access for our kids? That's the metric that we really want to use. And so I, we don't have direct, uh, linkage to that metric yet to say, yes, we can see more patients because it's very complex. There's other, there's other, uh, reasons that you may not see more patients than just ambient technology making it easier to document, but it certainly is not hurting. And so this is one barrier that we can remove now to provide more access to kids. And, and that's, that's one of the most important things.
00:16:22 Megan Antonelli: What about, I mean, in terms of that documentation and the billing and the, you know, sort of coding pieces of that as it goes upstream. Are you seeing any metrics around, um, you know, sort of coding and revenue recovery and that and that sort of thing? Or is this primarily, um, around the physician and kind of the assist part of it.
00:16:43 Joe Egan: It's primarily around the assist, but there is anecdotal and this is too early to tell yet. But one, one thing we are hopeful of is that the ambient technology is going to make it easier for rev cycle to close the loop.
00:16:59 Speaker 1: You're listening to digital health talks. When we return, we'll continue our discussion on how technology is revolutionizing healthcare delivery. Stay with us to hear more insights on creating sustainable, patient centered digital health solutions.
00:17:17 Joe Egan: For example, one thing that happens is if you, uh, put in codes and now this goes to your payer to say these are the charges for this particular encounter. Payers are looking for the documentation as evidence that yes, those are things that happen. And in the past, if a physician did not provide that evidence in the note, then you could have denials, more denials. And so then you have to go back and then look at that and then provide that evidence back to the payer. And anecdotally, what we are seeing is better documentation in the note that justifies those charges and so less denials. That's the hope is we're going to be able to actually watch this and, and watch denials. First time denials go down because ambient technology is providing better evidence in the document, in the notes.
00:18:08 Megan Antonelli: And then I have this hope that eventually the data is there, the denials happen. Then they, they all, you know, they the appeals happen, the process happens. And it happens so much that it becomes reductive and then it stops happening all together. Right? Is that that's that's my vision for all of this. Is that the battle of the bots, uh, happens. And then, you know, in the end we realize, well, that was all silly, and we should just stop doing that and give people the care that they want when they need it.
00:18:34 Joe Egan: Exactly.
00:18:35 Megan Antonelli: Right. That's, that's the vision. That's the hope. And, you know, it will require those three levels of, of AI to be working together across both clinical and, and the financial systems. But, you know, things are moving so fast. I think we're getting there. Um, you know, faster. So when you, you talked a little bit about the other tools in terms of that, that inform piece, um, the data analytics, the epic, uh, Microsoft fabric. Tell us a little bit about that in terms of, um, you know, the population level data and kind of what you're seeing there, um, and any, any gems that have come out of that usage.
00:19:10 Joe Egan: Sure. Um, I don't want to overstate our current maturity when it comes to those types of tools. Uh, we do, for example, have epic cosmos as one of the tools that we have in place and, uh, the, the goal for those types of tools is, let's say, for example, let's say you have a rare pediatric disease. Uh, a children's hospital often does not have enough cases to create that reliable evidence to say, this is the treatment that's standard for this type of rare disease. And cosmos gives clinicians access to a much larger de-identified population so they can find those similar patients and patterns. This is something that's new to Valley Children's that we just implemented, uh, recently. But that's the goal is to provide that type of evidence to our patients so they can, uh, it can help them in that rare pediatric disease, uh, process. And so, um, cosmos is one of those tools. Um, we do have other reporting tools that we have here in, uh, in valley children's data landscape, such as slicer dicer. I mentioned, uh, Microsoft fabric that is a current implementation. So we are moving away from our old data warehousing technologies to Microsoft fabric and connecting our separate and disparate data systems into Microsoft fabric, because this will allow us to have even additional tools to be able to do some of these things, like, uh, APIs for artificial intelligence that we can use natively from Microsoft fabric data science tools that we did not have in the past that we can start using here in the future. Uh, it's new. It's a breaking path for us, but we're excited about that direction. So we can give a higher level of, of data, um, tools and resources to not only physicians, but to all of our workforce members.
00:21:06 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think that the rare disease piece, there's so much and we talk about this a lot in terms of, you know, AI being able to enable some things that the resources weren't there to do before. And again, when you think of the data and the pool and the, you know, the access to it and the ability to do the analysis without necessarily investing millions and millions in the research to do it. That identification. I mean, we talked a little bit about Judy Faulkner's recent interview, and she talked about how much patient data is actually in, you know, the epic system. Now, we all know some problems with the connectivity and what you can truly access and all of that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, the promise is there, the potential is there. And, and I think for pediatrics in particular, where one, clinical trials are tough and two, data pool is smaller, um, you know, that doing that kind of research is hard. So tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of your experience specific to pediatrics, you know, with AI development and kind of what you're, what you're working on and how you're solving for that.
00:22:10 Joe Egan: It's an interesting question because when it comes to pediatrics, um, AI or other technologies. Uh, a child's not simply a smaller adult, right? An adult, uh, trained AI model cannot be assumed to work safely in pediatrics, just like other things like imaging. For example, you might have imaging systems that have, uh, artificial intelligence and other technologies to be able to help a radiologist spot things. And those things are typically tuned for adults. And so it's always been a struggle in, uh, pediatrics to get these tools to be at the cutting edge. I know I keep saying cutting edge, but, uh, uh, it's always been a struggle. And so, uh, we're hoping that these types of technologies will help us address that problem through collaboration and shared de-identified data sets and pediatric specific validation and ongoing lots of different ways that, uh, this will help us specifically at Valley Children's in the future.
00:23:16 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, I do think that pediatric health systems are some of the more collaborative health systems in the country because of that, right? You know, they kind of often stand alone in their market and then they collaborate across the markets, um, very well. So that's, you know, standing on the shoulders of others and letting a few, you know, bleeding edge versus cutting edge. It's all, you know, it's good to be, um, striving for the edge and, and trying to kind of push it forward. And it's clear you guys are doing that really well. I mean, you talked a little bit about, you know, kind of the culture and the work, you know, and I think that's something we hear often is, you know, the technology is there. The work is in kind of the implementation and bringing the change. And while ambient has been one of those things that, you know, the speed to adoption and the desire to adopt is, is there, um, you know, it's not always and, and getting that culture to build. And I think when we think about where the EHR came in and perhaps was not a pull or it was. Yeah. No, it was it was a tech we had to push right from, from the very levels of the, you know, top layers of the government to push it. Right. Um, that there's this, you know, it's changing now, but that doesn't mean the organization is there to kind of support all of that. So talk a little bit about what you guys have done around that to build the culture. Um, and, you know, and to, you know, make sure things, if something breaks, if something doesn't go, you know, that that gets, that gets fixed too.
00:24:45 Joe Egan: Sure. So I'll go back to something I think I said, which is it shouldn't own the process, especially the technology discipline. I should own the security and architecture and integration. Uh, the reliability be part of the governance. But I believe that operational leaders need to own that workflow and adoption and outcome, uh, for that to be, uh, really integrated and accepted into the organization. And that's something that we have really built into our governance processes here at Valley Children's. We have four main technology governance groups information security technology and business systems, EMR and clinical systems, and then data governance. And so all of those are very, very important. But most most importantly is the membership in those governance groups or outside of it. They're outside of technology, and we strive on making sure that those members understand that they own these technologies and these workflows and have to make decisions. Uh, I don't know if this is a good example, but I always say it is like the mechanic and you own the car. Um, we're not going to tell you where to drive it, but we're definitely going to tell you you shouldn't drive one hundred miles an hour on a dirt road and you shouldn't take your car there. And we need to be partners, but it shouldn't be telling you what to do with this technology and when to use it. That needs to be a partnership. And so, uh, very important. We, uh, we do own project management. Uh, we do own implementations. Uh, but when it comes to care transformation and innovation, uh, that is definitely a partnership. I'll give you one example, uh, that we're going through right now. It's a small example, but it's our intranet. So we have an intranet, uh, that we call George Page. And so George is our mascot for Valley Children's Hospital. It's a giraffe. And the reason is I don't know if you know this or not, but giraffes are the, the largest mammal that have the largest hearts in, uh, from any mammal perspective. And so, uh, we, uh, that's a perfect example of our mascot because we want to have the largest hearts for our, our kids. And so George, the draft is our mascot. And so our intranet page is called The George Page, and we are going through a pretty significant upgrade and moving the George Page to a cloud services and Microsoft, uh, SharePoint three sixty five will be that, that platform and part of that project was bringing, uh, the workforce members and organizational leaders outside of it into this saying, look, you need to tell us how we're going to do this and how it's going to work properly and how you want to use this because it is not it is not an IT system. We even implemented a governance system on change management during this process, during this project, to make sure that organizational leaders are going to, in the future after implementation, make decisions on changes to the intranet. Page two. It's a small thing, but it's something that we try to do for any technology. Um, when for the organization.
00:28:03 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I love the analogy, I'm big on analogies. But, you know, and I think the analogy of kind of changing the tires as the car is driving has always been that it, you know, leader analogy, but the, the one of being the mechanic and the organization is the car owner is, is huge. And then don't forget on security not to pick up any hitchhikers, right. But that yeah, yeah, it's good, but it's, I mean, I think, and, and, and it applies to any tech deployment across the organization, you know, and I think that's a huge piece of it. And, you know, and I've always, as we've kind of brought the community of healthcare IT leaders together, there's so much, you know, there was a time where it did feel, you know, kind of separate and, and it was like, we're building these things and it was separate. But now that it in any functional organization really, um, you know, they're part, they're part of the heart and soul of, of that org. So it's great to hear that. That's how it is there at Valley Children's as well. And I love I love George the Giraffe. That's amazing. Um, so we have speaking of good things, great things. Uh, we have a segment called five Good things. And so we like to always end on kind of the positive and, and, you know, kind of what we're most excited about. And we've talked a lot about good things already. But tell us a little bit about, you know, as you look ahead, what's, you know, kind of most exciting to you right now about kind of the tech that you're working on and how it's impacting the patients and the care that you guys are giving.
00:29:36 Joe Egan: That is a very hard question to answer because you're picking just five good things. And there's so much change right now in healthcare technology that, uh, that's hard to do. I mean, ambient and AI is obviously at the top because you're returning time to clinicians and families and that turns right back into access. And so I think that would be number one on my list. Uh, it's number one on everybody's list though, right now. But, uh, let's see here. Uh, I would say, um, looking at the future of, uh, Agentic technologies, uh, how can it support scheduling navigation and access is right up there too. Uh, I'm trying to stay away from AI, though, to see if we can talk about other things, but I mean, there's no way to not put that on the list because there's so much potential there. There's, there's a lot of risk with agentic in healthcare. There's going to be, I envision there's going to be a lot of policy and governance that, um, we're going to have to think about from a state and federal perspective to, uh, that we just don't even know yet. Um, but I think it's inevitable that that's going to help in a big way. Um, I would say, um, our cosmos implementation and shared pediatric data is right up there too. That's new for us. Um, but I can see, big improvements to the care process by using these tools more. Getting these tools more integrated into our core processes here at Valley Children's and then expanding on them in the future when they can connect to other things, such as using artificial intelligence to help with it. Um, we just went live with Epic Aura two, and we're pushing big on our genomics and precision medicine and integrating it into the everyday care. And so I would, uh, for Valley Children's, I would say that's probably right up there too on one of my five good things, at least for Valley Children's.
00:31:36 Megan Antonelli: And that's amazing that, you know, I'll be honest, we don't actually make everybody come up with five. The segment is five. But since you were going, I was letting you go. But you know, that's amazing. I think I think that was even five. So um.
00:31:50 Joe Egan: Okay.
00:31:50 Megan Antonelli: Good stuff. And I think it is, um, it's really exciting to see. And that last one in particular, you know, if you think about how long we've been sort of talking about, you know, the personalized medicine and genomics and really using that in care at the bedside and to, to know that that's sort of on the horizon finally, is great news, particularly when it comes to pediatrics. Um, so that's, that's exciting stuff. So, um, you know, Joe, so good to hear all, all the work you guys are doing. Tell our audience a little bit about the best way to connect follow up, learn more.
00:32:24 Joe Egan: Um, with me personally, the best way to connect, you can always email me at j at valley children's dot org. Check out my LinkedIn. I've got my personal email up there too.
00:32:35 Megan Antonelli: Great, and you're on LinkedIn, and I know you guys are like, you guys are a chime. Most wires, you must go to chime. Do you go to some of the annual meetings to, um, to, for people to hear and, and, uh, learn from what you're doing.
00:32:49 Joe Egan: Yes. And we'll be at epic, um, this year too. So if you're there, um, hit me up and we can say hi. Um, but chime is one of my major, uh, annual, um, uh, conferences that I try to make because there's so many more IT leaders there. Uh, it's very, very valuable. Um, and actually that's, that's something that I've noticed recently is it seems like the industry leaders for technology are getting together more too, and having more group think. And which if we go back to the five good things, that is a great thing. And that's been a change that I've seen over the last few years, is all of this collaboration that's happening between healthcare entities. And it's invaluable to me. And so if I was going to recommend to anybody, uh, what do we need to be doing as a, as a industry together? It's continuing that so we can all learn from each other. I, I just can't tell you how much that, um, it has been valuable to Valley Children's and me personally learning from others, uh, in, In situations such as this, actually from your podcasts and from, uh, other, uh, other areas where people are sharing information. It's, it's a great thing.
00:34:05 Megan Antonelli: Well, I love that I didn't even pay him to say that folks. Um, but that that's the best good thing we've had in a while. Um, I think, and I agree, especially here in California, I think there's been a lot of momentum picking up, uh, you know, and chime doing some of their smaller events, uh, you know, has been a great, a great way for us to kind of all get together. I'm super involved in the SoCal group and they do some great meetings here, um, as well. So hopefully we can get you down from the Central Valley for that or we'll go up, go up there for, for some of it, I think actually Fresno is still in the southern Cal region versus the northern Cal. But you know, either one.
00:34:43 Joe Egan: Is on who you ask.
00:34:43 Megan Antonelli: But yeah, right. Either way, great, great events. Um, and great talking to you. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed it. And I hope to see you soon at at an upcoming show.
00:34:55 Joe Egan: Pleasure. Thank you very much.
00:34:57 Megan Antonelli: Absolutely. To our audience, you know, thanks so much for joining us today. What Joe is building at Valley Children's is exactly the kind of work this show exists to surface three layers of AI outcomes that outperform the industry, and a mission that starts with the kids and George, George the giraffe's heart, uh, and the kids in Madera County getting the same standard of care as anyone else in the in this country. It's not a pilot. It is the model. If this conversation got you thinking, that is the whole point. Share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe to Digital Health Talks. Follow us on YouTube at Health Impact Live and visit health impact dot com. I'm Megan Antonelli, CEO of Health Impact Live, and this is Digital health Talks. Let's keep fixing health care one conversation at a time.
00:35:41 Outro: Thank you for joining us on Digital Health Talks, where we explore the intersection of health care and technology with leaders who are transforming patient care This episode was brought to you by our valued program partners. Heidi, the AI care partner built for every moment of the clinical day. Natera. Advancing. Contactless. Vital signs. Monitoring. Sailpoint. Securing healthcare identity management and access. Governance. Your engagement helps drive the future of healthcare innovation. Subscribe to digital health Talks on your preferred podcast platform. Share these insights with your network and follow us on LinkedIn for exclusive content and updates. Ready to connect with healthcare technology leaders in person? Join us at the next Health Impact event. Visit Health Impact live dot com for dates and registration. Until next time. This is Digital Health talks where change makers come together to fix healthcare.