The growth of Interoperability connects the data of everyone in the healthcare ecosystem, while ensuring cybersecurity. Hear from Dr. Tim Pletcher of MiHIN.

In this episode, Brian Anderson interviews Dr. Tim Pletcher. He is the Executive Director of Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services, also known as MiHIN; the CEO of Bella Terra; the CEO of Interoperability Institute; and he is a visionary entrepreneur and a contemporary thinker in the field of healthcare IT.

Tim explains that he’s always loved being at the intersection of technology and what helps people.

“I've known all the way along that technology can make things better. And so I've always viewed my space as connecting the technology to what it is that needs to change or could change to make things better,” he says.

Tim explains how he crafted his own, unique major at the University of Michigan, before entering the workforce. As he graduated, he worked in computer networking with the U of M’s medical center. Later, he ran a predictive modeling advanced analytics group and helped Central Michigan University get into the data sharing space.

He then dives into his experiences at MiHIN, sharing how they’re striving to connect all the data of all people in the healthcare ecosystem—a concept known as interoperability—while ensuring the proper legal, technical, and cybersecurity controls are in place. MiHIN has now connected more than 1,400 pharmacies in Michigan and, recently, integrated with Great Lakes Health Connect, gaining access to their Longitudinal Health Record.

Tim and Brian discuss Interoperability Land, a simulation where people can practice with synthetic data using fake hospital EHRs, doctors, and health plan databases. Augusto and MiHIN often partner together for what’s called Interoperathan, a connectathon where programmers test applications within Interoperability Land—all in a safe and synthetic space.

The two men also explore various standards and the future of machine learning in the world of healthcare.

We thank Tim for his time on the Augusto Podcast and wish him the best of luck in all his endeavors!

Augusto HeathIT focuses on custom software design and development, cloud computing, and support solutions to enable our clients to realize their digital vision in Healthcare.

Do you manage health care data? Gerry Miller, CEO of Cloudticity, shares the story behind starting this cloud-based business and how it can help you.

In this episode, Brian Anderson interviews Gerry Miller, CEO of Cloudticity—a company dedicated to improving public health by helping medical providers and companies wrangle the cloud. They provide managed services focused on developing HIPAA compliant applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

A serial entrepreneur, Gerry was approached by Microsoft Consulting Services and asked to serve as practice manager for the Great Lakes district and, later, the chief technology officer for the Central U.S. region.

When Gerry left Microsoft, he spent several years helping companies scale and doing some angel investing before stumbling into Cloudticity.

At that time, there was a tremendous sea tide change happening in the healthcare industry. The HITECH Act had just been passed. The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, had just been passed, which forced a tremendous amount of investment in digitizing health data. And healthcare and technology had always been passions of his.

He and a friend decided to start a cloud-based company to help ingest large quantities of data at scale. In the early days of Cloudticity, they built the first patient portal ever on the cloud and the first health information exchange (HIE) on the cloud. They started getting noticed by AWS who sent business their way.

Gerry adds that the most important aspect of the cloud that his clients enjoy is agility. He says while it generally starts as a financial decision, it very quickly becomes a competitive differentiator for many of their clients, as they can move faster in the cloud.

In March of 2020, the state of New York was the hardest hit by COVID-19 in the country. Cloudticity helped them get an operational data lake with data flowing in six days, and that fed their contact tracing program, which is the largest civil project ever in the history of the state of New York. And six weeks later, they were the first state that entered green.

We thank Gerry Miller for his time on the Augusto Digital Insights podcast and wish him and Cloudticity the very best!

Hospitals are increasingly agreeing not to compete on clinical information, but to connect to a trusted health information network. Featuring George Bosnjak. 

In this episode, Brian Anderson interviews George Bosnjak, an industry guru in the world of Health IT. George is vice president of member development for Professional Credentials Exchange (ProCredEx), a small start-up focused on improving the clinical credentialing process. There, he helps connect the healthcare community in a trusted network and create innovative tools that, together, eliminate credentialing waste.

He shares about his previous experience with Great Lakes Health Connect—now part of the Michigan Health Information Network (MiHIN)—building a network on payer reimbursement models.

George then dives into the world of HINs, sharing how hospitals are increasingly agreeing not to compete on clinical information—but rather to connect to a trusted third party. He offers real examples of the way this works, pointing to Hurricane Harvey and COVID-19. Today, almost every HER connects to some type of exchange, making the process of gathering patient information at the point of service a much more technologically smooth experience for providers.

George explains how important it is to have access to the community record in emergency scenarios like this, when people are being seen in tents or parking lots or football fields.

He also looks to the future, analyzing the fine line between the helpfulness of sharing patient data versus the importance of keeping it safe and secure. On the positive side, he points to the ways it could make it easier to recruit patients for clinical trials.

George concludes by sharing what he’s working on at ProCredEx. He’s building the first-of-its-kind distributed ledger credentialing network, with blockchain enabled. He hopes this will help verify providers’ credentials and verifications much more quickly and efficiently—especially when they’re required to move around the country like in the current pandemic atmosphere.

We thank George for his time on the Augusto Podcast and wish him the best of luck on all his projects!