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!

How a former Emergency Room nurse and director formed an innovative, a la carte healthcare company called HealthBar. Featuring Nathan Baar.

In this episode, Brian Anderson interviews Nathan Baar, MHA, BSN, RN, CEN. Nathan began his medical career as a Registered Nurse at Metro Health and eventually served as Director of Emergency and Urgent Care Service.

He details his entrance into healthcare, sharing that his mom — a nurse’s aid — noticed his love for personal interaction and conversation. Nathan’s experience in the emergency department alerted him to the dysfunction that exists within healthcare: failed cases, chronic diseases, and the unmanaged health of individuals where the ER is used as an access point for basic needs.

These realizations led him, ultimately, to create HealthBar. The company provides healthcare services delivered by highly trained clinicians. They strive to provide timely, accessible, transparent, and affordable care to all clients.

HealthBar aims to counter common complaints such as, “I can’t get into my doctor for three months,” or “I don’t want to use health services because I’m worried about how much it’s going to cost me.” Instead, HealthBar provides price transparency and drive-thru accessibility through its a la carte offerings.

Nathan adds that the COVID-19 pandemic truly transformed how we interact as a society and how clinical care is provided. Many people, naturally, needed to use technology from their homes to receive diagnoses and care. He describes 2020 as the moment where everything clicked. While telehealth isn’t a catchall, it is an access point for a conversation, a check-in, or an opportunity to educate individuals.

He questions: “Why does healthcare have to be in person? Why do you have to get of your vehicle for a blood draw?” Nathan’s company removes complexities, turning it into a consumerist model — like ordering food online.

Nathan concludes by highlighting the importance of technology, saying, “You really can’t operate right now without being a sliver of a tech company, too.” At Augusto, we’re proud to work alongside Nathan and HealthBar on these innovative healthcare opportunities.

We thank Nathan for his time on the Augusto Podcast and wish him the best of luck with HealthBar!

What is the future of healthcare technology? In this episode of Augusto Digital Insights’ healthcare series, Brian Anderson interviews Dr. Kyle Hoedebecke, Medical Director of Oscar Health—the first health insurance company built around a full stack technology platform and a relentless focus on serving its members.

In this episode, Brian Anderson interviews Dr. Kyle Hoedebecke, Medical Director of Oscar Health—the first health insurance company built around a full stack technology platform and a relentless focus on serving its members. The company offers a unique virtual care experience from the comfort of your home, at work, or on-the-go—by video chat or phone. 

Kyle is also an angel investor and a mentor with a focus on healthcare technology, like wearables, AI, AR/VR, 3D-printing, bio-pharma, and more.

He didn’t take a traditional physician’s path, but rather started at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. From there, he was part of the lucky 1% of his class that got to go directly to medical school at the Uniformed Services University. Kyle specialized in family medicine, before traveling throughout about 120 countries. Along the way, he picked up 3 additional languages: German, Spanish, and Guarani—an indigenous language from Paraguay.

While in South Korea, Kyle earned master’s degrees in business administration, public administration, and telemedicine.

Now, at Oscar Health, he’s able to follow his passion of innovation within healthcare startups. The company calls itself half technology, half insurance. They provide free telemedicine to all Oscar members and a concierge service to help members process claims or get a specialty referral.

Kyle’s personal goal is to make our healthcare system better for everyone through technology and improved systems. So he has become an angel investor for health technology. He shares about a 3D printer for pharmaceuticals, calling it “a pharmacy from anywhere you want.” He believes this can be incredibly helpful for remote areas or during natural disasters.

Brian and Kyle also discuss a variety of wearable technology—like smartwatches and portable stethoscopes—that can facilitate healthcare in areas with too few physicians.

We’re grateful for Dr. Kyle Hoedebecke’s time on the Augusto Health IT podcast and wish him the best of luck in all his endeavors.

Andrew Heuerman, entrepreneur and CEO of The Patient Company, describes his journey into researching, analyzing, and building medical devices for the healthcare community.

In this episode, Brian Anderson interviews Andrew Heuerman, an entrepreneur and current CEO of The Patient Company, which has recently been in the news for raising $1 million in seed round funding.

Andrew’s interest in healthcare stems from his parents’ occupations, and he quickly developed a passion for small business startups, as well. Three years into his undergraduate education in pre-med, he discovered he preferred the business side of healthcare over being a practicing clinician.

As he pursued these new interests, he wandered into some product development and business classes—eventually landing an internship (and later, a job) with West Michigan-based Spectrum Health. 

Andrew credits the talented people he was surrounded by at Spectrum for providing learning and experimental opportunities. While at Spectrum, he was part of a team that vetted 2,000+ medical device and product ideas each year from staff.

He learned to ask important questions about cost of development and pathway to market. Having thousands of clinicians at his team’s hands also provided a fantastic testing ground to explore exciting new product ideas.

Andrew continues on to discuss the process of convincing investors to support your projects, and how to use regional and national grants to supplement the costs.

He then shares how he transitioned to starting and leading The Patient Company. Initially, Andrew had been working with a lateral patient transfer idea that safely moves patients without injuring clinicians. Eventually, there was a clear path for Andrew to move the product forward outside of Spectrum Health—since healthcare systems can’t sell medical devices back into their own systems.

For those interested in learning more about Andrew’s work, visit thepatientcompany.com. There, clinicians can review the technology or reach out to ask more questions about SimPull, the lateral patient transfer device.