Business as Usual: Jason James, Net Health CIO

So good afternoon, everyone. This is Audrey Roussel and President and CEO, the Pittsburgh Technology Council, very excited as I am every day on the people who we get a chance to talk to. And today is no exception. In a moment, I will introduce our guests who's the chief information officer for net health, it'll be very cool to talk about net health, and all the changes that they've actually gone through in the growth over the years. So I want to give a shout out to Huntington bank on thank them for believing in us in the work that they do across the entire community both as, as a lender and the array of services that they provide. They have been a leading partner of ours and have just taken a chance on a lot of the experiments that we've run. And I guess in the year of doing ba us business as usual, it's probably not an experiment at this point. But they've been with us at every leg of the journey. 40 by 80. That's the wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech Council. And it is our charitable organization. It's for the longitude and latitude of Pittsburgh. And our focus is on entrepreneurship, as well as workforce development. And soon you're going to hear more about apprenticeships. So a couple of things. We've put your mics on mute, and you're gonna have a chance to chat with our guests, and ask some questions. But this isn't a time to sell your wares. This is a time to just focus on our guest. And I'm now thrilled to introduce Jason James. I also have Jonathan kersting. Here, he is the Vice President of all thing marketing, and he will keep his eye on the chat. And he is our master storyteller. So I'm bringing to the forefront now Jason James was told me that goes by JJ. So appreciate that. In case you think I'm doing that without his permission, I have his permission to be to call him JJ. So thank you, JJ. And thank you for joining us. You're joining us from Atlanta, he splits his time in Pittsburgh, but he essentially is part of the executive leadership team at net health. And there, they've been virtual for quite a while. So I just so JJ, how are you? First of all, how are you?

I'm good. I mean, as good as we can be? I mean, we've been living in a year of not really working from home but living at work.

Ah, that's a good way. So you get no break. Great. Is that what's happening? Well, yeah,

at any moment, you could hear my two year old start banging on my door, you know, I've got very noisy co worker. So in between my two year old and my three month old, you may hear some noise in the background.

Right. So is there any line in HR that you have a direct pipeline to

say does my wife is former HR, I have been filing complaints for like a year now and I don't know where they're going.

Okay, it sounds like you're not successful, but it sounds like you're a good parent. So I think it's great that you're home. And it's okay, if we get interrupted Just so you know, it's okay. So, so JJ, talk about yourself, what's been your journey? How did you land in the role that you've been in? Just just sort of gonna rapid fire? Tell us? Sure. So

let me give you a quick background. So I every job I've ever had been in it. So I live in Atlanta. I grew up about two hours southeast of here in a very small town called opal, like Alabama, known for textile mills. And so when I was 15, and everybody was working in grocery stores or working in the mill, I was laying out my antastic networks and doing PC upgrades. And did that for a few years, bought a company I was working for when I was in college, eventually moved to Atlanta, did the startup scene had a couple of exits. Most of my last few jobs have been because of my network, you know, your network becomes part of your network. And so through my network, I landed a role at Optima healthcare in Atlanta was headquartered in Florida as a CIO. And then we were acquired by net health out of Pittsburgh, and the board and the CEO and the executives had the wherewithal to ask me if I would stay on and so I love it. I love Pittsburgh, it's a great city. In fact, pre pandemic, I was looking at buying a place and then the world changed roughly a year ago. But it's a great organization. You know, what we've been focused on is not only reuniting caregivers where they're calling but you know, in a way building a culture we're extremely proud of. Well, so that's really cool. Wait, you have a whole month old baby. I have a she just turned three months and so I came back from paid parental leave at the beginning of the year, so I took off almost two months, net health leaves and paid parental leave. I'm a big proponent in men taking a larger role in the upbringing of their children, and it's So I wanted to make an example of it. And if you know, it proves my succession planning work. But it also proved that men can do it. What I wanted to break was the stigma of men taking parental leave, you know, if you go back to my late father, he wasn't in the delivery room when I was born, his generation didn't do that. But now if a father didn't do that, they would be almost ostracized. And so what I wanted to do was to sort of break that stigma, men should be at home, helping their partner as much as possible. And by the way, executives can do it. So I've been pushing more and more CIOs to be cultural leaders and walk in their CEOs office and saying, hey, it's time we had paid parental leave.

That's great. That's great. Wait, so did you have a COVID? Baby?

Yeah. And it was it was one of those things, it became, we found out right when COVID hit and it really changed health care, obviously. But it changed health care for those actually having children because I couldn't be in the room with my wife when she had the ultrasounds. Luckily, I had done that with my first daughter. But it really changed that. And when she was born, I could be in the room. But you know, with COVID, everything going on, we had a neighbor, watch my two year old. So I stayed with my wife and my newborn for a day, and then I had to leave the hospital, I wasn't allowed back in until it's time to pick them up. So you know, you have to adapt. And so it's it's one of those things. It's, it was several months before even our parents saw our new daughter.

Wow, great story, and great. And that's sort of in alignment with with what we know about net health in terms of their culture, and how they've embraced, you know, just even the pillows in Pittsburgh in terms of their commitment to a supportive and innovative culture. So that's great. So let's talk about net health. For people who aren't, you know, don't know anything about net health or just reset the table. So your

stand what is net health? Sure, we're a SaaS provider that focuses on the entire continuum of care. That's everything from hospital to home. So we have solutions in skilled nursing facilities, wound care, hospice, home health, so we cover all those aspects. And so in doing so, we're we're in every bit of healthcare, and again, that goes from the hospital to, to how people get here in their home. And so it's, you know, and that's changed a lot don't COVID. You know, if you think about, you know, how people could get care, you know, that it didn't stop, right? How they got care how a patient can be treated may have changed, but people still have wounds, right, that had to be taken care of people were still in skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes, it still had to be cared for. In a way, we may not have been frontline workers, but we were empowering those frontline workers to do their job. And it was something we were we're extremely proud to do.

And so what about some observations during COVID? Are there? I mean, that with you, essentially having front row seat to be issues that, you know, people are grappling with, even now? Yeah, it's,

it's so stressful for healthcare workers. I mean, so if you think about it, their job was in high demand high stress to begin with, but now they're facing a real threat and going in, that could be a risk to their life, many organizations didn't have adequate PP when it first began. But yet, they were still caring for patients that were obviously contagious, it is a pandemic, and trying to not only, you know, take care of patients that were getting very sick and dying, and then at the same time, trying to balance a home life, right. And, you know, their kids being sent home and trying to balance with how do you homeschool a child or young children when at the same time, you're still afraid of Am I going to pick this up and bring it back home? And so what we found is that healthcare is under a tremendous amount of stress was already a stringed industry to begin with. But you couple that with pandemic and then it takes a toll on a lot of organizations, and a lot of people are service organizations.

Well, what talk a little bit about the culture, you mentioned just a little bit about, you know, obviously, personally, and leave that that you had a chance to take. We'll talk about the culture, I mean, sure. So you're seeing so many things up front,

right. Now when you say you mean our culture or the culture facing your culture

and how you address that because yeah, the support and support

so obviously, what we had to do was as people are serving these industries, we had to serve our own people. And so we created these virtual water coolers, you know, if you would have been addicted Traditional office you will bond over connections that have nothing to do with work, right? So it might be barbecue, or it might be your pet or it might be your kids. We wanted to simulate that kind of environment, what we realized was when people weren't in an office, they still needed a cat. And so we created these virtual channels that allowed people to connect. And so we also had events during the day, you know, that made sure people understood that, hey, productivity is extremely high. How do we get people engaged? How do we make sure they're engaged? How do we give them a break? And so it we had people, you know, we were lucky, we had somebody on staff that was a certified burden steward. And so she taught a class on bourbon. And then I taught a class on barbecue. And so the idea is, how do we get people to connect if they were in an office over shared mutual passion that has nothing to do with work? And that's one thing, what it ultimately led to was more and more discussions. And so we didn't shy away from those discussions. Some of those discussions that arose were what happens when, you know, people wanted to talk about the George George Floridian stand and Black Lives Matter. And we didn't shy away from that, in fact, we I was lucky enough to moderate a panel, a fireside chat between our members of color, and people were allowed to bring in their families and employees and really discuss what does that mean? What does it mean to be a person of color in America today? And so what we find is, as we evolved, you know, we're creating a much larger table to make sure people are represented within the organization, you know,

the role of health IT and the role of this work, you know, the timeliness of it, and the importance of it, you know, obviously can't be understated. But, you know, we talked to people in government, we talk to our colleagues that are in health care, it's become so obvious, you know, that the that the medical billing and compliance software, the shortcomings, Walt's played such a substantial role in the dispersal of you know, even vaccines, right? So has net health created a COVID related solution or software to help your client during the past year,

so part of our jilani platform allows healthcare individuals to schedule vaccine distribution, right, that's important, how are you getting people and hours are focused internally meaning within those organizations, not necessarily for the public, but for those organizations? Like if you were running a very large hospital chain, how do you make sure you're coordinating your staff with the ability to get a vaccine so they can feel more protected as they face a growing number of infections in America?

Well, you know, Pittsburgh, we're gonna drag on Pittsburgh for a little bit. And since you're

sure it's a great city, yes,

it is a great city, and we're really fast becoming sort of the epicenter of both AI and health IT. And, you know, obviously, net health has, it has a big piece of that, from your perspective, you know, what does the future of AI look like in terms of capacity in terms of solving healthcare challenges?

You know, you have to look what what's going on in the industry. And I'm going to go so far as to leave Pittsburgh and end up in Japan and look at what's happening at Showa University and the way they're able to use AI to do early detection of colorectal cancer, you're talking to almost five years ahead of what you would find within a traditional physician setting. And the reason of that is it's it's AI's greatest strength is pattern recognition. By the way, the same thing humans are great at right? One of the things we excel at is pattern recognition. Well, ai takes human pattern recognition, and really amplifies that. And so when you talk about predictive care, right, it's been able to pick up my newsha, that may be changing prior to even a physician seeing and so what they're doing there is again, being able to pick up early signs of cancer long before traditional physician would see it, what we're seeing in the United States. And what we're going to see in healthcare it is that more and more will be brought to bear. If you look at what we're doing in terms of wound care, the ability net health takes the ability to be able to measure a wound to look at a wound, find depth, find color changes, do predictive analytics in order to know what is the care of the patient, how that will change how that will impact them. You know, if we fast forward about a decade, what we're going to find in the more progressive health care centers is that AI is going to be as commonplace as a stethoscope was for the last 150 years, right. And we need it because of the complexity of diseases the complexity of, of how we treat the options. We have to treat patients. All. And so if we look at AI, it's our best resource in order to be able to correlate all that data to provide a better patient outcome.

So now let's look about look at your role, you know, Chief Information Officer. And those roles have changed over time. It depends upon the organization. And it seems like you're an executive level role. So what you know what talk about your role, talk about the importance, talk about the things that are your priorities, right now, and maybe how it's changed over time, right? So

if you if you look at a CIO, of all great CIOs are evolving into transformational CIOs the ability to look at the technology, look at the business and grow that. And that's been really, you know, for the last two or three years, our focus, right transformational CIO, I believe pandemic has created the cultural change agent in the CIO. You know, if you look at what we've been able to do, you know, if you've been able to work for the last year, you need to go thank your CIO, you need to go thank your IT team, right. If we'd go back a decade, 20 years ago, what would the economic impact have been, but what we find as people work more and more remotely, there is a need to connect with them. And a much deeper sense in some of that's not being driven by HR. It's not being driven by the operations. It's being driven by the CIO. And it's not only having tools in place, but looking at tools and looking at people work and removing friction, looking at tools that allow them better connectivity, not only with the business, but with each other. Right. You know, it's it's my hope there's this humanization of it, right? That we look at it and realize at the end of that packet, is our most important asset. And that's people, right. And so that means we have to look at technology, that's a lot easier to use, you know, we're on a platform I'm sending in Atlanta you're sending in Pittsburgh, the reason we're able to do this is because zoom has created this amazingly frictionless audio visual aid, you know, how often have we worked, walked into a conference room? You know, and even me with my three degrees and go, Why the hell is so complicated? Why can't I get connected to this? Right? I think when we eventually return into an office, those that do, I think we're going to start demanding more frictionless technologies. How often do you lean over while you're working? And ask Alexa, when she might go off a minute to play your yacht rock? Right? You know, or for me, maybe something a little more Jimmy Buffett. And so somebody asked a question earlier? Where are those colorful things? Those are geeky Tiki. So aside from barbecue have a big Tiki enthusiast. So but the idea is all this technology sort of incorporates into itself, right? We have to look at tools and how humans are using it, especially at the health care level, right? How often have you gone into health care center, and they make you fill out a form? And you know, I had a health care provider about 18 months ago, she said, Well, can I fax you some information? I said, Well, I don't get faxes where I live. And she goes, Well, where do you live? I said, the 21st century, I said, you can either send it through an app or email me, but I don't take it back. So again, I think this role as the cultural change agent, coming from the Office of CEO is going to expand again, it starts with looking at frictionless technology. But it also comes with realizing we're trying to empower people to do their best, right?

Well, you know, let's, let's talk about the workforce, like the office going back to work, right? numbers, hopefully declining, the increase of vaccines, etc. What do you think, the future of the offices?

Yeah, I believe Well, first of all, let's let's let's be very transparent, pre pandemic, we had about a dozen offices in the United States. With Pittsburgh being our headquarters, Pittsburgh will continue to be our headquarters, we have shed almost a dozen offices. Me Myself, I've given up a permanent corner office for permanent home office. Now, that doesn't mean I won't travel more and more, but the idea is, the Office for a lot of organizations will be less relevant. I think there'll be millions of Americans that never return to an office Monday through Friday, nine to five, the traditional office hours are over a traditional office for a lot of people are over. That doesn't mean people won't be go in. That doesn't mean they won't go in from time to time. But let me tell you for all the leaders out there, if you think everybody wants to be in your office Monday through Friday, nine to five, those days are done. And I see it all the time. I sit on a lot of national CIO advisory boards, and it's definitely demographic driven. The CIOs I see that are over 50 they're like we need to go in now. And those that are under 50 years like I think there's going to be a flexibility I think people are at times are going to want to go in you know, but at times other people won't How you connect with people will matter more, more so than four walls? Now the offices that are left have to be like I talked about a lot more frictionless, right? Can you easily collaborate? Can you get to give people reason to go? And you know, I'm sitting in my home office looking at four screens right now. Right? You know, I, you know, I'm highly productive. That doesn't mean I don't want to see people. That doesn't mean I don't want to connect with people. But there'll be a large portion of people that they know that that's not their way of life. And for those that think it can be in your all your people have to be in there every day. Well, let me tell you, I'll come after your parent all day long. Because I don't really care where they live. I want to care about the work they do.

There's a quick question from Eric King Jonathan, if you just want to grab that. And then I want to,

he's got two here, and they're really good ones. Great to see. JJ, thanks for being part of the show today. So Eric wants to know, where's your AI capability being developed and implemented as it externally contracted? Or do you have competency located in house?

Great question. We have competency in house we've, we have data scientists, we've expanded data scientists, we've acquired companies in other areas, we acquired a company called tissue analytics, which is now part of our platform. They were out of Baltimore. Ai, you know, we talked about earlier, Audrey talked about Pittsburgh is an epicenter, you look at what's happening at Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh will continue to grow and continue to be vital. So certain areas you look at, that are, you know, defined by what they do. If you look at Cloud, you know, Seattle is a big player. If you look at FinTech, Atlanta's a big player, if you look at AI, Pittsburgh is the player. And so more and more organizations are going to grow out of that. If they don't have a presence in Pittsburgh, they'll still have probably talent in Pittsburgh, right. And Carnegie Mellon and the surrounding, you know, universities have been driving that. And so for Lucky for us, we have an in house. But when we say in house, they might be throughout America, and not necessarily located in one geography.

Very cool. And he's a kind of a follow up to your comments about humanizing it, which I think is really important to talk about. What's new, do you have any soft skills staff to work on the critical social sides? Yeah, I in analytics.

So obviously, that's where it becomes important in so not to pick on data scientists, right? Let's pick on all of it all technical people, a lot of them got into technology, because they weren't all that great with people. That's not true anymore. Right? It may have early, you know, there were plenty of Linux admins I worked with and back in the day that lived in the basement played d&d all the time, no shame in that rank. But what we're finding is there's a lot more people getting out of that mode and understanding in order to understand data, you have to understand people, if you look at what a lot of organizations are hiring, right, they're hiring anthropologist, you know, I'm fortunate my master's is in it. But my undergrad is in anthropology, you know, it's the study of people and culture and how they use tools. What we're going to have to do with our data sciences, unfortunately, is get them with people, right, they have to understand what they're doing. In a healthcare setting, you have to understand the patient, right? All of us have had an experience with a doctor where their bedside manner was awful, right? What did that mean? That means you weren't as comfortable with your doctor as possible. That means you weren't comfortable communicating with them? Well, guess what data scientists guess what it people, your client is people and you're going to have to connect with them. What we will find, though, is that there will be these intermediaries, there'll be people that just touched data, right? And there might be people that act almost as a data psychologist that goes in between teams and help them understand people better. But again, when we talk about this humanization of it, at the end of the day, we're still serving people, and we have to have a better understanding. I think when you look at the pandemic, one of the greatest things that happened with it, it was the largest push for digital transformation in the world, and in some ways, a cultural transformation. So I do think we're gonna see more soft skills. The biggest soft skill I tell leaders a need right now is flexibility. Stuff happens, right? You know, at any point, my two year old could bounce in the door and start throwing stuff off my desk. That's what happens right? But we also have to understand that, you know, we have to communicate, we have to find how we communicate the other, the other you know, not that this where this question lies, but one of the other positive aspects I see about this remote workforce and this working from home is it's given a level playing field to those with disabilities. If you are in a wheelchair, if you had some form of challenge where it makes it hard to get in and out of the house. That's talent you can go after right now. Right? If you have this kind of progressive organization where you don't require people to come in, start looking at diversity initiatives, so you can bring in that kind of talent, because when we have a more representative workforce, it gets us closer to the humanization of it, and also gets us closer to understanding each other.

So Are you hiring?

Me? Yeah, yeah, my job postings, you know, we've, we continue to hire, go to our website, the vast, vast majority of the roles that we feel are throughout the United States, we still have a large presence and presence in Pittsburgh. We love people in Pittsburgh. But if there are people listening from outside of Pittsburgh, don't let that stop you.

That's great. So now I want to, as we wrap up, I want to talk about something that we talked about earlier, spring is right around the corner, right in less than three weeks. And I know it's warmer in Atlanta, where you are. So you've probably been doing this longer than we have people are going to be pulling off our our grill covers and getting our grills ready for summer. And my good friend, Patrick coletti. Hopefully he's on the call somewhere. He is on the call. I see him. You see him, okay. who founded he was one of the founders of net health claims that you are a world class. And I'm going to say this because I can't say it any other way. Bob, Bob, the queue expert, BBQ expert,

I am actually a Kansas City certified barbecue judge. I've judged in eight states in the District of Columbia, I do have a hobby that I judge barbecue, I'm what's called an egghead I'm a big proponent of the Big Green Egg, which is not only grill and smoker, it's it's versatile. But yeah, that's one of the hobbies because it's really the opposite of it. Right? You know, everything we do is about speed that will ruin barbecue, right? This idea, it's, it's, in a way, it's one of the original American intervention and inventions, obviously, you know, you know, so many cultures grill and cook meat slow, but American barbecue is very different. Right, you know, born out of the slave movement, it has roots, much like jazz and rock and roll, you know, born in the deep south and born in other parts of the country, but it is an American institution. You got to have hobbies other than what you do. And so it's sort of level sets and reminds me that I can't rush things, you know. And so it's fun.

So can you give us some helpful hints? Because I think I might want to have you back on the show, where we only talk about

pizza.

I think, you know, maybe we could, you know, watch you do that and give us some advice. So, what's your favorite? What's your favorite?

Oh, man, it's I'm a big, you know, growing up in Alabama and living in Georgia and traveling throughout America. I'm still big fan of Texas barbecue. If brisket is done? Well, it is one of the most fantastic cuts of meat out there. But you know, it's it's hard to do. You know, it's, it's one of those things that people constantly master and try to master. And really, it needs two things. It needs salt and pepper. The rest of it is just time. You know,

how long How long?

Well always depends on the weight. Right. But you know, you know, anything I'm doing in terms of brisket is generally about 12 to 14 hours.

12 to 14 hours. Yeah. In a smoker. Yeah. In a smoke. And then what about do you cook any fish?

Occasionally, I'll do a smoke fish dip. So when I was traveling more South Florida, they will do what's called a smoke fish dip. And they would smoke fish and then blended with, you know, sour cream and cream cheese and mayo and it makes a really great dip kind of thing. But

yeah. Okay, well, here, it's lunchtime. So I think you know, you've wet our palates. It's been thrilling to have you on a primer. I love to hear the net health culture continue to proliferate. And I love your reminder that it takes both parents to participate. And I'm glad to hear about your candor on addressing a lot of tough issues. So I think that that bodes well, for anyone who's interested in net health. Really appreciate the time that you've spent with us. Is there one other thing that Eric is trying to get in here? I'm speaking in that health culture or other C suite executives at net health reasonably AI and analytically literate?

Absolutely. You know, we believe that as we evolve the world organization, what we're actually evolving into is a predictive analytics organization, serving healthcare in order to do that AI, and analytics itself will be a strong pillar of what we do.

Well, JJ, you've been awesome. I can't thank you enough for being so candid with us. And so what do you think maybe we check back in and we do a BBQ 30 minutes.

I think once we're willing to travel, I think we can do it live as well. Right.

Ooh, you hear that? That? I'm loving that. That sounds like a plan. Well, I want to thank you for joining us. JJ, James. Jason James, also known as JJ, the Chief Information Officer at net health, from from Atlanta, really appreciate it. Stay safe. Enjoy your kids. We will be in touch with you. And tomorrow, same time, what do we have going on, Jonathan?

So we're continuing our conversation on all things artificial intelligence. We are welcoming Colonel David Bradshaw, who is the deputy director of the artificial intelligence task force with the army should be a really fun conversation.

It is it is. Thanks, JJ. Thanks, everyone. Stay safe.

Take care everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai