Empowering our Nation's Workforce and Compliance Programs

All right, TGIF, and welcome back to In Case You Missed It, our weekly roundup of what's hot in this market. Good to see you, Joe, after a whirlwind week and, uh, post-State of GovTech.

Yeah, it feels like we're getting, getting closer to the holidays day by day. So nice to see you.

We are. The airport was definitely an indicator of that on both sides of the country. So today we're going to dig into empowering our nation's workforce and compliance programs and We're going to really look at how new tech can improve the ways that the full ecosystem of, you know, licensed professionals, employers, regulators, educators, and partners all work together in this very important area. Now, we've brought on 2 executives from the leading workforce compliance management platform Propelus to help dig into this today. I want to invite to our virtual stage good friend and CEO of Propelus, Julie Walker, and CTO John Barnes. Hey, Julie. Hey, John.

Thanks so much for carving some time out to crash our little party on Friday.

Thank you so much, Dustin and Joe and everyone on our conversation today. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm the CEO at Propelus. I am dialing in from Nashville, Tennessee, and one of these days I'm gonna accidentally run into Dustin or Joe in an airport.

Or on Music Row in Nashville. So, you know, one of the two. You know, maybe first question, just to kind of dig in, I'd love to learn a little bit more, you know, your backstory. Tell us a little bit about Propelus. You know, Julie, let's start with you for this one.

Awesome. Thanks, Dustin. You know, Propelus, for those on the call or on the— here today that are a little bit less familiar with Propelus, there's good reason for that. We recently launched our brand a handful of months ago, really as a values-driven, product-led organization. We have— we're uniquely positioned across government, healthcare, and education. And really core to our mission is helping ensure our nation's workforce is competent, safer, healthier, and compliant to work more efficiently and effectively together. And as we walk through conversation today, we're excited to share a little bit more about how we're playing a bigger role and more importantly, focusing on elevating our workforce across our nation. Yeah, so that's a little bit about us. And again, it's a pleasure to be here. And last thing I'll say is really at the core of who we are as an organization is really focusing on safer communities. And that really keeps us grounded in how we're thinking about workforce compliance management.

Yeah, I love that mission orientation. We live and breathe that as well. John, how about you? I'd love to get to know you a little bit as well.

Certainly. No, really excited to be here. I'm dialing in from the Chicago area and glad to be back home, and maybe I'll run into you guys in the airport one day as well. So I lead technology and product for Propellus and really excited to be here. I've got a background, I've been a part of some different Bay Area companies, most recently Salesforce, and just really excited to take advantage of some of the great things that we've built and really take that technology to improve how governmental boards, professionals, and providers work together to have a safe, streamlined workforce. So excited to dig in and talk a little bit about what we're up to and some of the industry trends that are happening today.

Well, let's dig right in. Julie, you mentioned that unique position of government, education, healthcare, and looking at our nation's workforce. What are you seeing out there? What are the big challenges that are bubbling up? Why are those challenges happening? And what are some of the implications that you see for compliance programs?

Yeah, well, you know, first and foremost, it's complex as we think about our nation's workforce. Of course, there's a lot of movement and regulatory shifts. We're seeing a lot of administrative burden, especially if we're looking at healthcare workforce, for example. We're seeing a healthcare workforce crisis, frankly. You're seeing a shortage of healthcare professionals. Reaching alarming levels. Of course, less staff means, you know, care quality suffers. You know, layer on top of that a lot of the administrative burden, compliance requirements. This means further burnout, attrition, and so much more that keeping a pulse on this is so essential. You know, and as we think about our nation's workforce, there really is a compelling need for even further innovation of how do we truly streamline how they work better together across the broader complex ecosystem. So yeah, no, it's complex, probably the best way to put it. But I think there's opportunities to obviously help elevate our nation's workforce and demonstrate some improvements through connectivity.

And y'all have done some incredible work on that. I mean, I think, you know, you really have proven that you can use technology to revolutionize this process. And I'd love for you to maybe share a little bit more about how technology can kind of support that full, like, journey lifecycle of the professional to ensure that they're, you know, competent, safe, and compliant and clear to work.

Yeah, you're spot on. I mean, technology's role is, you know, obviously very essential ensuring that professionals are competent, that they are safe, that they are compliant to work. Um, you know, and, you know, from our humble perspective, putting the professionals at the center really understanding and embracing their journey, the many pressures and complicating factors, it's really upon technology to eliminate a lot of the unnecessary and avoidable administrative burden when and where possible. I think this also means that technology should enable the right connectivity to streamline how they work better together, how our professionals work better with their licensure boards, with agencies, with their employers, And again, their focus really being on leveraging technology for a happier, safer workforce and ultimately safeguarding our communities.

Yeah, I can appreciate your earlier comments on the healthcare shortage. My wife's a registered nurse and it's been interesting to follow the shortage. A decade ago, it was hard to find a job. Now it's plentiful opportunities if you're a registered nurse. But when you look at some of the licensing boards, the educational providers, how are licensed professionals interacting to benefit the public?

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in, John. You're welcome to do so as well. But as we think how they're working together, you know, in brief, having them aligned and connected in a way such that, you know, your wife, for example, you know, there's a day she woke up and had this dream to become a nurse. Oftentimes they don't tell you all the other things that you have to go do in order to maintain your license, you know, to ensure that you're taking the right continuing educations, maybe licensed in multiple states, you know, through technology and how they're working together. I think really the better alignment we have, the better connectivity in the right ways that we have is truly going to allow us to realize the vision of safeguarding our communities. And especially within healthcare, safety is the crux of— it really is at the center of making sure that— the right people are caring for the right patients for the best outcomes.

And John, this would be good to get your take on because I know there's like a platform dynamic here and would love, you know, to kind of get you to maybe address, you know, how that platform dynamic is used to streamline this exchange of information that's often been very problematic in the past.

Certainly does. And yeah, I think, I think what we've really found is the, the overall healthcare ecosystem is complex. There's a lot of different technology providers, that are in play. And as Julie said, really what we try to do is keep the professional at the center of that. So our goal is really serving those, those, those multiple stakeholders. So starting with a professional, what we try to do is make it very easy for them to see where am I in my license journey? When do I need to renew? What is my transcript? What classes do I need to take to maintain CE, to maintain my license? And it's gotten more complicated. A lot of professionals are working in multiple states. They might hold multiple licenses and work across multiple providers. And so it's not as simple as it seems. So what we really try to do is utilize our platform to make it easy for the professional to know what classes do I need to take, where am I in that journey, how am I, how am I progressing towards my goal. We also partner with boards to make that interaction with the professional easier. So we actually have a board suite. So for the various, various licensing boards, we help them manage all of the different providers, the roles that those providers have. and help them have a nice way for them to build out what is the CE requirement for the different professionals for our board in our jurisdiction, and also manage educational providers and review the classes that they have. So that way, if a board wants to approve a CE class, you know, for their professionals, they can look at that class, they can make sure it's current, that they approve it. And so that way, when the professional's interacting with our platform and they're actually taking that CE, taking that class, The board has already approved that. It's running within the same program, in the same system. And so the professional knows that, hey, I just took this class, I can get approval. I don't have to upload a picture and hope that this gets approved. I know that what I'm doing is actually already approved by my board and is going to help me maintain my license so that I can, you know, get back on the floor and maintain care for my health system.

So, John, I want to stick with you for a bit. You mentioned We've talked about that complexity throughout today's episode, and you talked about all those different players, right? Licensing boards, education providers, that licensed professional that's trying to maintain or advance their license.

Yeah.

You know, with all of that, it's inevitable that there are these gaps that emerge and frustrations that emerge. How are you seeing, you know, cutting-edge technologies or technologies in general What role are they playing to close some of those gaps and improve the experience?

I think technology is a real enabler. So even though I am a technology professional, I always think about how can I use technology to improve a business outcome or a health outcome, you know, for those professionals. And so, you know, some of the ways that technology is making a difference is one is essentially using APIs, so making a seamless connection behind the scenes between those different stakeholders, whether it's a board, you know, the system that a professional is using to take CE, reporting that compliance back to that governmental board, or even the healthcare provider system itself to say, is this professional working on my floor current? Are their licenses current? Are there any exclusions or disciplinary actions around them? So I think one of the first ways is really seamless connectivity. You have the APIs to make all that happy and kind of flow in a nice, safe way so that that whether whichever stakeholder you are, there's not a heavy lift to make that data flow. And the other is really meeting those people where they are. And so one of the key areas we're seeing is leveraging mobile applications to be able to take their CE, see where they are. And one of the exciting areas that we're starting to work on is just leveraging GenAI to make that whole process easier so that a professional can actually take a picture of their certificate, of their HART card, of their license, upload that and report that CE very quickly where they don't have to go through and type out all of those different elements of whatever the CE or the license is that they've taken, their credential. And it also streamlines that process for the board so they, they have less errors. They're not having to worry, is this, is this a valid license? You know, we're helping kind of not replace a board or replace what that professional is doing, but just help automate them and smooth that process so that it doesn't take as long to report their, their CE back to their board.

I love that. And the use of AI, you invoked artificial intelligence. There's a lot, you know, happening there. You know, anything else as you think about kind of the way that AI and data analytics is really revolutionizing what we can do here? You know, how do you see that improving, you know, the assessment and monitoring of licensed professionals in addition to the use case you mentioned a second ago?

It's really an interesting world. I know it's a little bit of the Wild West. Everybody's excited. There's a lot of hype, but there's actually a lot of reality there as well. And we're taking a thoughtful approach towards AI. There's traditional, you know, AI/ML models, which are great for looking at big data and predicting, you know, scores, likelihoods for people to do things. I think that the whole GPT approach is really changing what we can do, and it's really interesting. It's reached a point for a lot of different tasks where AI can be as good or better than what a person can do for certain things. However, I think where we're at And really the best use cases for AI are things where it can actually help augment or take on some of the early, just kind of heavy lifting work that would normally take somebody a while to type in something or do something. I think in terms of our platform, the image recognition use case is a really interesting one. We're also seeing some possibilities to use it actually to help with fraud. So essentially using it to do fuzzy name matching, looking at, who this professional is across multiple state boards to see, are there any sanctions or disciplinary actions across other boards for this person? Being able to map transcripts and requirements across different boards. I think this is even more important as people are working in multiple states to help understand how their transcript might map to other boards or jurisdictions and understand where they are in that journey. So just helping automate a lot of that path where in the past it would have been a board building out a whole transcript of kind of what are the requirements for a profession, for a board in a given jurisdiction. So, and I think there's areas as well where, you know, it can make a lot of sense too in terms of just overall support or a chatbot to help people through their interface. You know, one of the interesting things that we're exploring as well is using a chat UX where it'll basically be an interface for someone to ask, am I compliant? What's the next class I need to take? When does my license expire? So really moving away from a traditional user interface and more of a chat interface just to help answer questions and help speed that process where you don't have to click around and understand which menu or which screen do I go to to do a certain task.

You know, it wouldn't be an In Case You Missed It episode if we didn't mention AI. So thanks. But really, I know it's a hot topic when we look at this marketplace and, and this topic. I mean, e-learning, online education continues to have a tremendous impact on those that are out there seeking this professional development. What impact are you seeing it have on the public sector and licensed professionals at large?

Yeah, well, first and foremost, the workforce, while complex, it's on the go. I think we can all agree time is precious. Convenience and ease are just really essential. And as we think about professional development on the go, on demand, when, how, where they need it, And especially, you know, for our licensure boards in the public sector, you know, I think it's meeting— and John mentioned this earlier— it's meeting them where they are in their journey, but also ensuring that it's highly efficient, highly effective, that they have confidence that what they're taking on the go, wherever they may be, however they need to, that it will meet the requirements set forth by their licensure boards or otherwise. So they can get back to what they're intending to do. And it really not only is the future— not only is it here now, but in the future, it really is the underpinning to make sure that we've got a competent, happier, and ultimately a safer workforce.

I love that. Y'all are definitely finding ways to abstract complexity, you know, from the professionals, but also, you know, in the government administration of all this. I think it's great. Now, one of the things that we've noticed over time, you know, Joe and I have talked about, you know, a lot of these platform-type systems before, and, you know, sometimes agencies are like, ah, cybersecurity, you know, we've got PII in here, we've got a lot of different things that are going on. So, John, I kind of want to get your thoughts on this as we think about cybersecurity in the context of this conversation and all the sensitive data that's flowing between these 2 entities. You know, what role does data privacy play in this conversation and kind of in this ecosystem in general?

That's a great question, Dustin. I think security is always job one. Whenever you have a platform that has this kind of data in it, it's really beholden upon us to make sure that all of that data is safe and secure. So it starts with really following industry best practices in terms of how do we encrypt that data, how do we protect it at rest, how do we have the right level of perimeter security around the data to make sure that everything is safe. The other area that we really make sure that we work on is when we're transferring that data between these various systems, that we're doing it in a secure way, where everything is encrypted in transit, where nothing can be intercepted. And the whole data privacy area is really, really evolving. That was something that I dealt a lot with even in a previous life. And what we're starting to see is some states are passing specific laws around data residency, data privacy, what can you do with my data, data discovery. So it started with California with CCPA and evolved with CPRA. For most of the public health information and licensure information that we deal with, it's available on the various governmental board websites. And so we make sure that we're very transparent in terms of what we have. And what we're really doing is just connecting, you know, people that have access to that data and need to have access to that data, whether it's the professional themselves seeing what data do we have about them, them reporting that directly with their board or with their workforce. And so, you know, a lot of it's making sure that there's an agreement in place in terms of, can this person see my data, is there a reason for it, and that there's agreement and compliance and verification of that data flow to make sure that it's only going between places where the professional is comfortable with their data being exposed. And you're doing it in such a way that allows them to work, to be safe, or to verify their credentials.

You know, John, earlier you mentioned the matching that has to occur sometimes. I think of the the pandemic ushering in this more remote workforce, a workforce that isn't bound by geography anymore. So you could be a teacher, a K through 12 teacher, that's a virtual teacher that's teaching in multiple states, or a healthcare professional that's a, you know, right, an advice line that's operating in multiple states. You know, when you look at the role of technology, how can it support that recognition of the different qualifications that may be needed in California versus Texas or different regions to ensure that as we look forward to a public sector workforce, that they're recruiting, you know, that they're building a more dynamic workforce and they're not maybe bound by geography as much?

That's a great question, Joe. I think there's a lot happening. It depends on what the profession is. There are a lot more compacts coming together where governments are coming together to make sure that their license is recognized across different states, regardless of what the requirements are in a given state. I think the other area where technology is really helping and what we're trying to knit together is, is using— just using technology to help automatically map so that a professional knows, hey, if I've done these things and I'm, I'm compliant in the state, what other states can I work in? Are there any missing gaps in terms of CE or things that I need to do to be credentialed to work in the state for this profession? So I think it's really helping break down those barriers and simplify that. And I think over time, That's where we're leveraging AI to look at how can we really knit that together to take all those various government regulations and simplify that, make that easier for someone to know where else can I work, and for a provider to know, hey, can I hire this person?

Mm-hmm.

And the other stakeholder that we're starting to work with more as well, which I think is really key, are some of those staffing agencies where that's what they're trying to understand as well, is as we're talking to someone, How do I know where I can staff them? Where are they safe to work? If I've got a health system or a system that crosses state lines, you know, where can I actually schedule this person? So I think that's another key stakeholder that we're starting to knit together into our overall ecosystem.

Love that. Like the TurboTax of compliance management.

Yeah.

Breaking down the complexity.

The only other thing I would add is, you know, the integrity of that data is so critical. especially, you know, as much as we've talked about safety and protecting, you know, our public sector and our workforce, it's really making sure that that data and that individual is who they say they are and it is what it truly is, credible, is also top of mind for us.

So my last question for you all is just around the future. And, you know, we've talked about AI, we've talked about, you know, the kind of the platform technologies, but are there emerging trends or, you know, other future technology developments on the horizon that you think hold the potential to further empower the public sector and strengthen these connections that we've been talking about today between the licensing boards, the education providers, and the professionals themselves that are navigating the complexity of all of this craziness? And Julie, I'll start with you for this one.

Sure. You know, I think John's hit on a lot of excellent points. I would say it's nothing short of a fascinating time, especially with the emergence of licensure compacts. You know, the, the focus on standardizing credentials when and where possible to further streamline and, and simplify those requirements that, you know, enable a safer, safer workforce and a more compliant workforce. I know that the term universal, universal credentials has been used fairly frequently in a number of recent conversations. And then, you know, it just really goes back to how do we create the right connectivity to streamline the respective workflows through world-class, easy-to-use solutions. I think, you know, as many of us can attest, we're busy, and simplifying when and where possible is really just the way of the future to ensure that there's strong alignment across a number of key constituents. And as John mentioned, I know we've had a lot of references within healthcare, you know, there's further extensions into our healthcare payers. that are, you know, needing to manage to, you know, very similar requirements. So just creating the connectivity more broadly, I think, is going to be highly advantageous and really is going to be the key focus as we move forward.

Yeah, I love that. John, how about you? What's on the horizon?

Yeah, I know I probably touched on a lot of things in some of the earlier answers. I think as Julie mentioned, you know, things are just continuing to evolve and come together. I think it'll be interesting to see what happens Again, just kind of going back to AI, what happens on the CE front, you know, I think one of the areas that a lot of folks are using AI for is content creation. So I could see things evolving where some of the content creators are creating more tailored classes that are really specific to a given profession or a given role and just making the content even more useful and applicable. And I would say overall, the barriers to entry are rising a little bit too, where a lot of states are moving towards state ramp or, you know, TexRamp, ArizonaRamp, etc., security. So I think your data security and privacy is very important, and there's going to be a higher bar, which is great because I think it's just going to make sure that all that data is protected. And over time, with what we're seeing with our APIs and other APIs, I think hopefully things are going to be, going to be coming together more on the backend. in a very seamless, invisible way for the various stakeholders just to make that data flow and make it easier so that what we're seeing is some of our healthcare providers are even utilizing our connectivity and APIs directly into their HRIS systems or even into badging systems to know, can this person— if you're, for example, going back to, you know, like Joe, I know your wife's a nurse. If you're credentialed or have a license for a certain profession, can I badge in and get into the NICU floor? Or my credentials only allow me to work on the oncology floor. So sometimes it can get really granular, you know, as professionals move around between floors or different buildings to make sure that they're able to work within that given area and just making technology have all that data flow so that everyone knows, is that person safe? Are they able to work on that floor and kind of meet that role today?

So we appreciate those insights. Julie, we saved the most difficult question for— Where should Technology's audience go to learn more about your company and your solutions?

This is the hardest question, huh? All right, well, you can check out our new website, propellus.com. Again, this is a newly launched brand. We welcome your feedback. It's a journey for us as well as an organization really to share our unique story across our respective product lines. that we've, you know, that we've highlighted here today. And, you know, we're, as you check it out, we're really excited to continue to invest substantially in our innovation and really focusing on modernizing how our professionals, our licensure boards, our compacts, our agencies, their employers, how we all work better together, really with the focus on, again, safeguarding our communities. So it's just a— It's a pleasure to be here today. You're also welcome to email me, find me on LinkedIn. I would love that nothing more than to connect with anyone out here today. But thank you so much, guys.

Perfect. We'll drop that link and your respective LinkedIn profiles in our, in our show notes. We want to thank both of you for joining us on this week's episode of In Case You Missed It. Until then, have a wonderful weekend, everyone.

Bye.

Thank you.