Bonus Drop: Call for AI contributors (ft. Dr. Frank A. Papay and Dr. Piyush Mathur)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices Podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges, and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marx.

Welcome to another drop, Digital Voices. Really excited because this is a special drop, and the reason it's special is it's really all around an amazing book that's being created, and you can be a part of it as well. And so There's no way to do this sort of book by yourself, so it's really a call out to everyone that's listening. And the best part of it is I get to work with some of my former colleagues from the Cleveland Clinic. Uh, I'm gonna— we're gonna go by first names, so Dr. Piyush and Dr. Frank. So welcome to Digital Voices.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ed.

Yeah, it's great to have you. And actually, Piyush, your return. So we talked a lot. You, you've been on before. We talked about innovation. We talked about BrainX Community, which actually you and Frank created.

That's right.

And so it's a, it's a global community, uh, and it's great stuff. I, I follow very closely on LinkedIn and great sharing across the globe. So that's really how we first met, was at Cleveland Clinic, and I was serving there. We all met because, uh, obviously we're all leaders at the Cleveland Clinic and doing some very cool, creative, innovative, transformative things together. And that's how we met. But the first thing people want to know when they listen to Digital Voices, because we ask this of every guest, is what's on your playlist. So, what kind of music do you like to listen to? We'll start with you, Frank.

What kind of music? Reggae and the OR. It has a nice rhythm and a nice sort of ambiance to everybody that brings down sort of focus, yet a calm focus. I like that. It's the upbeat of the guitar.

Yeah, I like that. Piyush, what about you?

Yeah, for me it's slightly different. It's heavy metal. I love Metallica. I love Guns N' Roses. It wakes me up in the morning. It keeps me going through the day. And, you know, when I'm like in the OR working with the surgeons, they're listening to reggae, and I have to get back to the speed and do the transitions of patients quickly. The metal keeps me going.

That's funny. I remember when I first started serving clinically in healthcare, I was an anesthesia tech. At Poudre Valley Hospital in Colorado, and I'll never forget. You know, because I was like this little 20-year-old, 27-year-old kid, and the neuro docs, neurosurgeons—they were like playing heavy metal. You know, and I was like, "Hey, whatever it takes, whatever is good because it's good for the patient. If the clinicians are happy and and that helps them, it's great for everyone involved." That's that's really cool. What about life messages? Is there a quote or some sort of mantra that each of you try to live your life by? Piyush, why don't we start with you?

Yeah, I think I discussed that previously. For me, it's failure is not an option. You know, it's a very optimistic message. It's about us trying to solve problems, us trying to find solutions, guided by Gene Kranz, the mission controller for Apollo 13. If they could succeed bringing that lunar module back to Earth in those circumstances, We are in a safer place. We can do better.

And you, Frank?

It's a couple, but I would say it's a combination that social intelligence is more important than intellectual intelligence, number one. And number two, the power of serendipity, meeting people and using your social intelligence to create things bigger than you are and bigger than they are. And like face transplants and BrainX and And what we're doing right here, Ed.

Yeah, I— it's— I— we could spend multiple podcasts just talking about the amazing things that, that you all did. And yeah, it wasn't necessarily directly AI-related, but, uh, the whole face transplant, uh, was amazing work that you all did and, and pioneered. And I know that there you use technology as well, like, uh, uh, probably like virtual reality and things like that.

Yeah, we used in our last face transplant, we used virtual reality to plan. And then the key behind that is how do you take virtual reality into augmented reality? And then using AI, and then how do you embed that onto the patient, whether it's CAT scans, PET scans, or whatever?

Yeah.

And so that is kind of the holy grail, so to speak, is how do you, in part, for surgical navigation, other elements of technology onto a patient while you're operating in real time. So that's going to use a lot of crunching power utilizing machine learning. We can talk about that for another hour, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk about— I don't know, this is really bad for me because now I'm going to have like, if I didn't already have withdrawals from not being up there with you all doing some cool things, I'm really going to get them now. Yeah. So what are the potentials? Any other use cases that maybe you're doing today with AI or the potential of AI Whether it's in the anesthesia practice or the surgical plastics practice?

Yeah, so I can start with that. I think we are living in very exciting times because AI itself is evolving. And you've seen ChatGPT becoming the public face of AI. And we're seeing these large language models, the foundation models, the multimodality of that evolving. So these are very exciting times for us. And something that I've been driven by for quite some time is how can we improve delivery of high-quality care and safer care to our patients? How can we support our clinicians using some of these tools and technologies? Because we have a purpose and we have to deliver care with an impact. And these are the tools and technologies that can help us, that can empower us. So these are very exciting times with the new technologies that we are seeing. So we are looking at how can you adopt some of these large language models to deliver safer care? Can they help ease up some of the burden for the clinicians? And can they truly make a meaningful change?

That's a good example. Frank, anything from you?

Yeah, from us, it's sort of the mantra of most healthcare systems in the United States, if not in the world, is access issues. The population's growing older, chronic disease are getting more frequent. And so how can you really create a better access model for everyone equally with diversity? And I think one of the solutions of that is artificial intelligence. And in addition to what I am as a surgeon, and one of the mantras at the Cleveland Clinic is we're gonna have to do things faster, better, and cheaper, but in addition to the cheaper, to more people.

Yeah.

So, how do you do that? And the only way to do that is augment the individual. And the only way to augment the individual is bringing in some other intelligence to double-check what we're doing, to make sure the quality's there, in addition to expanding our capabilities, broadening our scope. And that's where the excitement of machine learning in augmented reality with artificial intelligence is what I'm very interested in.

Yeah, and it's so cool. And like we said, we could spend the rest of the time just talking about all the different examples and things, because even 5 years ago, we were already— when I say we at the Cleveland Clinic— really pioneering a lot of AI-type work, machine learning, as well as other technologies, but really to deliver world-class care. It's been pretty cool. So that's why I'm so thrilled that you are co-authors with me, co-editors. We're doing this together. We're doing this book. Sort of a really brief history, and then we're going to talk about the why for the book and how you can all get engaged with the 3 of us. The history is we developed some books in the past on innovation that were sort of generalized in terms of what people and organizations were doing around the globe. And those books became bestsellers. And the reason is it offered sort of a playbook and global best practice, and someone could pick up a book and see what other people are doing around the world and really emulate. Obviously, they're going to tailor it, personalize it to their particular organization. But it was so popular that the publisher said, you know, with AI, we need to do the same thing. And I couldn't think of anyone better than the two of you to do this work on, given the fact that you have this history already. And not many people can say they have a history with AI because many people are just learning it. Now, so that's sort of the opening for the book. Any other reasons why for the book that either one of you want to address, how the book might be helpful?

Yeah, I think something that you start off with, this is a great opportunity for a lot of people to get engaged. And that's a very powerful message because when we think about AI, a lot of us have thought about it as a future, right? But now it is present. And how can we get engaged? And this is a great opportunity to get engaged. That's what excites me. And we can have inputs from people from all diverse backgrounds, from all over the world, who can contribute and have the opportunity for many of us to learn from their work.

Yeah, that's what I'm excited about, exactly that, you know, is really the power of the collective mind, the power of What you have, Ed, is the reach of really bringing in a lot of collective minds to create this huge genius. And then, how do you collate all these different ideas into usable knowledge, actionable knowledge? And that's what I'm excited. I'm excited to learn from everyone else. Hopefully, they're excited to learn from us.

Yeah. And the cool thing about the construct of the book is we'll be able to— because as I think it was you, Pio, mentioned, it's evolving and it always will be evolving. And so the book is constructed in such a way that it's pretty easy to add on additional volumes in the future. So we've done that with the first Voices of Innovation, the generic one I mentioned, already has a second edition out. And I imagine this with AI will have multiple editions coming out in the future. And I think another reason why for the book and why people would want to be part of the book is I think it's great for organizational brands. So it really establishes your organization to be a leader in AI. And so a lot of these other books I keep referencing will have 30, 40 other health systems from around the world engaged, and they take a lot of pride in the fact that they're being published and able to showcase themselves to the rest of the world and again, help further the mission and quality of care, patient safety, and those sorts of initiatives. So that's another reason I always say it's good for for people to have the experience of publishing themselves. So some people may want to write their own books in the future, and so this is a good foray into it. But it's always good. I know all of us have contributed to books before and authored some books, and it's really good just for the self as well. And then finally is where some of the proceeds for the book will go, and some of it will go towards curing cancer. It's really a good all-around, you know, reason to participate that we just articulated. So, uh, now we want to talk a little bit about, you know, how, how you can be, uh, part of it. And so I hate— I don't want to be— I feel like I'm dominating the conversation now, but let me just finish this part and then, uh, we'll come back to both of you. So you can send an email to voicesofinnovation. That's one word, voicesofinnovation@ And when you do that, you will receive sort of detailed instructions on how to apply to be part of the book. So it's a competitive process. We, we take in, uh, many submissions, and if, if previous work sets a standard, uh, you know, we'll have about 30% that are accepted, uh, to be in the book. But we really encourage everyone who's interested to apply. So the first step though is send the email to voicesofinnovation@gmail.com. It'll explain everything on how to submit your particular transcript and just how the competitive process works. So it's all real tight like that. So as we end the program, a last question to both of you. We went through this rather quickly, but informatively. Is there something that we missed talking about or something we did talk about that you want to double down on? So I'll leave each of you sort of with the last word. So, Piyush, we'll start with you and we'll end with Frank.

I think this is special. That's what you started off with. This is exciting and you don't want to miss out on this opportunity.

Yeah, and I would say diversity. I mean, we need great ideas, this collective mind. We need to build that from all over the world. So any diverse thoughts or any way of looking at artificial intelligence in a different way and how does that really help everyone, you know, AI for all, so to speak, is what we really need. I know we sound like the Three Musketeers here, but, you know, it truly, that's what we want. It's really one for all and all for one. So please join us and really contribute and Bring your ideas, and so we can form them out, scrutinize it, and really give it some legitimacy.

Yeah, this is great. And yeah, we've got a great publisher, uh, one of the biggest publishers in the world behind it. And, uh, it's going to be super, super good. I think, I think it's going to be super important, and not because we're involved. To your point, Frank, it's really the collective around the world. There'll be so many great contributions that I believe this book will definitely help propel and accelerate the adoption, the effective adoption of AI in healthcare to improve. For us, we're always mostly interested in the quality outcomes and the patient safety aspects, but also there's benefit on the business side too to make our organizations more efficient. So, so many good reasons. You can tell our excitement. So send your email.

Voices.

of innovation at gmail.com, and we'll get the process going. Which, speaking of the timing, is in the month of October. We hope to finish the collection of the submissions and really start paring them down, uh, in November. So you have a whole month, uh, to work on these things and, and get them turned in. So again, thank you. Thank you, Piyush. Thank you, Frank, for being part of Digital Voices. Uh, it's kind of a quick-hitting special drop encouraging all of our listeners to participate. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ed.

Hey, that wraps up Digital Voices.

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