DGTL Laboratory Operations (ft. Chif Umejei)

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.

Digital Voices, and going to have a lot of fun today because I think it's our first guest where the leader has both a senior sort of digital tech position as well as a senior operations position. And we're going to learn all about that and how he melds those 2 together. And I just think it's really interesting also from a career perspective. So ask some, some questions along those lines. So I want to welcome Chief Yumiji, System Vice President, Laboratory Operations and Clinical Systems from New York Presbyterian Hospital. Welcome, Chief.

Thanks for having me, Ed. Truly excited.

Yeah, it's so much fun. And, uh, yeah, I can't wait to jump right into it. But first, DJ Megan, if you could lead operations in a hospital, what would it be? I don't know.

I don't know too much about the different areas of operations that go into running a hospital, but I look forward to what Chief has to say. And maybe by the end of this podcast, I'll have an idea.

Yeah, the lab is super interesting, as you'll hear. You know, so much of the underpinnings foundation for the clinical aspects of patient care are found in the lab and usually more technically advanced. So we'll see what Chief's experience is there. Similar to radiology, more advanced typically than IT. So it'll be really interesting to hear more about that. So Chief, I think we met for the first time— was it the first time when we met in New York City, maybe Earlier in 2022.

Yes, it was.

And, and so it was fabulous getting to meet you. And I was so impressed by the fact that not only were you, you know, a leader in the typical tech digital space, but also leading operations, which says a lot about who you are. It says a lot about NYP. And so I was like, I just want to have a conversation with you and share with others about you in that role, because I think it is pretty progressive. And I, And I think the blending should continue. I think we're going to find in our conversation with you just the power that happens when those roles are blended. But before we go too far, everyone always wants to know what songs are on your playlist. So when you— if we were to look at your music player, what kind of songs would we see on there?

Oh, interesting. I have an eclectic palate when it comes to music, from reggae, calypso, Afrobeats, jazz, R&B, country. But I'll give you 2 songs that always get my day started. One is the classic Bob Marley Redemption song, mostly because I feel every single day is a chance at redemption.

Yes.

And it is a beautiful song. And one is a current Afrobeats song by an artist called Kiss Daniel called Buga, B-U-G-A. Which is— if you're a TikToker or Instagrammer, there's lots of videos of folks coming up with new dance moves to that. But those would be my top 2 songs that are on constant repeat currently.

All right. No, I'm going to look those up. I don't have those in my playlist. And I thought it was interesting, you know, because you were talking a lot about reggae, Afrobeats, R&B, and then you said you slipped country in there almost like really fast. we wouldn't recognize you said it. But that, that's interesting. I was just trying to think of the commonality, uh, between, between those, uh, and maybe there, there are some in the, in the rhythm section.

I don't know. Storytelling.

What's that?

Yeah, each one tells a story. Yeah, each, um, yeah, each, you know, country music is oftentimes a story, a narrative. Reggae is similar in the sense, and, and, and I, I do love that the beats is mostly for the dancing, but for reflective moments, it's a combination of both.

All right, so I have to ask you then as well, do you dance? Do you, do you, uh—

If you drop a beat, I will move.

All right, all right, this will be fun. So I know what we'll do next time we're together in the city. Uh, what about a life message or mission or mantra? Is there some guiding words that you live your life by?

Sure, um, I'll give you a couple. I'll try and weave them together into a cohesive narrative. So as a kid, my maternal grandfather used to always— he was a strict disciplinarian and he always used to say, there is no room for mediocrity where excellence could be attained. And that was often his mantra whenever I didn't come back with the best grades. So that was one and it's rung through. I hated that phrase every single time he said it, but now I repeat it all the time to the young ones and loved ones. I did mention I love this Redemption Song by Bob Marley. I literally play that every day. One of the classic lines in that song is a quote by Marcus Garvey where he says, emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our mind. And it's an ethos. Every day there's fear. Every day we are held by the chains of indecision, insecurity. And for me, that is a recollection that, yeah, we can emancipate ourselves. It's in the mind, and we can do that. No one will do it for us. We will do it ourselves. And then the last narrative I'll put is a quote often Winston Churchill said this, or it's attributed to Winston Churchill, where it says, success is not final, failure is not fatal. And I've butchered it now. And I think It kind of ends with what matters is you continue or you continue to push on. And so there's a theme of redeeming oneself every day. We fail, we succeed, we redeem, and we know that we will not be mediocre. We'll continue to strive for excellence. And that journey is truly what it is. And that is the ethos with which I live by. I'll conclude with saying just being kind to people, treating people the way you want to be. I think Working hard, persevering, pushing through adversities, but bringing people along in a good way. And that's what I try to live by.

Yeah, no, I love all those. Those are really good. And from what I know about you, I think you truly personify those things. So tell us a little bit more about you. So you're already intriguing in many different ways. Can you share your story, personal, professional? and how you got to where you are today?

Sure. I'll start off by saying mine is a classic American story and the fact that we're all immigrants in one way, shape, or form, or descendants of immigrants in one way, shape, or form. I'm a first-generation immigrant from Nigeria in West Africa. That's shaped a lot of who I am, a lot of the struggles, population, our obsession with education, obsession for drive. has pushed me to be who I am. But more about not just my ethnic or ancestral background, I think Chief Umeje came to the States, hoped to be a soccer player, and that didn't necessarily work out and got interested and intrigued with computer science. So in undergrad, I did what I think is a crazy thing. in hindsight. I double majored in philosophy and computer science. And so if you think about it, most people think of philosophy outside of logistics or, sorry, logic. Most people think about philosophy as the artsy, wordy side. I think of computer science as the mathematical side. And I tried to combine left brain, right brain as much as I could. That theme of trying to not fit in a box, if you will, has followed me through my life. So, grew up in IT, started my career from service desk to a desktop person to a systems administrator, transitioned into technical sales, came to New York Presbyterian about 15 years ago. And my journey in New York Presbyterian has gone from Every 2 years or 3 years in those 15 years, I've had a different role from pharmacy application systems to peri-op systems to leading the EHR to leading biomedical engineering, bouncing up to do creative projects, innovation projects with really revolutionary David H. Cook Ambulatory Care Center, and then leading our enterprise as we merged with Epic. And then became a glutton for punishment and decided to stretch my mind a different way and combine that experience with leading IT and then going on into an expanded role with consolidating our laboratory enterprise. So that's been my journey to date. I know it's a little bit rushed, but always liked the opportunity to do something different or to challenge myself differently. And that's been That's been what I've wanted to do. And fortunately, I've worked in an organization and with leaders who had enough faith to allow me to express both sides of my brain, if I were to go back to the computer science and philosophy analogy.

No, that's super fascinating. So let's dig in a little bit more on how it came to be that you were in IT, as you established, and at NYP. You were obviously working with the lab folks, I think you mentioned, in terms of systems or consolidation. But then how did you go— how did that actually happen where you're now leading lab operations? You know, who was— whose idea was it? Just how it came about.

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out who was the originator of that concept, but I will say Our lab organization is really big. It's a 2,000-person org. It spans 11 hospitals. It brings in roughly $250 million in revenue. And up until I was put in the role, each laboratory reported into the hospital. So the concept here was to get all our laboratories aligned as one massive corporate entity for economies of scale, opportunities to innovate and improve. In my conversation with my boss at the time, Dr. Fleischhut, the thinking was there's a lot of technology in labs, there's a lot of process in labs, there's a lot of working across different people, and they needed some talent that was comfortable staying high level and going subatomic. Because in the laboratories, Every single detail is critical. You know, some other roles you can get away being at a 50,000-foot view, but you have to be able to dive deep and pull out. They felt, given the fact that in my career I had done many different things, and more importantly, I think the skill set was being able to collaborate, they decided to take a bet. And they placed that bet on me. And I will say I'm very fortunate with the teams that lead the laboratories and our partners because They are the true superstars, and I am just providing them an opportunity to shine.

No, it's pretty incredible. I mean, I'm sort of jealous, actually. I wish I would have had the opportunity to lead part of operations in my journey. Was there some fear or trepidation, Chief? And if so, how did you overcome that? Because this is brand new. This is not like going from service desk to desktop support. And the other transitions you made, this is like, this is like a huge one. So how did you sort of like, how did you handle it?

Sure. I think the first step is acknowledging that you know nothing. If you are a Game of Thrones fan, one of the most common lines in Game of Thrones is, you know nothing, Jon Snow. Accept that you don't know. And once you have the humility to accept that you don't know, then you begin to ask the simple questions. And people begin to trust you. So I think for me, was I scared? Absolutely. I was walking into a profession where almost everyone in the room was on paper more qualified for the job than I was in the traditional sense.

Yes.

I'm walking into a room where everyone has a PhD or an MD. They could go subatomic with any conversation about chemistry and periodic tables and those those kind of things. But what I brought, or I think I continue to bring to the table, is someone who listens, who accepts that I don't know, asks the simple questions, do not try to impose my will, but get a collegial environment going and partnering with them come up with the best solutions. And what you do find is no matter what experience you've had, it's relevant. There's always a scenario where you can tap into something you've done. An example I give is people who do project management say, I've never managed a project before. You wake up every morning and you get to work. That's a project.

Right.

You have to get dressed. You have to get planned. There's a scope. There's a budget. So you begin to leverage all those things and do not belittle your previous experience, but also be humble about what you don't know and bring people into it as much as you can. And I'll be honest, I've been lucky. Very, very, very good people. And we're working together in a very good way to make amazing things happen.

So yeah, no, that's good wisdom right there. What about— I mentioned early in the conversation that lab, at least in my experience, tended to be sort of ahead of traditional tech in terms of what they do. Like radiology kind of has the same reputation. So can you share anything that our listeners, you know, who are generally like chief digital officers, chief information officers, not really in-depth in the lab, But like any sort of cool things, like, you know, one of the things we did in pathology where I came from is we used some AI, you know, to help figure out, you know, really reduce the burden from the clinicians so that they were just focused on the questionable labs, if you will. Is there any example you can give of just like something that people might not know about in terms of tech in the lab?

In the lab, sure. So some of the cool things in the laboratory is there's a ton of technology, a ton of devices. Is overall automation.

Yeah.

There are several lines in the laboratory that are truly impressive robotics and truly impressive AI, where you get a specimen, you run it at the beginning of the line, it takes off the tube, it analyzes the sample, it adds analytes to the sample, it gets them through, covers the processes and results. Most folks don't see that. And it's when you do walk into a truly automated laboratory, it is amazing how much automation does take place.

Yeah.

Some of the stuff that will get the headlines, especially upcoming, is when we look at anatomic pathology and the focus on digital. There is a need. Pathologists are becoming a unicorn, if you will. Seeing one and training one and getting one qualified is becoming a rarity. And also then having subspecialty expertise is even rarer than your standard pathologist. So because of the death of pathologists and the fact that there are not so many, digital pathology, especially in the anatomic space, is becoming huge. So there's several platforms that are coming up, AI companies, Paige, Path, et cetera, that what they do is layer on getting blocks of slides that have human tissue, digitizing them, being able to zoom in into, for lack of a better term, subatomic levels, and then being able to share those workloads and have pathologists sign out from anywhere.

Yeah.

So there's a lot. And when we think about that, some of the typical buzzwords like cloud come in, cloud computing for your storage and etc., the AI and the machine learning, and then overall that infrastructure that enables this to happen. is really beginning to take off in a lot of amazing ways.

Yeah, that's why I wanted you to just make a couple of comments on it, because I don't think most people know. And so I recommend everyone do a deep tour in their lab. If you work in a hospital setting, do a deep tour, not just a surface tour, but you'll be impressed. Even I was. I'd been doing this for so long. And when I did a deeper tour, I was like, wow, this is just amazing. And then, of course, the impact to patient care. The need for velocity, the need for accuracy, you know, impacts people's lives. So, it's really cool. So, do you recommend this sort of career path to anyone else? I mean, it doesn't have to be lab, but the concept of IT and getting some operational experience. I mean, what do you counsel people? Would you encourage them to do that?

I would say yes. But people, I think from an institutional perspective, I would say talent diversity or specialty diversity is good. It helps the enterprise. You have leaders who have worked in different verticals, and they begin to experience different verticals. It gives a cohesiveness and a deeper understanding of your enterprise. So if you're looking at it from a C-suite level or CEO level, like, yep, it's good. Let's rotate some of our leaders through, let them get some understanding. So that's good. From an individual level, I think you have to be honest with who you are. If you are comfortable with change, comfortable being uncomfortable, I think it's a risk worth taking. If you're someone who likes what they like and know what they like, and that is just your personality, it may not be a risk you want to— you may want to indulge in. Another thing is be comfortable with failure and be comfortable with the spirit that you will redeem yourself every chance you get. Simply because if you're not, you're not going to be willing to take that risk. If you're not comfortable walking into a room and being completely clueless about what the subject is and knowing that by the end of the conversation, you'll be just about dangerous, then maybe it's not. But You wouldn't know until you try. So I think find those opportunities where you can— low-risk opportunities from an individual point of view where you can get exposed to these other business units, get exposed to the lingo, and then you may just find a very rewarding career path. Look, on the digital side, not everyone's going to be the CIO. There can only be one CIO in an enterprise.

Right.

But there may be opportunities that exist in operations and vice versa. You could be an operator who gets exposed to IT and all of a sudden that is where you are. I think a lot of the early CIOs were operators who began to run technology units. So I think there's a lot to be gained if you are willing to open yourself to it. I strongly recommend it, but I'm not under any pretenses that it is easy. It is, it's a risk. It's difficult and you challenge yourself, but, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And I think the rewards are well worth it. Yeah.

That sounds fabulous. I recall one of my deputy CIOs when I was in University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, and he wanted to be a COO really bad. And so the hospital gave him some opportunities, and today he's a COO of a hospital in part of the BJC network. So it's great to have that opportunity. So, Chief, you mentioned something Just briefly, but I want to go a little bit deeper into it. And that is, yeah, how do we create opportunities? And have you all tried it yet for operations to have a similar role in IT? So maybe part of their role, kind of flipping the reverse of what you're doing, like creating an opportunity for someone in operations to really work in IT. You know, do you all deliberately try any programs like that, or is it something that— I think it sounds like you'd be very open to doing.

No, I am. I'm open to it. I think that professional diversity helps. You know, every HR leadership book right now talks about diversity of thought. And oftentimes we think about it from race and gender, but it's also diversity of background.

Yeah.

So there's a different lens that you get when you're coming in from a different discipline. and understanding that discipline. And I think the opportunity for someone to ask the simple, seemingly stupid questions, you'll be surprised that really, really sharp people know the complicated stuff. But when you ask, so why do we do it this way? And then you're like, because we've always done it. Could we try something simple? That helps. So that, if you will, the lens of a newborn or the lens of a rookie.

Yeah.

And the fearlessness of that will add and enrich the teams. In our enterprise, we've had scenarios where even within our IT shop, irrespective of level, we have recruited folks who have non-traditional IT backgrounds and vice versa. And I think it helps that diversity of thought, that diversity of pool, and that understanding of the business needs would definitely enrich any IT organization. Of course, you have to strike the balance between the technical expertise and the business expertise or the domain expertise, but being able to create those opportunities for cross-pollination of ideas and cross-pollination of talent ultimately enriches your enterprise.

Yeah, I could see, definitely see the value of that. I wanna shift over now to sort of leadership and Chief D, how has being in this operational role part-time made you a better leader, like overall from a— from your tech role. So has it made you a better leader? And if so, you know, what's maybe one or two attributes?

Yeah, I'm stretched in a different way. If you talk servers, computers, EHR workflows, I've done that for years. But then you find out now you're talking about regulatory, you're talking about people issues, you're talking about union, non-union issues. etc. And then you realize you're learning a different muscle or more accountability for the finances, more accountability for the direct patient care. So for me, it's given me a much deeper understanding of how what we do at all levels, whether it's technology or whether it's laboratory, impact the patients since I'm in the patient care business. And that deep understanding for that means that I am more the ethos of our enterprise resonates a lot more with me because I can feel it. I now know the impact. I now understand the why. Am I a better leader for it? Absolutely, because I'm being stretched to lead people that frankly are smarter than me in that discipline. I'm being stretched to be humble, but at the same time, in that level of humility, add impact. And that is a Really, really good lesson for me. Overall, what I would say has been great leadership is I'm learning. I'm learning people. I'm learning dynamics of people. I'm learning, uh, to manage different, uh, dynamics. Um, and, and, and it's a, it's a very, very, very good path.

Yeah, it's like I said, it's, it's very fascinating. And, and clearly it's, it's really not only just stretched you as you, as you mentioned, but giving you these opportunities to see all these different dynamics of the health system. And, you know, obviously you bring that back to your other role and just, you know, comes together and it's kind of knit and woven together to make you a better leader. You know, you've talked about this indirectly throughout our conversation, but I wonder if you have anything more to say about attribution to your career success. You know, obviously you talked about your family foundation, And then you shared with us a lot of quotes and different things that you've learned along the way. But is there anything else that you haven't said yet that's helped you in terms of your career success?

Never stop learning and just keep learning. It takes many forms. So it's not just the latest magazine or the latest certification or the latest tech class. It's discussing, meeting, and interacting with people and having conversations. So by doing that, I think I've learned— I keep learning. And I think the more we learn, the more we evolve, the better we are. And just don't be afraid. Take a risk. Try something that you're not comfortable with today, and you might find out you will never do it again, or you may find out that it's An opportunity, a door you never thought was going to be open to you.

Yeah, lots of good wisdom there. It's funny, I'm sort of smiling because I just came back from speaking to a division of HCA on leadership. And a lot of the things that you're saying, I mean, they're my exact slides. I don't use words on my slides. It's just pictures. And, but all these things that you're saying are very similar. So I think you're spot on. And I hope people take it seriously. Sometimes you listen and someone says, hey, never stop learning or take risks, but we process it like, oh yeah, I should do that. And then we don't, we get comfortable and we maybe don't want to change or push ourselves. And that's fine. I tell people, just be really good if that's the case, just be really, really expert at whatever you do. But if you want more, if you want to have larger influence, larger impact, you've got to do these sort of things. So, um, what's the most important advice someone gave you? So is— was there a piece of advice, although we've talked a lot already about different things that people have done and how you've learned, but was there a specific advice that someone gave you one time that kind of like, oh yeah, that's right on, I need to take some action?

There's been many. Um, I think the one This may come off a little crass, so just forgive me for a second. It was my very first job in a traditional workforce in America. My boss, who took a chance on me at the time, came up to me and said, look, Chief, we took a shot. You have no experience. We're giving you this opportunity. And he said, don't screw up.

Yeah.

And it's simple. It's what it is. Have that in the back of your mind, you know.

Yeah.

Don't screw up. Do your best, know the rules, don't screw up. And if you do, you can always redeem yourself. Tomorrow is another day to get better. So that's— it's simple. It's not any of the earthy things, but it is foundational to what we do.

So you obviously have, you know, big roles at your organization at NYP. What do you do to recharge your batteries and sort of stay fresh?

Um, try to take a break every now and again that is not uber-focused on my next thing. So whether it's my future ambitions or whether it's training or getting a new skill set, I'm a big soccer fan. So when I do get a chance, I play, I watch. These days I watch more than I play, or I critique more than I play. And, you know, hanging out with friends to just talk about something that is not work-related. Taking a couple of hours, a couple of days, you know, to do that or spend time with family is impactful. Family is very important to me, whether it's my parents, siblings, children. And that is— nothing recharges me more because I think about careers and life Each individual is the CEO of me incorporated, right? And each CEO is accountable to the board. And when I look at my board, I want to make my board happy. And spending time with them recharges me to do what I need to do.

No, that's that's super. So we're recording on November twenty ninth, twenty twenty two. So I'm gonna put you on the spot. Later today, there's a big match between United States and Iran. And, um, where are you placing your bets? Are we gonna—

Team USA got this. I'll say 2-1 to USA, and, uh, fingers crossed.

Yeah, I, I will go with you. I'll double down with you. Uh, victory for USA, we'll move on. Um, what is it— is Team USA your, your main team, or what other teams do you follow? Or, you know, even non-World Cup, like, are you, uh, Premier League, or what, what sort of leagues do you follow?

I'm a big Premier League fan. I'm a Chelsea fan. It's really sad. My entire house is all blue and everything has Chelsea blues and colors and the like. So Chelsea has been a fan for many years. I typically support on the national team level a lot of the African teams, naturally Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, and Brazil and France. For this World Cup, my money is on either Brazil or France, but we'll see.

Yeah, it is a very exciting time. Have you ever been to a World Cup? I have not, but it's on my bucket list. Have you gone to it?

It is on my bucket list as well. I want to say a decade ago, I thought I was going to go to Qatar for this one, but it didn't pan out. Yeah.

I'm a big Bayern fan. So I grew up in Germany, southern Germany. So grew up watching Bayern. So I followed Bayern. And so my team on the World Cup stage, on the international stage, of course, Team USA first. As I'm now a US citizen, but, uh, my heart is also with, uh, Germany all the time.

With Germany. Yeah. So, uh, how does it— with Bayern Munich, you win all the time. I know it's not a competition anymore.

I know it's— they need to do something to equalize, you know. Uh, it shouldn't be whoever has the most money, or not that that's always the answer, but certainly very influential. But they do have a pretty good system. It's good. We should do a whole podcast sometime talking about Leadership, and and there's that great. I'm sure you've seen it on on Netflix or something. It's a great series. I think they featured Chelsea one time. They featured Bayern or Manchester City. I can't remember who it was, but a couple different teams, and I found it very fascinating.

No, it is.

Well, Chief, thank you. We we talked a bunch of things, everything from soccer to a lot of music and some new music I need to listen to. But you you really dumped a lot of great wisdom. on us. You know, the whole concept of redemption, I think we probably mentioned a half dozen times or so, and just how important that is. And just to be humble and be resilient and be collaborative and collegial and always being curious. And I just have a whole page of notes here like I often do. Just a lot of great, great things. Take risks, never stop learning, learn a lot about the lab, learn a lot about you.

Is there something we may have missed or any topic you want to double down on as we end our You know, I think this will be a shameless plug to all the folks in the laboratories who may not watch this, but hopefully we'll get it to them. They're really special, talented people in different disciplines. And oftentimes, if you are in your discipline, whether it be IT or scientific or health or business, you you're blind to that. So as a leader, take the chance to get to meet people across your silo. You might be surprised how many hidden talents are there. I'm a story of a hidden talent that is doing an operational thing. And there are many stories in my organization and others where we've found gold, if you will, with really talented people in different disciplines.

Yeah.

So it should be— leaders should be intentional about creating those opportunities. for cross-pollination of disciplines and cross-pollination of ideas where it makes sense, you just might surprise yourself with the talent that is lurking in your organization.

Yeah, that's a good word to end on, Chief. I knew when we first met, I, you know, we were just talking and I knew you were a pretty special person. You're definitely a great leader. You're just a great human. And I really appreciate you being on Digital Voices.

I'm truly humbled, Ed, and thank you for the opportunity to speak.

All right. I hope everyone else found this as interesting as I did, just the combination of having a major operational role and a major IT role and just how to pull it off with finesse and to the great success of the organization and the patients that they serve at NYP. So that wraps up Digital Voices.

Thank you for listening to Digital Voices podcast with Ed Marx. If you If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening. Thank you.