Innovation & Engaging Your C-Suite (ft. Maya Ber Lerner)

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. One of my favorite things about Digital Voices is getting to learn more about different technologies and what people are doing to disrupt healthcare as we know it. And leverage digital to help save lives and increase efficiency and quality of care and all those things. And also, from time to time, we get to have discussions with CEOs and female CEOs, and we get to do all that in one today. So I'm really super excited to welcome the CEO of Chifi, which is Maia Baerleurner. So Maia, did I get your name right?

Yes, yes, you got my name exactly right.

All right, all right. Well, welcome to Digital Voices.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, this is going to be really fun.

Very excited about it as well.

Yeah, it's going to be fun because what you're doing is really exactly what I just said. You know, you're disrupting an area that's been very traditional for a long time and bringing in some technologies and making it a safer environment. So we'll get into that in a second. But first, producer Megan, you know, Maya is not the first and certainly not the last female CEO that we've had on Digital Voices. What are one or two things that you've learned from From the past CEOs that we've had? We've had so many amazing women leaders on the show.

You know, and everyone is doing something amazing in the industry and really moving the needle for healthcare IT and even outside of healthcare. So, I don't know.

I think most of all, the number one takeaway that I would say is just that we really belong at the table. Yeah, for sure. That's a good one. And more so than men, many often Oftentimes. So it's great when it's just a mix of people, which I love. But Chi-Fi is built for surgical teams and it makes perioperative quality, safety, and communication best practices simple. And Maya, tell us a little bit about, you know, the company. And I know that you're a co-founder and the other one is a surgeon, and I guess a couple tech geeks, that sort of thing. Tell us a little bit about Chifi, and then we're gonna get into our sort of standard way that we run Digital Voices.

Sure, so the way we look at Chifi is like if Asana and Slack had a baby and it was built for clinicians. That's how we sometimes describe it. That's a short description.

Yeah.

What we do is help surgeons and nurses and anesthesia teams and all the stakeholders in the surgical workflow collaborate in a seamless way and improve the results of surgery.

No, that, that's awesome because, you know, we've talked before and we're gonna get into that here in a second, but I served in surgical environments that, that you all are disrupting. And 20, you know, the first time was, geez, maybe 25 years ago, and then the second time was like just a couple years ago. And these, one was a community hospital and one was a world-class facility, and I'm telling you, not much had changed. in those 25 years, in terms of the way things operated there. So, really interested in talking about this. But we first met, what do you think it was? Was it 2 years ago or just a year ago that we first had a conversation?

I believe it was 2 years ago. Yeah, because I was introduced to you by someone from my previous life in cloud automation. So, we were actually maybe even talking a little bit about cloud.

Yeah, yeah, I remember our conversation. I was really fascinated by, by you as a person, by you as a leader in the company that you've created. And so, you know, once we started Digital Voices, I always had in mind, we got to find Maya and bring her onto the program. But what everyone wants to know is what's on your playlist? So what kind of music do you like to listen to?

That's a great question. It's very eclectic. You'll find, I guess, some rock, some alternative and pop, and the occasional classical music and house, and probably a mix of English and Hebrew, and some stuff that my kids made me put on the playlist during road trips. And I'm like, oh, that's not bad. And some French rap from kickboxing classes. So it's a— I mostly like to have a soundtrack to commuting. Which in New York City is mainly walking, but—

Right.

But still.

Yeah, yeah, it is an eclectic mix. And I can't remember them off top of my head, but on my— in my iTunes library, I've got several Israeli bands and soundtracks. Um, so I, I like that kind of music as well. Yeah, and in Hebrew, even though I— my dad speaks it, but I don't. Um, but I, I like the sound for sure. And there's, there's some songs from my childhood. Um, again, I can't remember them off the top of my head, but, you know, I still, uh, look for them today and, and it's just really good, some good music and fun times. Uh, what about a life message or mantra? Is there something, a guiding principle that sort of keeps you grounded?

A guiding principle. Um, yeah, I, I guess maybe the, the, the one that keeps repeating is trying not, not to regret things. You know, if everything ends tomorrow, I want to be happy with everything that I did that was under my control.

Yeah.

And yeah, it sometimes gets you into trouble, like let's move to another continent or let's start a startup. But it's the good, exciting kind of trouble, I think.

Yeah, no, I like that. That's one of mine as well, is live a life without regret. Yeah, because you never know when it's Life is taken, right? And so you want to live in such a way that you know you're not sitting there at the end of the day wishing you had done things differently. So I like that a lot. Yeah, share a little bit about your story. Obviously, you have an accent. You've already referenced different types of music. Tell us a little bit about your story, personal, professional, and and then you know leading up to you know become CEO and starting Chifi.

Yeah, sorry. As my accent, you know, it's easily it's easy to to see that I. I started my life somewhere else, not in New York. I grew up in Israel to a— my mother is an English teacher, actually, 2 brothers. And I was— my education is biomedical engineering. And most of my career I spent in cloud automation in different roles. I started in a company that is today headquartered in Texas. And did a lot of different roles there. And I think one of the things that led me to what I do today is witnessing the unbelievable revolution in software development tools and in cloud automation tools during these 15 years that I did a lot of sales and product management roles in this company. And I'm married to a surgeon, so that's my connection to the surgical world. And this surgeon had a problem, so I had to help him solve it.

Yeah, that— I love that because, you know, we often talk about in Digital Voices, you know, bringing in ideas from other industries that maybe are a little bit more advanced and bringing them in to help disrupt, you know, what we do today. So I think this is going to be a nice blend of that, you know, married to a surgeon. He was probably telling you all the challenges that he's facing in the OR suite. And, uh, and you're like, I have a solution for that. Or we can, you know, we can build a solution, uh, to help. But, you know, on the personal side, you, you mentioned you also have, uh, a couple of kids. So the reason I, I just bring that up is, uh, you know, cuz some of our listeners are listening from the angle of leadership and, you know, here you are, you're super successful and CEO, and at the same time you manage a family. So that's, that's really important, you know, for people to understand you can do, uh, you can do it all.

Yeah. Well, you know, good enough. You can— yeah, yeah. I have 2 teenage kids, so, you know, don't ask them right now. Maybe, you know, in a few years.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I saw that arc with our own kids. We have 5 kids, and there's definitely this time where, you know, they, they see you as knowing everything, and then as teenagers, you know nothing. But in their 20s, you know, after they experience life a little bit, they're like, wow, my parents were pretty smart.

Yeah, I hope they say so. You know, they think we're this Decent.

Yeah, right. Yeah, it's fun. Parenting is such great. So yeah, tell us the story of Chifi. I mean, we already touched on it, but, you know, how did it— you know, you mentioned your husband is a surgeon and, you know, you had all this cloud transformation biomedical, you know, background. So how did it come to be?

Yeah, so it all started when, you know, with a surgeon that had a problem. Jiffy is really a very organic company. Started with a surgeon that says, wait, surgery is teamwork. It's a team sport. But the way that the team works today is very unstructured. You have the surgeons, you have the nurses, you have anesthesiologists, you have a lot of stakeholders in this workflow. And the way that they get on the same page and the way that they orchestrate how they work is emails and questions and text messages and phone calls and a lot of— Informal things that are happening. And of course, everyone is doing an amazing job, but still 80% of the errors are a result of miscommunication. And he had 20 years of experience as a pilot. And, you know, everything for him, he really looked at it from the lens of aviation teamwork, and we need to brief and debrief. And these are concepts that are very well known also in the medical world. But then, when we were having all these conversations at home, because this surgeon lives in my house, so we have a lot of conversations about what frustrates him. And I listen to him and I say, wait, you know, you're describing cross-functional teams that are doing iterative tasks and they're trying to get better at it, make it a little bit less of an art and a little bit more of a, you know, high-efficiency machine in a way.

Yeah.

It sounds like it could benefit from agile concepts. So how come these professionals don't have something like Asana or why don't they use Slack? So we started going into these questions of why don't they have decent workflow tools that can make them more efficient and higher quality? And this really started a conversation that led to developing a prototype that was very successful in academic studies and starting a company.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. Can you share sort of that use case, that initial use case, on how the company got going in the academic environment?

It started from something that is pretty small, right? We didn't start with ideation of what's the biggest problem in healthcare and how do we solve it. It was just doing digital huddles. So, you know, everyone in medicine knows that if the team talks before any activity, then things will get better. There are tons of studies about that. But the question is, how do you get to do it? So what we started from was hospitals that know that they want to do a huddle, but it's very difficult to do because you ask the entire surgical team to come to the operating room at 6:45 AM where they already have a very, very busy day, and it's a nightmare for them. So it's very hard for them to do. And then what we say is, okay, let's look at a digital alternative to it. And you get a lot of this. It's not just that it becomes asynchronous, it starts remembering things. It can help you. It can orchestrate a process. It can get the right people at the right time, the right information at the right time. So that really becomes interesting. And this is the use case that we really started from, is showing that we can make those pre-op huddle rates really high consistently.

Yeah. And like you said, that's so important for a successful outcome. So That's really good. You mentioned sort of the adoption curve, or alluded to the adoption curve, in healthcare is a little bit slow when you bring up these new concepts. And I talked about how the OR was exactly the same when I was at a community hospital 25 years ago to sort of a leading organization. Any thoughts on why things are so slow to adopt?

Oh, I have a lot of thoughts. And I think these are things that we were talking about 2 years ago. And I remember you talking about the multidisciplinary approach. and agile principles. And I think it's moving, you know, since we talked back then, I think a lot has changed. But this is no doubt our biggest enemy is the lack of incentive to make things better, right? Or thinking that things are good enough as they are.

Yeah.

And I think the big inflection point is really understanding that you can't go on like that. And it's mainly in how the clinicians work. The, you know, when we see nurses leaving their jobs and, you know, they're doing a very, very hard, you know, they're working super, super hard.

Yeah.

Under very difficult conditions. And it, I think we're now at a time when we have to make their lives better. We just have to. It's no longer a question of, is it, you know, wouldn't it be nice to make the clinicians' lives better?

Yeah, the— it's multi, you know, factorial, the sort of the different challenges going on, and especially in an OR environment, because now it's, you know, a lot of life and death, you know, in high-stress, high-stakes environments. So, but I, I was even sort of shocked, you know, that my last time when I served in the OR about one, one shift a week, and, you know, the amount of communication that does or doesn't take place and how it takes place. And checklists are good, right? We had the whole Checklist Manifesto and things like that, and I think that helped move the needle forward, but you're still largely reliant on paper and sort of remembering. And so what you all do is really, you know, take it to the next level digitally. Is there another example that you can give on either something that you're working on today or sort of Upstream a little bit in terms of further automating those processes within the OR?

Yeah, sure. The good and the bad news is that there's a lot to work on on the perioperative workflow. And it's a pretty massive opportunity in that aspect. But there's a lot to change. A lot of things on this workflow are manual, are very inefficient. And at the end of the day, it's the clinicians that suffer. I sometimes, you know, I heard one surgeon say that it just stuck in my head that, yeah, that the patient's at the center, but all the clinicians are at the computer station putting things in the EMR, right? So this idea of how do we get the clinicians at the center with the patient?

Yeah.

is something that I think is, you know, really guides us as we try to move forward with the company and thinking about what the next use cases can be and what else can be done. And a lot of it happens by pull, you know, once you start giving good tools that are helpful, you immediately get the questions, you know, okay, can I also book with it? Can we do also the handoffs?

Right.

Or post-op? So it really happens naturally. And it reminds me a lot, I have to admit, of developer tools, even though it's sometimes a bit of a wacky analogy. But for me, it's very, very similar.

Yeah. No, and you start in the perioperative suite, but certainly I think your trajectory is beyond, right? You can get beyond that because this tool can help with clinical communication far beyond the perioperative suite.

Yeah, I'm sure, you know, there are enough issues to solve, I think. And a lot of them can be solved with a bit more of a bottom-up approach, which is something that really does not exist in healthcare today.

Yeah, so let's talk— let's shift a little bit. Now we have a pretty decent understanding about what you all do. You know, I think you would still— what, you know, you'd still be regarded as a startup where you've been a startup and now you're maturing. And we all hear about startups. And my question's pretty simple. Is it as grinding and as challenging as it seems to be from the outside? You know, when you're, you've got this great idea, you've got your first few clients, you keep the agile methodology, you're iterating, you're making improvements. You're seeing impact on quality, on burnout issues. But it just seems so hard. I mean, is it hard building a company like this inside of healthcare?

Oh, yes. In one word, yes. It's very hard. Yes, it's like every startup, of course. But I think that anyone that tries to build provider enablement tools gets an even tougher deal because it's a difficult business. You also need to change the culture in this business. You're not entering, like, this known category. You know, I came from the cloud automation world. So, this is a world where today you have very clear categories. Everyone knows they need to automate. But here, you're entering this area where it's not clear to everyone that you need to change things. So, there's also some category creation and And educating people on how digitization can help them.

Yeah, that's a really good point. This is not— you're not disrupting a current technology where you're coming in with this new idea, but everyone already has an understanding of that new idea because they're all sort of on board. You're really coming into an area that doesn't have technology, you know, enablement. So it's more like if we go back to the huddle example, it's just like huddles, like people getting around a circle and talking, but now you're digitizing that. And so you're creating this new category. So not only do you have the typical challenges of a startup, but now you're also having to create a new category in a sense. And then, of course, the biggest issue of all, as you mentioned, is just the culture, right? And not everyone thinks that we need change. People are happy with the status quo and those sorts of things. What do you think the C-suite can do to enable more innovation and to happen faster? So we've talked, like we just said, challenges of innovation, why things are slow to adopt in healthcare. But if you were talking with C-suite members, what do you wish they knew or what could they do to enable more innovation?

Right. I think C-suite at providers it has to be involved in changing the status quo as it is today. Because the industry in a way is stuck in a little bit of a vicious cycle, right? If you want to sell to hospitals, then the basic assumption is that it's going to take you 12 to 18 months to sell anything. And then this creates a— this a lot of, you know, has a lot of consequences. For example, you can't sell something small, right? Because you're going to work for 18 months. So, it better be really big. And that means you need to sell it to someone high up, right? So, you need to sell it to C-suite. And this also means that you need to sell something that is interesting enough for the C-suite to be interested in what you're doing. So, it needs to cover a lot of use cases. And that's pretty much the recipe to bad software, right? To start from the start selling—

Right.

A lot of use cases to C-suite. And then the question is, how do you change that? Right? How do you make the sales cycle shorter? And there are 2 things I think that kills startups in healthcare, in provider enablement today. And one is the long sales cycle. And the second one is the integrations, but they're all in a way connected.

Yeah.

So I think that today it needs to be a top priority in order to promote innovation. It needs to be top priority for C-suite. to make the sales cycles somehow shorter and to somehow succeed initially, maybe without the integrations or to make integrations easier. This is a healthcare-wide thing that needs to happen, and I really believe will happen. And there are a lot of forces that are taking it in the right direction, right? Like tech consumerism and like cloud adoption and migration to the cloud. These are all things that are working in the favor of smaller companies because it makes it easier. But still, I really believe in the C-suite role right now in this process is to help disrupt the industry in a way.

Yeah. And I think, you know, that's one of the purposes behind Digital Voices is try to encourage the C-suite and chief digital officers and CIOs and others to really get deeply involved to make sure this happens because that's when we make real change and we can impact quality of care, save people's lives, reduce burnout, those sort of things. That's why both you and I are big, obviously, proponents of that. And one idea, Maya, that I've used and one tool I used in my past was to get the C-suite involved was we created the TED Talks and we did a branded version of TED Talks called TEDx. And, uh, and then we made the C-suite be the judges. Uh, so what, what we did in this process of who gets to speak at TEDx is, uh, they— we had a, you know, a subcategory where anyone who had a great idea, uh, leveraging technology could, you know, present. And, and again, the C-suite were the judges, so they had to listen to 20— you know, we probably narrowed it down to 20 pitches, uh, and they got really excited, involved, and then we funded the winner. So the top 3 went on to the TEDx stage, and then the audience selected the winner. And then we funded that winner and actually created something that still is— was the basis for something still used today. And that was one way to draw in the C-suite to get them to be thinking about innovation because they're always thinking about other strategic imperatives that are really important to the organization. And sometimes they lose sight of the innovation. And if there's not that top-down pressure, sometimes it doesn't happen for the reasons we've talked about. So, tell us about— so, I think, again, people are really interested sort of in startups and things like that. Tell us something about the company, like, what are you most proud of to date?

Probably most proud of being able to help clinician users. That's number one. I mean, there are a lot of other things, right? When you manage to sell to hospitals and, you know, get over these sales cycles and when you manage to show ROI or when there are great academic research results. But most of all, if we, you know, we sometimes get emails to our support from a nurse, right, that would say, you know, thank you. Thank you for giving me a tool that helps me. And it helped improve patient experience today because everything went smoothly. Or it helped, you know, it makes things less frustrating for me because I just get all the information that I need in one place and I have a one-stop shop and I can ask questions. And it made my day better. For me, these are the things. And I always answer, thank you, you made our team's day, because it's true. They made our team's day.

Yeah.

And this really, you know, it keeps us going. It's— there's not— I cannot stress it enough how critical it is for us to get this love from users.

Yeah, no, that is really important and reassuring. You know, so you're CEO, and what would you attribute your career success to? So if someone said, wow, Maia, that's amazing, you know, you've done all these things and now you're CEO, and, um, you know, what do you attribute your success to?

Wow, that's a, that's a hard question. I, I'm not even sure that I'm that successful, but, um, you know, I, I never— I always try to do my best, I think, and I always try to work harder than everyone else. So this together with persistency or stubbornness, you know, depending on who you ask, I think is— it's just how I try to do it. But we'll see if it's successful.

Yeah. Well, you know, you've obviously been successful to date, you know, with all your past roles and, you know, as a You know, as a mom, as a wife, all that kind of stuff as well, everything put together. But I like that, you know, do your best, work harder than others, and be persistent. Those are 3 really important things. So given all those roles that I just also mentioned, how do you recharge your batteries? So people always wonder, you know, you know, it sounds so stressful, so many things to do, but, you know, how do you recharge your batteries? How do you stay fresh?

Wow. Um, mainly spending time with my family. And well, I do kickboxing. I always find something to do that takes energy out and gives you at least an hour, 2 hours of not having to think about anything.

Yeah.

So right now it's boxing and Muay Thai. Sounds a little bit aggressive. It is a little bit aggressive, but maybe that's what you need when you're starting a company.

Yeah. No, that's great. That's— it's good, you know, to have sort of that well-balanced, uh, perspective and life and, you know, keeping active in all areas, not just intellectually but physically, spiritually, and those sort of things. So we talked about a lot. Wow. We talked about, um, how you started, uh, Chifi, um, what it's like to be the CEO, talked about what Chifi does and the disruption in the perioperative suite. And then we talked about leadership. So is there anything we missed, Maia, or anything that you want to double down on as we wrap up today's edition of Digital Voices?

Well, you know, I'm kind of curious to get your take on, you know, on what it would take to get the C-suite involved in something that starts with quick wins. You know, if you don't want to boil the ocean and you want to start from smaller success stories, What's your take on that?

Yeah, well, as I've alluded to, the C-suite needs to be engaged. You can't give this to a subordinate, and you can't make it happen by hiring a chief innovation officer. So I know that might be heretical, but sometimes the answer from the C-suite is, oh, let's just hire a chief transformation officer or a chief digital officer or wow, magic happens. It really doesn't. Oftentimes when you add those layers, you're adding more complexity to the organization and ultimately more resistance. So I've been in organizations where there are a lot of chiefs and there wasn't much getting done because all these chiefs are fighting for the same resources and they're fighting strategically and they have different perspectives. So, so the C-suite has to enable innovation organically and then They need to reward innovation. And I think that's when you see it happen. If everyone's okay with the status quo and the C-suite doesn't say anything, not much is going to change. But if the C-suite is expecting innovation as part of your role as a leader, imagine now you apply this throughout the organization that, hey, if you're a leader, you're a director, a vice president, a chief of some sort, part of your role is innovation, then, and that's what's rewarded, then it's going to happen. So if I'm the the director over perioperative, I'm gonna be thinking, how can we improve things? How can we change things? And my boss is gonna be the same way, incentivized the same way. And I think there's gonna be less resistance as a result, because that's what changes the culture as well. So a long answer, but I think that's what it takes. But I think too often people are like, let's just hire a chief innovation officer. And there's no disrespect to anyone who is one. I'm just saying that's not the ultimate answer. It's really encouraging organic growth and being engaged yourself. My, I should be, you know, that should be part of my job description and my roles, responsibilities is to have, you know, 2 or 3 innovative items, uh, that 2 or 3 new innovations that happen in my area this year. Um, otherwise it's not gonna happen.

I agree. So good answer. Yeah. All right.

So yeah, that, that's, that's our encouragement to everyone listening is, man, don't take in the theory and hear great stories like Maya's and Chiefy, but do something. And that's when change happens. So you gotta take action and be persistent, be persistent, work harder, and do your best. Hey, Maya, thanks for being our guest.

Thank you so much for having me, Ed.

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