The Future of Connected Care (ft. Donny Patel)

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.

Ed here. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Thank you everyone for listening. I know you can listen to a lot of different podcasts like I do, and you're listening to us. And I think one of the reasons that we are getting this kind of traction is that we don't do any commercials. There's no ads, there's no sponsors. You can trust our content that it's just purely good stuff, getting some really interesting people like Donnie Patel to be our guest. Donnie, welcome to Digital Voices.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really excited about having you because you and I met, I don't know the exact year, Donnie, but at least 5 years ago, and I was part of the Baxter advisory team. And I just loved it because I loved hearing about what you all were doing, but I got to know you on a personal level. I was always like, man, Donnie's a pretty cool guy. And then over the years, I've also watched you mature into a leader. And today you're president at Baxter Connected Care Technical Services.

Yeah, it's been a couple of years ago. I think it was 2023, if I may, and you were part of our advisory board. That's where we kicked things off. Like, so Ed, you've been part of our journey too when we started Connected Care at Baxter, you were one of the first, uh, people we reached out to be on.

Yeah, no, you, you're awesome, and I like you as a, as a human and as a leader, and that's why I wanted you on. So, Donnie, the most important question though that we ask is, what are the songs on your playlist?

So it's my— the songs I have on my playlist are pretty much just trance electronic music. I don't listen to lyrics and any of that. That just keeps me going, and it just The way I operate is like sometimes I just don't want to listen to any lyrics and I just want to listen to some music and go on. I listen to a lot of jazz music, but it's mostly electronic trance, Trent Mohler, a few others who I listen to.

I love it. Because I know some people like to listen to just musical tracks while they work. Like, do you listen to it while you work at all?

No, I listen to it when I travel a lot for work. So I'm generally, I have my music on during the plane rides because as you know, the Wi-Fi on the planes have not evolved. I'm on the road almost every week and I listen to music when I'm on the plane or simply at times when I want to go to sleep and that music puts me to sleep.

Yeah. That's good. Especially if you know the type of music you're talking about, if you can go to sleep to that music, that's a trained mind right there. What about life message or mantra? Are there words that you live by or quotes that inspire you?

You may have heard this and our listeners would have heard this many times, like, you know, Live as if today is the last day and do all the things you can do in a manner by which you not only benefit yourself and your family, but others. So, you know, it's all about, and I, you know, you and I both have a history in healthcare, it's about what do we do today to make others' life much more simpler and better and how we can somehow make a difference to deliver the care that we tend to deliver through the work we do to the patients we ultimately serve. So for me, it's more about, you know, Live the day today as if it's the last day, but look forward to tomorrow as well, because you never know what tomorrow brings to you.

Yeah, I like that. There's actually a Tim McGraw song, right? Called Live As If You're Dying. And that's, that's pretty good. I like, it's a good, it's a great message. But let's talk about who you are. So who are you? What is your story, Donnie? You know, tell us about your life growing up.

Yeah, absolutely. So I was born in India. I spent a lot of years in India and I did a little bit of schooling there, a little bit of schooling in Australia. Australia, US. I've studied in many different countries, but I also worked in different countries as well. So I've done some time in Singapore. I worked in China. I worked in Australia. And through Baxter, I have had the pleasure of working in a global organization that allows me to operate in many regions, many countries. I didn't start my career in healthcare. I am a mechanical engineer. I have a degree in robotics engineering, and I have an MBA. It's funny, I got picked up in healthcare is because I couldn't find a manufacturing job. And a close relative of ours called me and said, hey, you know, you know something about computers? I'm like, yeah, I play with computers all the time. Do this, that, and the other. Well, there might be a job in our company. And so I got called into a job and went to an interview where mostly the questions are, well, do you know IP addresses? I'm like, yeah, I know IP address. What do you want to know about it? So it ended up becoming a data conversion role. I was in the data conversion company, which quickly evolved into kind of building interfaces and, you know, writing scripts on extracting data from EMR and converting into a different format. One thing led into another and I ended up in hospitals and one of the hospitals you were the CIO of. Oh, you know, I think we crossed paths, like you left or I left and you joined as the CIO, something like that. But, you know, I ended up getting jobs at hospitals to do exactly that, system conversion, system migration. And then primarily in IT and informatics and CIS of various kinds. And then when Baxter brought me in, they wanted someone who had worked at hospitals. They wanted someone who has that exposure and that experience. And so one thing led into another. It was very, very organic on how I ended up here.

Yeah, that's very cool. And that probably explains your accent a little bit because you wouldn't know that you're from India based on your accent. You have a very, let's say, a global accent. Right. And so you spent time in Australia.

Confused accent. It's a confused accent.

No, I like it. I love accents and trying to figure out where people are from, but yours would definitely, if I didn't know you already and your last name, yeah, I might make it a little bit tricky. So yeah, so we talked a little bit about your career already. You sort of began on the hospital side and you sort of described your journey. And was it a hard decision? Because, you know, a lot of people are faced with the same decision. They might work at a hospital and a vendor says, hey, we want someone with hospital experience, but What did you have to think about before you made that jump?

I think it was, it, it was a hard decision. And the reason why it was a hard decision is that I was well established in my career in Mount Sinai, New York. And I think I saw myself going to another health system. So it was clear, clear progression in my mind at that time, going from one health system to the other health system, go from X size amount of beds and X amount of facility to a bigger one, right? I mean, that's how the career progressed.

Yeah.

So when I received that phone call from a company that manufactures products and, you know, pharma products, med devices and all that, and the first thing I had in my mind was like, what if I don't know? What if I can't figure it out? What if I'm not able to do that? Because it's a commercial mindset. I'm going into a commercial organization where necessarily I'm pitching to a CIO, pitching to a a CFO about my products. And I'm like, what if I'm not good at it? Like, there is a doubt that settles in your mind that it may not be the right opportunity. But I think at that point, I called my wife. I said, hey, listen, there's this opportunity. It seems interesting. I may go into the industry side. It's a new area. At that time, I was also interviewing for a CTO role in California at one of the children's hospitals. And they both lined up at the same time, both of them. And so I was like, CTO at this hospital or here, like it was, it was just that. And then what I ended up doing was I went with something that I didn't expect. So my wife says, look, that job, that role, that kinds of role will always remain. You can definitely go back and kind of pitch yourself as the CIO for the hospital or work in a hospital, et cetera. And maybe take this additional experience and say, hey, I worked on the vendor side too.

Yeah.

So maybe it will take you more, 6 months, but you know, there might be a hospital pick you up, but what if you succeed? It might be a different story you can tell. I'm like, yeah, you know what? Let me take some risks. And I personally, you know, there were other things in the, in our family that was working financially at that time in my favor. I don't have kids. Yeah. My wife has a very dynamic role in her own company where she travels a lot. So there was this understanding is that we both can be really aggressive towards our own respective careers. We lived in a condo. We didn't, we didn't own anything.

Right.

Subway is all I had. Like, you know, Metro is what I use. And so we didn't have debt. So it was all about, can we be more fluid? So that's kind of how I evolved into it.

No, I love that. You know, talking to your wife, smart move, taking risk. I love all that. And she was right. Yeah, you can. Take a risk. But if you're, if you're good at something already, you can always go back to where you came. So life is too short, like we've been talking about.

Yeah.

So you might as well try something, and it really worked out. I do want to talk specifically about what you're doing in the marketplace, but before we get there, I'm super familiar with Baxter because I worked on the clinical side for a long time and knew Baxter more from the clinical side. Can you just share generally for the audience that may not know too much about Baxter, the the full Baxter in terms of the markets that you serve and things like that. Then I want to talk about a little bit about your career and then what you're doing at Baxter.

Absolutely. So it's over a 100-year-old company. A lot of companies that you know today as a company have origins to Baxter. So I'll name a few of those companies here in a second. But as it stands today, our portfolio comprises of pharma therapy-related products and technology-related products. So we have generics in pharma and generics And we have, we are a big manufacturer of solutions. A variety of solutions are manufactured by us. We used to have a dialysis business that just separated. We separated about a few weeks ago. So we were, I think we were number 1, number 2 in dialysis. That company's now called Vantiv. Large clients there. On the therapy side of the business, this is our business that, you know, we call like the old Baxter to some degree. We have infusion pumps in that business. We We have compounders, we make compounders, we have automation for pharmacy. So we have some automation robots as well that we plan. It's a partnership. So, you know, we partner with certain companies and in certain markets, but we have products in pharmacy. And then we make, you know, nutrition. A lot of, you know, patients won't be able to, let's say they're on the bed and they can't eat. So we'll make nutrition like clinolipids and lipids. We make those as well. So cocktails, nutrition cocktails for them. And then on the technology, we call it healthcare systems and technology segment. So we have 3 segments. We have pharma segment, medical products and therapies, and we have health systems, healthcare systems and technology. A lot of the capital that we have in this business and that business is mostly acquired from Elrond that you know from a few years ago.

Yeah.

So we have beds, we have lights, booms, furniture, you know, Velchallen, which may be something you're familiar with. You go to a primary care office, you will see a Welch Allyn product. That's actually Baxter. So a lot of product fam— Mortara, if you know Mortara, Mortara is also a Baxter product or Baxter company. We have a monitoring business in there as well. Tons of like over 200 different kinds of product categories that we play in. My group is responsible for the software side of things. So we are the connecting tissue amongst all these products. So my group makes the platform that connects all these products, and then we We have a communication portfolio as well that my group is also leading. We just had the pleasure of launching a voice product at HIMSS. So we launched that product very recently. It's called VaultLink. We also have a text messaging platform, secure texting platform. So a variety of connected care products are in that portfolio. And then the services business is generally the capital services business, repairs, warranties, rental, leasing, that kind of business. So it's a big business. services business is also a big business.

Yeah.

So that's a little bit about our company and somewhat.

Yeah, no, it's giant. And with a storied history, like you talked about. Yeah, it was kind of fun when I was on the Baxter sort of advisory board. I was also on the Hill-Rom advisory board when the— that merger happened. Yeah, merger happened. So that was a lot of fun to be part of both. Tell us about The Voice. Yeah. So let's go more into about what your Doing and the launch that you had recently at HIMSS 25 in Vegas. Yeah.

Tell us about your voice product. Yeah. So we are going in a different category now that we think is the new level of integration that I think the hospitals will benefit from. So we created this product called Volt Link, L-I-N-Q. And this is a product that allows nurse-to-nurse communication. Okay. Well, Donnie, that has been there for ages. This is beyond that because what we have built is we have built LLMs in it. So, we talked about my accent, silent accent. I can actually give voice commands to this device and it will control some workflows in the room. So, as I was mentioning, the amount of equipment we manufacture and the amount of capital we can place in a room, in theory, we can outfit a room about 70% with just our products. Now, provided— and that's a low number, But no hospital is going to buy everything from us. It's going to be a mix of products. But I could activate things like, hey, turn the bed safety on in room number 101 on this bed, and it will automatically turn the safety on by itself. It will understand my accent. It can also make calls while you need for help. Like, I need help. You're not going to say, excuse me, I need help. In duress, your voice levels are going to be busy. Pitch and tone is going to be different. So this product, we are expecting this product to enable a lot of voice-related workflows across all our products. So as we release more products in the cloud, we are building actually copilots and agents for our nurses. So that's the area where we are playing. Throughout the year, you will hear about exciting releases. And we also will give a little bit of a playground where hospitals themselves will build their own agents and their own copilots that will sit with this voice tech.

Yeah. I agree with you. The future is now, you know, I know a lot of nurses who this will take a huge burden off them, improve quality of care, improve the experience for both patients and the nurse. And yeah, that's pretty exciting. Where else do you see the industry moving with connected care? I know you can't reveal any secrets about what's coming out next with Baxter, but where do you think we're headed with all this connected care?

So I know you and I were on parallel worlds, going to some of the conferences that we go to at this time of the year, right? I think, you know, a few areas where— so first, I, it'll be remiss of me if I don't talk a little bit about my company and the products we have. I think what we see from our end is the level of integration that the hospitals are gonna now demand from companies like us and software companies is gonna be totally different than what was in 2013, 2014, Meaningful Use 1, 2, or whatnot. We are no longer talking HL7. We are no longer talking about that. I believe even when we had those HL7-type integrations, nurses still used sticky notes, paper, writing pads, iPads. They would write an app on the iPad so that they can scribble on the iPad, and then they would go into the EMR and document what they need to document, right? So we think that voice-activated workflows is one area, one pillar. So it's like integration using voice. So can I have integration of devices with an EMR or the end system using voice? That's one area. The other area where I'm starting to see, or tend to see, and I can't put my pulse on it yet, is auto-documentation in EMRs. So that's another place where I'm seeing is that you have tons and tons of information that is sitting in the EMR about that patient. I have seen so many products in the market right now, and I'm seeing a growing trend where We're building these GPTs where the doctors and the nurses can actually question the chart and get answers about that patient much more simply than reviewing pages and pages and pages. So we're seeing some agentic technologies over there. And then the last is on the virtual sitting and virtual monitoring side, I'm seeing a lot of trends in regards to— because the nurse-to-patient ratio has always been the question in the hospital. I'm seeing a lot of trends globally, not just in the US, but globally, as there is a lot of camera equipment out there. There's a lot of integration around those pieces, a lot of monitoring, a lot of safety-related products available. So when we look at connected care, it's 3 areas— voice, automation and documentation, virtual sitting or some kind of monitoring. And this is just for hospitals. I'm not talking about hospital at home or wearables. But in the hospital, this is where I'm seeing. Yeah.

Donnie, you said the word, you were kind of given a global perspective as well. Do you, do you see any parts of the world that are maybe more advanced than the US or taking risks?

Yeah. I was in Netherlands about, about this time last year, did a couple of visits in a bunch of hospitals. I was not expecting the level of integrations that I've seen in the rooms over there. I went to a couple of hospitals. I almost felt like I'm going into a retreat. I never—you never see a hospital become a retreat. You know the image. You've been—you worked at hospital for your life, right? It's not—it's a very tense environment. I looked at the hospital and go, "Oh my God, it's different!" The amount of integration they have built from being able to command the blinds to go up, the lights, the amount of equipment, automated equipment that's in there—it's phenomenal. Matter of fact, I'll give one example around Verona, Italy. I forget the name of the hospital that we went to, but they have a lot of our OR equipment, Helion, which is our OR camera equipment. They had like 16 surgery rooms set up with advanced camera systems. And a lot of them would qualify as a medical device in the United States, but they don't qualify as a medical device in Italy. Like you could zoom in using gestures. You can, you know, take measurements, you can document all of that. For us in the US, it'll be a device that you had to put a claim against. So they are taking so much risks in that area. China. So when I was working in China and when I do business in China, I see a lot of the information about the patient is sitting in the WeChat app. So there is an app store in an app store in which they can see vital signs, they can see everything that is happening around the bedside, and they can just copy it to their EMR.

Yeah.

So I'm seeing a lot of risk-taking in other markets. I think the pages are turning. I think we will be learning a lot. From those nations. Yeah.

I can see the potential. I know I've given you this feedback before because I worked in the OR at the Cleveland Clinic and as advanced as we were and they are, you know, world leaders in quality and safety, I saw so many opportunities for automation, you know, and, and the things that you're talking about right now. So that gets me pretty excited about the future and different things. Let's talk about leadership. So you've grown a lot at Baxter. I sort of skipped that part, but you're now the president. Or, you know, when I introduced you, the president over connected care technical services, you've grown a lot. So tell me about, uh, some of that growth. Was there a, if you had to go back and look and people are listening, right? Cause they're like, maybe they're an analyst, a director, a vice president. Were there one or two key things that maybe helped you get to where you are?

Number one is influence. So I went from a team of one person, my admin. when I joined the company. I have about 4,300 people in my organization right now. And people are asking, how did that happen? I'm like, listen, I'm not that smart, number one. So let's get that straight. But I think it's about influence and problem solving. And about influence is you build influence within the company or in your organization by problem solving from somebody else. Okay? So it's always about— At Baxter, I have grown for the fact because I was able to solve a lot of problems for other business units all the time, extended myself tons. And what that did is oftentimes they would say, well, can you permanently solve this problem for us? Can you own this? Can you run with this? Can you temporarily see this for 6 months before we find a new leader? So that was an organic growth that I did not unlock and I did not realize until lately. I was like, how did I get here? Because somebody asked that question to me, I was like, I don't know. I was like, okay, it's the power of influence that I gradually built because I was solving problems for others. And oftentimes it's just that not doubting yourself. And it sounds cheesy, but it is true, is because sometimes we often— we are our worst critique.

Yes.

Or maybe we're our best critique, or we are our worst critique. I think we are our worst critique because we always doubt ourselves as to— I don't think That's true. I think, you know, I don't know this. It's like we don't take that many risks. And I have seen that risk-taking and that influence and, you know, helping somebody out, I think has allowed me to combine in those areas, being able to take a better decision. So it's like better decision-making has allowed me to grow. So I think if I was giving that advice to myself 10, 15 years ago, I think I would totally be at a different place in my career today because I didn't take that many risks. I didn't— my manager tells me to do something, I just do that and that's it. I wrap up at 5, 6, 7 PM, call it a day, go on. I did not have the curiosity. So it'll be the curiosity is something that you need to have. What are some of the other folks doing, right? I work in IT, then what are some of the problems that the hospital is having? Let me inquire. Let me make friends over there. And inquire and just build that curiosity. I think that's what has helped me a whole lot. Yeah.

You just laid down like 10 different things there, Dalia. That's really good. Trying to keep up, taking notes. Okay. So, so far everything's been super positive. What about things that you had to learn the hard way? Is there one example of something you had to learn the hard way that taught you something of value that you then, you know, leveraged going forward?

I learned, I learned a lot of coding and programming along the way. I picked it up as a hobby. And I let it go. I went into all the administrative stuff. And I think if you are an engineer, do not let go of your first instinct because it kind of helps you out in the long run. So, as I started digging in deeper and deeper, and now I have a SWAT team, or we call it the incubation team of 5 engineers that I work with very closely outside of all the folks, other folks I have. And we talk code, we talk about, you know, how to code quickly, how to code fast. Part of that is me getting back to coding, being learn— learning to code. And I oftentimes find myself, I was like, man, I shouldn't have left coding, man, I shouldn't have left programming. So I made that switch into management. I learned the hard way along the way. I completely, completely disregarded everything. So it's like someone talks about Python and I'm like deer in headlights. I don't know what they're talking about.

Yeah.

And it's, you shouldn't let that go. The other thing I've, I've, I talked about, like, you know, I went from mechanical engineering into healthcare. I completely disregarded my mechanical engineering knowledge. Right. But most of what I do now is electromechanical. So it's all coming back.

Yeah. That's good.

No, that's— Education doesn't go to waste. Yeah.

That's, that's super interesting. I wish we had time to dig more into that. What about how do you recharge your batteries and remain fresh? You're obviously a hard worker. You get a lot of things done. You travel a lot. You're married. So what do you do to sort of refresh?

I do a lot of landscape photography and I take time during the year. So I do one, my wife allows me one trip, solo trip where I would, I can pick a destination. I can go there. 5, 10 days and I can, photography-wise, I can do whatever I want. Those are the days when I go on like a 20-mile hike, 30-mile hike, I backpack. And yeah, and if you see me on one of those, you're like, I kind of know that guy. It's like, oh, that's you. So it would be like, it's a total different person. So, you know, photography, it is for me, it's an outlet. It's a way of composing. You know, the mountain's already there. The sun is already there. The water is already there. But how do you compose it? So it's, it has taught me how to compose in real life, you know, maintaining the composure, also planning. It also tells me what's the best time for sunset, you know, is it going to rain? Is it going to be foggy? Like all of those tactics eventually teach me certain lessons in, in my work life as well. It's like, you know, like I'm planning a sunset, I'll plan a go-live, I'll plan an event.

That's cool. That's why I love, I love doing digital voices because you learn You meet so many fascinating people like yourself who I've had the benefit of already knowing, but you learn these very great things, whether it's the life mantra we talked about. We talked a lot about leadership and all the nuggets of gold that you dropped on us in terms of how did you go from an influencer of one to having a team of 4,300 and all the things to make that happen. I love that whole concept of staying true to what got you started, the mechanical engineering, the coding. And how it can help you and never lose touch of that. I think that's a really important lesson for all of us. What did I miss, or is there anything that you want to double down on? Dani, I'll give you the last word.

First of all, thanks a lot, Ed. I truly enjoy Digital Voices. I hope that our subscribers here are as well and enjoying this talk. Truly enjoy it. It's a podcast that I learn a lot. If I had to say the last thing is like, you know, in healthcare, what I find often ourselves is, and I was mentioning about, you know, the global markets and the markets out of US where there is so much advancements. I think as us as leaders and some of, some of our listeners are not from healthcare, but for the ones who are in healthcare, I think we can start a movement. There's a, there's a, there's a hesitation to innovation to some degree. And I think it's often, it's a battlefield where everybody wants to do something, but nobody's going to take the first step.

Yeah.

To actually doing it. I find myself as a person who's working on the industry side, hospitals are ones where, you know, a lot of incubation and ideation happens and then they end up going to whatever supplier they are. I've seen a lot of hospitals who have good incubation shops, but they go nowhere.

Yeah.

And so I'm always looking for those partnerships and, and, and there are so many advanced hospitals who are now actually looking for partnerships with companies like us. But as healthcare leaders in general, and I'm not speaking for Baxter, I'm just in general, I think if we had mutual cohorts where we can say, hey, why don't we as a group do X, Y, and Z? Why don't we solve voice? Why don't we solve camera? Why don't we solve this interaction for our nurses? I think US can still be the leader compared to the globe. I personally think that's the challenge we can all solve together. Ed, I lean on you because you are the great connector. Maybe you'll figure a way out of bringing us all together.

Well, I love your whole message and especially ending on that note because yeah, we've come to the point that many leaders in healthcare, especially on the provider side, think innovation is implementing the latest software upgrade of their electronic health record.

Exactly.

While that's important, that's not innovation. And I love companies like you, leaders like you, companies like you represent, Who are like willing to push, take some risks, and find someone, and together in a partnership you can make things happen. That's why I always tell people like find a great partner like Baxter and start taking some calculated risks, and you'll change the world. So I love it. Thanks so much, Donnie, for being our guest.

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