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Global Summit 2024

author - Everton Santos
Author
Everton Santos
author - Jonathan Christensen
Author
Jonathan Christensen
 
September 16, 2024 | Read Time: 12  minutes

In June 2024, KLAS hosted our annual Global Summit on the shores of Lago Maggiore in northern Italy. At this summit, 128 industry executives—including 70 healthcare representatives from 18 countries and 58 healthcare IT (HIT) vendor and consultant attendees—came together to discuss industry trends. Over the two-day conference, these leaders discussed significant barriers that hinder progress in the healthcare industry as well as areas of potential growth and innovation. This summit overview highlights findings from tabletop discussions that explored how the healthcare industry can better navigate challenges related to artificial intelligence (AI), clinician burnout, and customization.

pre summit survey icon

Pre-Summit Survey

To supplement group discussions during the summit, KLAS administered a pre-summit survey to learn about healthcare organizations’ current status with and strategies for AI, clinician burnout, and customization within their IT environment.

Artificial Intelligence

Through the pre-summit survey, 43 healthcare representatives shared the current status of AI within their organizations. While nearly three-quarters of these representatives have invested in at least one AI use case, only 16% have a formal AI strategy in place.

status of provider ai strategy
status of provider ai investment

During the summit, attendees held discussions focused on four questions related to AI. The following takeaways are organized according to those questions.

takeaway 1 icon

What Does Effective AI Governance Need to Look Like in Healthcare Organizations?

  • Implement a multi-committee approach: Different AI applications and use cases require their own specialized committees. However, to ensure cohesive governance, these individual committees require oversight from a broader AI committee (which itself could be a subset of an existing governance committee, such as for EHR governance). This multi-committee approach enables tailored management of AI initiatives while maintaining alignment across groups.
  • Have diverse stakeholder representation in AI governance committees: AI governance committees should have diverse representation from key stakeholders (e.g., CIOs, CMIOs, chief safety/risk officers, academics, and end users). This ensures all perspectives are considered, fostering a comprehensive governance framework.
  • Focus on accuracy, reliability, and explainability to build user confidence in AI: Clinicians should be able to trust AI without necessarily understanding the technical details. Governance committees should ensure AI outputs are accurate, reliable, and explainable by conducting proof-of-concept work, continuously monitoring AI performance, and holding AI systems to established standards.
  • Address compliance and ethical issues: AI governance must address regulatory compliance and ethical issues (e.g., data privacy, security, and patient consent and safety). Establishing clear guidelines and accountability measures helps mitigate risks and ensures AI implementations align with legal and ethical standards.
  • Provide some degree of AI training to all healthcare employees: As AI adoption increases, providing AI training to all staff is crucial to building common understanding, digital maturity, and trust across the organization. Training should be tailored to each employee’s level of AI interaction.
takeaway 2 icon

How Should Organizations Decide Where to Invest in AI & Which Solutions to Purchase?

  • Focus on impactful AI use cases (e.g., improving efficiency): Organizations should focus on AI use cases that are beneficial and scalable and can drive efficiency. Workflow and productivity improvements should be prioritized over diagnostics (though diagnostic AI is already well defined for imaging and radiology).
  • Implement strong integration between AI and core systems: For AI to be sustainable, it must be integrated with core systems like the EHR or PACS. In the case of curated vendor marketplaces, vendors should negotiate costs and perform evaluations to select the AI solutions best suited to their customers.
  • Healthcare organizations and HIT vendors should collaboratively tackle experimental AI: Healthcare organizations should not be expected to invest in experimental AI alone. Vendors need to be transparent about AI that is in the early stages of development, and healthcare organizations and vendors should collaborate to develop and refine new AI solutions.
  • Consider time savings, safety, and burnout when evaluating ROI: Healthcare organizations should focus on outcomes such as time savings, improved safety, and reduced burnout when evaluating the ROI of AI. These key outcomes, as well as effective governance, help justify AI investments.
  • Evaluate AI algorithms prior to adoption: Healthcare organizations and vendors both emphasize the need for robust evaluation of AI algorithms, including site visits and resource assessments, to ensure scalability and integration across departments. Effective governance and validation, such as through the NHS or MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency), are crucial for user confidence in AI.
takeaway 3 icon

How Can Organizations Effectively Monitor AI Algorithms to Ensure Accuracy and Reliability?

  • Share responsibility for effective AI monitoring: Healthcare organizations’ governance committees (or other dedicated individuals) should audit AI outputs to ensure quality. Additionally, technology vendors should provide an audit trail and demonstrate the efficacy of their algorithms.
  • Help customers understand AI performance through benchmarking: Vendors should benchmark their AI algorithms against those of other vendors to demonstrate to customers how well those algorithms are performing. This includes providing dashboards and continuously improving existing models.
  • Be transparent about algorithm outputs: In addition to being transparent about the base output, vendors should regularly check for biases and be transparent about ongoing changes and upgrades.
  • Involve from both healthcare organizations and vendors in AI education: Both groups should understand an AI model’s complexities and ensure clinicians aren’t solely reliant on AI for decision-making.
  • Stay on top of local regulations: Different countries have different regulations, but compliance with standards is crucial. Vendors should ensure that AI is compliant with local regulations and that mechanisms are in place for regular audits and updates.
takeaway 4 icon

How Can Organizations Protect Themselves in a Legal/Regulatory Sense as They Adopt AI?

  • Governance is the first line of defense: Establishing a robust governance framework is crucial. Healthcare organizations must implement ongoing regulatory reviews; comply with local, regulatory, and industry standards; set clear policies; and use closed systems to protect data.
  • Clinicians need training to avoid bias and spot inaccuracies: As mentioned before, clinicians need to have confidence in AI systems. Proper onboarding and training ensure clinicians can identify and address inaccuracies from AI, thereby improving documentation quality and clinical experience.
  • Patient consent is essential: Patients need to understand what they are consenting to (e.g., training algorithms, diagnostic AI, treatment by AI). Ensuring anonymity and clarity in the consent process is vital.
  • Protect patient data through trusted data environments: Protecting patient data, especially when using generative AI, requires strict adherence to data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR). Organizations must ensure data residency and use trusted data environments to safeguard data.
  • Healthcare organizations, vendors, and regulatory bodies should be aligned: To successfully navigate the evolving AI environment, healthcare organizations and vendors need to collaborate with regulatory bodies and stay up to date on potential changes.

Clinician Burnout

Clinician burnout is a global challenge—among the respondents to the pre-summit survey, over half report that at least 20% of the clinicians at their organization experience symptoms of burnout. Additionally, almost half of these organizations report that the EHR is a moderate or major contributor to clinician burnout.

estimated percentage of clinicians reporting burnout symptoms
how does the ehr affect clinician burnout

Clinician Burnout Discussion Takeaways

  • Clinician burnout is increasing; healthcare organization attendees noted that many of their clinicians have progressed from experiencing general stress to more severe levels of burnout.
  • Clinicians often lack time to take advantage of well-being opportunities due to heavy workloads and inefficiencies tied to repetitive data entry or security measures.
  • Change resistance and change fatigue contribute to clinician burnout.
  • Healthcare organizations need dedicated personnel to monitor and address burnout; these personnel should implement strategies (see list below) aimed at reducing burnout contributors and creating an organizational culture that supports employee well-being.

Strategies That Can Reduce Clinician Burnout

Involve clinicians in workflow and data-collection decisions to ensure relevance and efficiency

Allocate an appropriate amount of time for training and change management during normal work hours

Implement technologies that reduce inefficiencies/duplicate documentation (e.g., smart reports, generative notes, automated administrative tasks, and ambient speech technology)

Create quiet spaces in the facility for downtime during shifts

Cultivate a healthy, collaborative relationship between clinician and IT teams

Provide access to counseling and well-being programs

Customization

Across the world, the majority of healthcare organizations report having a moderately to heavily customized technology environment, and many are looking to minimize these customizations. Of the 41% of pre-summit survey respondents who have a heavily customized environment, almost half also report that upgrades are challenging.

what is the state of software customization in your organization

Key Recommendations for Minimizing Customization & Staying Current with Software

For Healthcare Organizations

  • Find a balance between customization and standardization: While customization may be needed to meet local regulations, it should be managed carefully to avoid long-term complications. Generally, foundational workflows should be prioritized.
  • Implement a robust governance process/committee: A governance committee can review customization requests and vet them against established guidelines.
  • Emphasize personal configurations: Using personal configurations instead of code changes can help maintain system integrity and facilitate smoother upgrades.
  • Stay current with and provide training for updates: Organizations should plan for continual upgrades. Ideally, upgrades should be smaller and happen often as opposed to having less-frequent, large-scale upgrades, which are more disruptive. Clinicians should be trained on workflow changes or new functionality.
  • Focus on change management: Change management should be a continuous process, not a single event.

For HIT Vendors

  • Incorporate common requirements into the core system: This can minimize user need for extensive customizations, thus enabling smoother upgrades and better system stability.
  • Be flexible with changing requirements: Customers should be able to easily incorporate new local requirements into the system.
  • Send smaller, more frequent updates: These are easier for customers to manage than major, disruptive upgrades.
  • Make staying current easier: Ongoing upgrades should be provided free to customers or covered in their contract. Where possible, require and help clients stay current with software versions.
  • Clearly outline which updates need more workflow training: Vendors should provide the required resources to ensure customers get the training they need.

Global Summit 2025

KLAS’ next annual Global Summit will occur in Athens, Greece, on June 2–4, 2025. Healthcare leaders who are interested in attending can learn more about and register for the summit here.

2024 Summit Attendees 

Healthcare Organizations

Adrian Harris, Chief Medical Officer, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, England

Adrian Jimenez, SM, SOIN, Costa Rica

Ahmad Yahya, Chief Information Officer, Dubai Insurance, UAE

Alec Price-Forbes, Consultant Rheumatologist and CCIO, NHS England, England

Amrita Kumar, Consultant Radiologist and Clinical AI Lead, Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, England

Andrew Blanch, Clinical Director—Digital Health Branch, Queensland Health, Australia

Andrew Kelly, Chief Digital Officer, Scarborough Health Network, Canada

Anna Hawksley, Deputy Director of Cyber Improvement, NHS England, England

Annie Howitt, Chief Nursing and Midwifery Information Officer, Royal Women’s Hospital, Australia

Atif Albreiki, Chief Digital Officer, Dubai Health, UAE

Augustine Amusu, CIO, Mediclinic Middle East, UAE

Aviv Gladman, CMIO, Mackenzie Health, Canada

Ayesha Rahim, Clinical Lead for Digital Mental Health, NHS England, England

Benita Butler, Acting EMR Director, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia

Beverley Bryant, Chief Digital Information Officer, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, England

Bruno Campos, DSTI, Luz Saude, Portugal

Dalia Mominkhan, CEO, National Health Command Center, Saudi Arabia

Deborah Pinter, Clinical Operations Informatics Officer, Alberta Health Services, Canada

Drew Wesley, CIO/VP of Business & Technology, Women’s College Hospital, Canada

Elyse Adam, Director of Clinical Information Systems, Bendigo Health, Australia

Erik Sköldenberg, COO/CMO, Danderyds Hospital, Sweden

Fabio Lario, CMIO, Sírio-Libanês, Brazil

Fahad Bindayel, Director of Applications & Health Informatics Services, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Saudi Arabia

Gina Naughton, RIS/PACS Systems Manager, Saolta HealthCare Group, Ireland

Glenn Barton, Director of Clinical Education, Professional Practice, Research, The Ottawa Hospital, Canada

Gürhan Zincircioglu, CMIO/COO, Tire State Hospital, Türkiye

H.E. Mubaraka Ibrahim, CIO, Emirates Health Services, UAE

Harri Karjalainen, CIO, Helsinki University Hospital, Finland

Helen Balsdon, National Chief Nursing Information Officer (Interim), NHS England, England

Helen Crowther, National Digital Primary Care Nurse Lead/CNIO Office, NHS England, England

Henry Morriss, CMIO, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, England

Ian Hogan, CIO, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, England

Ilan Lenga, CIO/CMIO, Lakeridge Health, Central East Hospitals, Canada

Jacques Rossler, CIO, Hôpital Universitaire de Bruxelles, Belgium

Jason Bradley, Chief Digital and Data Officer, Countess of Chester Hospital, England

John Llewellyn, Chief Digital and Information Officer, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside (ICB), England

Julian Gully, CIO, Integral Diagnostics (IDX), Australia

Karim Jessa, CMIO, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and University Health Network, Canada

Kath Feely, Chief Allied Health Information Officer, Parkville Precinct, Australia

Linus Tham, Group Chief Information Officer, IHH Healthcare, Singapore

Luke Readman, Director of Digital Transformation, NHS England, England

Mahmood Adil, National Healthcare Advisor for Ministry of Public Health (Qatar) and Clinical Data & Digital Lead for Royal College of Physicians (UK), Qatar

Mansour Swaidan, Deputy CIO, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Saudi Arabia

Marco Foracchia, CIO, Azienda USL di Reggio Emilia, IRCCS, Italy

Mark Hutchinson, CIO Advisor, North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Trust, England

Marwah Younis, Strategy and Innovation Advisor, Canada’s Drug Agency (CADTH), Canada

Matt Connor, Chief Digital Information Officer, Liverpool University Hospitals, England

Natasha Phillips, Professor of Nursing & Digital Healthcare, Future Nurse, England

Nathaniel Alexander, Chief Nursing & Midwifery Information Officer, NSW Health - South Western Sydney LHD, Australia

Neeraja Valmiki, Project Manager—PMO, Emirates Health Services, UAE

Peter Gocke, Chief Digital Officer, Charité, Germany

Philippa Kirkpatrick, Chief Digital Information Officer, NHS South East London, England

Rebecca Broadbent, Clinical Informatics Officer Bendigo Health, Australia

Richard Corbridge, Director General— Digital, Department of Work & Pensions, England

Rizwan Malik, Consultant Radiologist, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, England

Rob Lee, VP of Digital Health/CIO, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Canada

Rosanna Intelisano, Management Engineer, A.O.U. Policlinico G.Martino, Italy

Rui Gomes, CIO, Coimbra University Hospital Centre, Portugal

Sabrina Cristofano, Chief Information Security Officer and Data Protection Officer, CHU Brugmann, Belgium

Sarah Barr, CIO, The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, England

Sarah Muttitt, VP & CIO, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and University Health Network, Canada

Sridhar Redla, Consultant Radiologist and Clinical Lead, AI & Innovations Board, Princess Alexandra Hospital, England

Stephanie Chau, Director of EMR Optimisation, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Australia

Stephen Dobson, CIO, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, England

Tamara Sunbul, Medical Director of Clinical Informatics, Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare, Saudi Arabia

Ulla Kuukka, Chief Experience Officer, Apotti, Finland

Victoria Chan, Deputy CMIO, Enterprise Analytics, Physician Lead EMR, Mackenzie Health, Canada

Yaron Denekamp, Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Clalit Health Services, Israel

Vendors/Consultants/Investors

Ahmad Alisa, CFO, Lean Business Services

Alexander Ryan, Director, Hyland Healthcare

Alison MacDonald, Senior Vice President & Global Lead of EHR Implementation, Nordic Global

Andrea Fiumicelli, Chairman, Dedalus

Andrea Sowitch, Global Director of Customer Engagement, Sectra

Arron Edwards, UK Managing Director, Intelerad

Bree Bush, CEO - GM, Command Center & Digital Pharma Solutions, GE HealthCare

Brianna Zink, Senior Director of Global Strategy, WFM, Infor

Carlos Cardoso, Regional Manager, Sectra

Chad Holmes, Security Evangelist, Cynerio

Christian Quimby, President of Healthcare IT Services, ROI International

Christopher Brice, EMEA Healthcare Director, Hyland Healthcare

Daniel Prescott, VP of EPR Transformation Service (Europe & Middle East), Nordic Global

Danilo Fraga, Clinical Digital Transformation Lead, Roche

Dario Arfelli, Global Senior Director, Philips

Darrell Bailey, VP of International Sales, Cynerio

Dimitrios Kakoulis, Strategy Healthcare & Industry Leader EMEA/APAC, Infor

Femi Ladega, Chief Digital Officer, Dedalus

Filipe Ganhão, Associate Partner, Deloitte

Giulia Poletti, Senior Associate, Hg

Guillaume Pascal, Directeur Général (GM), Softway Medical

Harm Mescher, SVP Sales EMEA & APAC, uPerform

Hongxia Huang, VP of Marketing, iMEDWAY

Ingrid Wistrand, Chief Product Officer, Cambio Healthcare Systems

Jacques Baudin, Head GTM & Customer Success EMEA/LATAM, Roche

Jason Jones, Executive in Residence, Rackspace

Jean-Baptiste Franceschini, Co-Founder & CMCO, Softway Medical

Jesse Hodes, VP of Sales and Product, Softek Solutions

Joerg Schwarz, Senior Director of Healthcare Data Solutions and Strategy, Infor

Judy Smith, COO, Ethical Healthcare

Kathleen Aller, Director of Healthcare Market Strategy, InterSystems

Kieran Bamber, Healthcare Director, Tanium

Leon Lerman, CEO & Co-Founder, Cynerio

Leslie Selby, VP & Sales, Epic

Luke Stockdale, CTO, Ethical Healthcare

Marco Giunta, Global Marketing Lead for Healthcare Insights, Roche

Martijn Antonius, Executive Director, Epic

Matt Heath, VP of Business Development, Softek Solutions

Mercedes McCoy, VP, Epic

Michael Lampron, CEO, Mach7 Technologies

Michael Ristau, VP of Global Marketing and International Business, Solventum

Michel Amous, Regional Managing Director EMEA, InterSystems

Nasser Shehata, CEO, Health Insights

Paul Bonnet, General Manager, Vidal Vademecum

Pier Messineo, VP of M&A, Alliances & Partnerships, Danaher

Roberto Anello, Regional President of Northern Europe, AGFA HealthCare

Sara Luisa Mintrone, Group Chief Marketing Officer, Dedalus

Sarah Corbridge, Healthcare Director, Credera

Scott Andrew, Healthcare Industry Director, Dell Technologies

Sherley Brothier, CTO, Softway Medical

Simon Philip Rost, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, GE HealthCare

Sriram Venkatasubramaniam, Enterprise Informatics—Europe and ROW, Philips

Stephanie Berry, Customer Advocate, Philips

Sunita Dash, Director of Product Management, GE HealthCare

Terri LeFort, Nordic International President, Nordic Global

Thor Hvidbak, Healthcare Senior Manager & Client Executive, Deloitte

Tracey Watson, Director of Consulting, Ethical Healthcare

Ubirajara Oliveira, VP of Technology and Products, Bionexo

Velescu Catalin, Director, Solventum

Véronique Lessens, Global Head of Strategy, Marketing & Communication, AGFA HealthCare

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This material is copyrighted. Any organization gaining unauthorized access to this report will be liable to compensate KLAS for the full retail price. Please see the KLAS DATA USE POLICY for information regarding use of this report. © 2024 KLAS Research, LLC. All Rights Reserved. NOTE: Performance scores may change significantly when including newly interviewed provider organizations, especially when added to a smaller sample size like in emerging markets with a small number of live clients. The findings presented are not meant to be conclusive data for an entire client base.

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