Next-Generation Innovations in Healthcare with HSS CTO Bashir Agboola

On the 13th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Bashir Agboola, Chief Technology Officer at Hospital for Special Surgery. HSS is one of the preeminent medical institutions in the world, specializing in orthopedics and providing care to patients from over 100 different countries. Today, Bashir shares his perspective on digital transformation, the exciting technologies HSS is deploying to improve patient outcomes, and insights into upcoming step changes in the healthcare industry.

Quick hits from Bashir:

On HSS utilizing 3D printing: “We have the first in-hospital 3D printing of joints. This was a project we did in collaboration with a European company to set up an FDA regulated facility at the hospital to print the joints for acute procedures. So for things like that of course you might think, ‘3D printing, is that digital?’ Of course…it's all along the line of digital transformation. The modern total knee replacement was developed at HSS close to 50 years ago. So being able to do 3D printing of implants for those acute situations is just in line with that tradition of groundbreaking innovation.”

On HSS accelerating its digital transformation during COVID-19: “We went from an organization that as of 2019 probably had less than 1% of our workforce working remotely to within March of 2020, a third of the organization was working from home, so we had to enable that technology. For me and other infrastructure and operations leaders in healthcare it was ‘finally, yes. This is what we've been saying all along, we need to focus on digital workplace transformation…’[For perspective], in all of 2019 we had less than 1500 telehealth sessions. 12 months later, we had over 123,000 telehealth sessions.”

On the future of healthcare delivery: “The future of healthcare has us consuming care virtually more and in ambulatory settings whether it's in-home or in a clinical setting. To put things in perspective, for the first 150 years of HSS, we did surgery at the hospital. In the last five years, we've opened a number of ambulatory surgical care centers where you go in, you get that meniscus tear repaired and you go back home. You don't have to stay in a hospital setting.”

On blockchain’s use cases for healthcare: “People have also talked about tackling the problems of counterfeit therapeutics, which is a big problem, particularly in the developing world. There are counterfeit drugs in pharmacies all over Africa and other parts of the world. Leveraging the blockchain to track the provenance of that drug or any other thing for which you want to track the provenance, the decentralized nature of the blockchain can allow us to do that.”

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Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer, Luke Reiser