Darren Dworkin, CIO, Cedars-Sinai, Chapter 1

“Innovation in hospitals isn’t new.” It may seem like an obvious statement, but as most health IT leaders can attest, it’s not. In fact, it’s a common misconception. The reality, says Darren Dworkin, CIO at Cedars-Sinai, is that innovation has always been a core philosophy at academic medical centers. What’s novel is the focus around delivery of care, and the pivotal role digital technology can play facilitating communication and enabling patients to become more engaged.

At Cedars-Sinai, innovation has always been part of the culture, whether it’s by being an early adopter of Epic’s Care Everywhere, working with Apple as a foundation member, or creating a “living lab” for startups through its Accelerator program. For Dworkin, this philosophy is the only way to move forward in the ever-changing health IT landscape. Recently, we spoke with him about the evolution in consumer engagement (and what it means for CIOs), how the recent Cambridge Analytica saga “opened peoples’ eyes,” the most significant way in which the CIO role has changed since he started 12 years ago, and what gets him most excited about the future.

Chapter 1



* Cedars-Sinai’s recent growth through affiliations & partnerships

* Early adopter of Epic’s Care Everywhere

* Using Apple’s Health App to “transform and translate data into consumer-centric tool.”

* Patient feedback: “I’ve downloaded my record — now what?”

* Lessons learned from early CPOE installs

* Consumer access to data: “Once you have it, you are your own custodian.”

* New twist on informed consent



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Bold Statements

The fun part all these years later is that we’re now getting to enjoy what some of the benefits are when you have this agile system installed and in place.

We continue to believe really strongly in the fact that we are trusted custodians of our patients’ data, but we certainly don’t own that data. It is our responsibility to make sure it’s available to them wherever they are.

Our assumption is that Apple will begin to create an ecosystem of applications that plug and play with Apple Health in a trusted and secure way so that patients can not only access their information, but begin to make use of it.

Getting patients an HTML copy of a C-CDA is not what they really had in mind. What they had in mind was being able to ‘download’ their medication lists and understand what they mean.

There are enough people out there who have secondary use plans for that data that might be slightly nefarious or slightly more commercially-minded than patients really understand, and I think it’s important for folks to understand who they’re consenting to have their data, and what it means.

Gamble:  Thank you so much, Darren, for taking some time to speak with healthsystemCIO today.

Dworkin:  It’s my pleasure.

 

Gamble:  I know most, if not all, of our audience is familiar with Cedars-Sinai — you’re a nonprofit academic medical center based in the Los Angeles area. Are you affiliated with any other health systems?

Dworkin:  Like most health systems across the country, we’re experiencing a lot of growth and pursuits of affiliations and partnerships. We are our own entity as Cedars-Sinai health system, and within that family is an array of ambulatory sites that we’ve affiliated with and brought into our various groups. Most recently, we’re proud of the fact that Torrance Memorial in Torrance, California has joined us through an affiliation.

 

Gamble:  And what’s the size of that facility?

Dworkin:  It’s roughly a 470-bed facility.

 

Gamble:  So this is a pretty big initiative.

Dworkin:  It is, and it’s characteristic of a lot of what’s going on i...