Q&A with Beth Lindsay-Wood, Part 1: “Cancer Care Has to Continue.”

There are different approaches that can be taken as an interim leader, but for the most part, the objective remains the same: maximize the impact while minimizing the damage. For Beth Lindsay-Wood, however, the tactic she took at Moffitt Cancer Center was the same has adopted with every role, interim or not. To her, it’s an opportunity to provide an outsider’s perspective on how to do things more effectively, while becoming “part of the organization.”

Recently, Lindsay-Wood spoke with healthsystemCIO about her journey so far at Moffitt, and how the team is leveraging analytics to provide personalized cancer care. She also provided her thoughts on what it means to be a true digital organization, how the organization has pivoted during the pandemic, and what excites her most about the direction of the industry.

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Key Takeaways



* Moffitt, a 30-year old organization built on the campus on University of South Florida, is “very balanced in terms of clinical services and research,” which distinguishes it from other cancer centers.

* Along with its physical expansion (construction of a new facility is being planned), Moffitt is growing its artificial intelligence capabilities to “take unstructured text and make it actionable” at the point of care.

* The ability to offer different options such as virtual visits has required “a big push from IT” in providing desktop, clinical, and research support.

* The three main pillars of Impact 2028, Moffitt’s Digital Transformation strategy, are: precision/personalized medicine, organizational growth, and the digital care and discovery accelerator.





Q&A with Beth Lindsay-Wood

Gamble:  Let’s start with a high-level overview of Moffitt. Obviously you’re a cancer center, but if you could give us some information about the organization.

Lindsay-Wood:  Moffitt is only about 30 years old. It all started with H. Lee Moffitt; while he was a member of the House of Representatives, he pushed hard to build a cancer center in Florida, and it happened. To his surprise, it was actually named after him. He’s still actively engaged today.

It’s located on primary on the campus of the University of South Florida, but it has grown dramatically. We are the only designated cancer center in Florida. We have a smaller hospital because most of our business is ambulatory with treatments, but we are building an expansion hospital on another campus that will be primarily surgical. That’s coming up in the next couple of years.

The exciting thing about Moffitt is that we are very balanced in terms of our clinical services with our research — I think that’s what makes Moffitt unique. In general, and particularly in Florida, there are some top 10 organizations that have a heavy research program along with the cancer services. We have a large research team that does a lot of clinical trials, a lot of drug discovery and different types of things. We have just started an artificial intelligence group with a new Chief Artificial Intelligence officer, and we have a new machine learning group in the research area. And so, from a tech perspective, a lot of very exciting things we’re doing here that you don’t typically see in a large IDN or a hospital based system, which is my background. So for me, this is pretty exciting stuff.

Our growth year over year is dramatic and continues to be. As an IT organization and as a health system, we continue to evolve. We have a large physician footprint, very high-end oncology footprint, and researchers working collaboratively with the d...