Rasu Shrestha, MD, Chief Innovation Officer, UPMC, Chapter 3

We’ve all heard the expression, ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’ and in any industry like healthcare where costs are skyrocketing, it seems like sound advice. But if you strongly believe that the basket — in this case, innovation — is the future, perhaps it’s time to rethink it, particularly if your organization has invested so much time and resources in this area.

For years, UPMC has worked to build a foundation for innovation that focuses on “substance backed by academic and scientific rigor to create products that are effective,” says Rasu Shrestha, who holds dual roles as Chief Innovation Officer at UPMC and Executive VP of UPMC Enterprises. In this interview, he talks about how the organization is leveraging its innovation arm to develop better care models, the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ when it comes to acting as one strategic group, and the ultimate goal of making technology “as invisible as possible.” Shrestha also discusses what it will take to improve interoperability, and why he’s excited about where the industry is headed.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Best-of-breed approach – “It gives us an advantage.”

* Using social determinants to get “the true patient story”

* Incorporating data outside the EMR – “Care doesn’t just happen within the hospital walls.”

* The “natural evolution” of VP for Medical Information Technology to CIO

* Value of a strong team

* UPMC’s strategic framework: “We’re doing a lot of great things.”

* Creating a culture to “fail fast and succeed often”



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Bold Statements

Care doesn’t just happen within the walls of the hospital or clinic where we’re spending maybe 20 minutes with the patient. Care happens outside of those walls, and there are data elements and attributes that need to be interoperable to allow us to have a much broader perspective.

It’s about building bridges. It’s about connecting the dots across all of these disparate entities. But it’s also about converting those data elements to information, and converting the information to knowledge by marrying it with evidence-based guidelines and clinical best practices and protocols.

Innovation isn’t just about data and getting data right. It’s not just about fancy charts and analytics; it really is about behavioral change.

We’re trying to impact how healthcare continues to play itself out, not just within the organization and the geography we influence here in Western Pennsylvania and more broadly, but across the industry.

Gamble:  Another issue I want to touch on is interoperability. Obviously, this is a significant challenge. We often hear people say that it should have been baked into Meaningful Use, but rather than go back and try to fix something that’s already happened, what do you think it’s going to take for the industry to start to see some progress here? I know this is a very big question.

Shrestha:  How much time do we have? I’m a big believer in interoperability or the need for interoperability. That was one of my charges at UPMC; it’s such a unique environment. Sometime back, we decided to go with the best of breed approach, even in our decision to go with Cerner as our main EMR in our inpatient areas, and Epic as our EMR across all ambulatory care venues. So we’re both Epic and Cerner, and we then have a different EMR for oncology, and a number other solutions in our ancillary care areas. It’s a best-of-breed that we’ve embraced, and while in many ways it poses a challenge,