University of Utah Health’s Victoria Tiase on Digital Health & Nursing: “We’re at a Real Inflection Point.”

The level of innovation happening in healthcare is off the charts. Digital tools are being leveraged to transform the way care is delivered and increase efficiencies — that is, when it’s done right.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. As the pressure to advance is ratcheted up, solutions are increasingly being developed without input from those in the trenches, and as a result, often stumble out of the gate.

University of Utah Health aims to change that with the Digital Health Initiative, which was established in 2022 to “cultivate a thriving research community” and provide the guidance needed to “get transformative tools to the bedside and do it in a scalable way,” according to Victoria Tiase, who serves as Director of Strategic Development. The differentiator for DHI — and a significant selling point in her decision to move from New York to Utah to help lead it — is involvement from nursing leaders.

Nurses “are in the room having conversations with patients and families,” she said during a recent interview with Kate Gamble. “Can you imagine capturing all of that data and being able to very quickly understand the needs when a patient is discharged and getting all the appropriation done in advance? There are huge efficiencies that could be gained there.”

At Utah Health, harnessing those efficiencies is a core objective, according to Tiase. During the discussion, she spoke about how the organization strives to foster innovation and help guide ideas to fruition by providing “digital health domain expertise.” She also talked about the tremendous value nurses bring to the leadership table; the catch-22 when it comes to innovation and burnout; her participation in the Future of Nursing 2030 initiative; and her message to vendors.

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Bold Statements

The fact that we are not always including clinicians is a problem. Researchers are designing these tools without the bedside folks, patients and clinicians, and then asking them to try them. And they might provide very valuable feedback that might not go anywhere.

We had a couple of listening sessions last year and we thought, let’s bring that in-house and let’s stand up a software development core and see if that might help if we put money and resources behind it; that way, it can serve as a resource for digital health researchers.

‘For any of you in the audience who are looking to fund a project or create some sort of tool, it’s all on the care coordination space. We still don’t have good tools for that. If you can figure out how to do that and consult with nurses on the best ways to do it, that would be a huge win.’

The way we fix the documentation burnout and burden is by having tools that can help support nurses and create efficiencies. The hard part is that we don’t have time right now for them to provide input. It’s a really tricky balance.

Nurses are in the room with patients and families way more than physicians. They’re having conversations with patients and families. Can you imagine capturing all of that data and being able to very quickly understand the needs for when the patient is discharged and getting all the appropriation done in advance?

 

Q&A with Victoria Tiase, Strategic Director, Digital Health & Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah

Gamble:  Hi Vicky, thanks so much for joining me. It’s been a while since we last spoke. So, you started with University of Utah in June of 2022.