Clint Cetti, Global Director, Strategy and Innovation, AT&T Business, joins Cheddar News to explore the digital transformation and future in healthcare that's changing the experience for patients, doctors, and researchers alike.

Opening Bell

Healthcare's Digital Transformation

today's edition of creating connections is powered by 18 T business internet dedicated internet access that allows us to bring the news to you in today's era of empowered health care consumers. Healthcare providers must deliver a superior patient experience to remain competitive. And joining us now to discuss Clint city Global Director of strategy and Innovation at A T and T. Business, Thank you so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit about the digital transformation in healthcare over the past couple of years. Well Asia, you know, a few years ago, health care was thrust whether it wanted to be or not into change and really put in place digital processes that have previously just been on drawing boards, proof of concepts and small scale deployments. Um you know, we've really seen a shift from hospital to home and increases in virtual care more of an adoption to cloud, in which these things are really the pillars needed to fully transform care. So as an industry, we're maintaining that momentum and transforming care delivery and we're doing it in ways that lower cost and maintain the, I guess the the the intimacy if you will but improve value and experience for both the patient and the clinician. Yeah, absolutely. Can absolutely see that from the pandemic and the shift that we've seen. I'm wondering how edge to edge technology is changing, how we view what's possible in healthcare. We've really done it and continue to do it by making more health care in points mobile and the network more intelligent through edge computing. You know, the health care field is now one of dreams becoming a reality. We see untethered, boundless extended reality for behavioral health and physical therapeutics and even more effective training for staff. We've seen a lot of high turnover there. We've got to get better at training and we're also using ai based cameras to monitor our care rooms that really reduce the impact on staff while improving the awareness of our caretakers and maintaining privacy for those patients that are being monitored. And this isn't just with 5G but also with fiber, we're connecting providers to clouds so they can compute at the edge as if their data center was inside of their hospital. Um You know, we're only touching what's possible. Um and when you can actually make it feel like these applications of big data sets are inside your hospital, you really improve processes like radiology and surgery and you know, again, we're only touching what's possible and in a field of dreams, we're building it and they're coming to the call of transforming care. Yeah, it sounds like there's so much potential here to change the way things are done. Something that struck me about what you said earlier is the intimacy and the personalization that's happening. How has the patient experience changed all the way from intake to outcome Malaysia. It has improved for some patients and some health systems, but the experience wasn't all that great to begin with as we all know. So it's becoming what it should have been, but it's not what it can be quite yet. We all have a long way to go and really by implementing digital front doors, consume arising telehealth which we all enjoy now and narrowing the gap on health equity by including secular in a lot of these things so that we're not assuming connectivity is where it needs to be with the actual patient, we can bring it with us. We've got a great start and what we found is that easier access to care in and of itself improves outcomes merely through early frictionless participation and these great investment advancements in wearables and devices that don't even need to sit on the person, you know, we've got the wearables and then we have things that are just in our ecosystem, they're all powered by A T and D. Connectivity and this is truly a great digital story in healthcare and encourages more focused on transformation that five G can absolutely deliver on. Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot of efficiency but also equity at the heart here, how is the digital transformation actually making patients smarter though and also more well informed on their own health care. That's that's a great question and really the now too soon is care anywhere making those things more mobile but we're working towards a future of always under care, meaning that if we're always, you know, within our uh our ecosystem of awareness within this data coming back and forth Um and within our own participation taste, we're sharing this lifestyle data with our healthcare insurance companies. Um it allows them to lower lifestyle risk and our own health journey they really want to coach. They want to provide insights um so that we can be informed and act and with the medical providers we share our data to improve medical interventions and outcomes no matter where we are. In other words wearables and Ai will provide patients or consumers real time assessments of their health versus really point in time snapshots during traditional business to medical offices and really well informing both risk reduction and medical medical outcome improvement. And this is where consumer and medical devices together serve to inform us about our health. I want to talk with you about risk because we know that health care is attractive to hackers, how our providers keeping themselves their patients and other records safe in this digital transformation. Yeah. And I'll tell you it's it's it's a really good story. But you know the fact that medical records sold on the black market are a greater value than an individual. Social security number um is just atrocious uh and as more medical devices get connected. The threat vectors increase. 5G. has a great story here because more intelligent, based more intelligent networks based in software can really raise the level of cybersecurity postures within healthcare and help mitigate attacks at every step along the way of your journey And that includes our clients using the federal government's first net network which is the only network by the way to provide tower decor encryption. We're all getting better at security and importantly, health care priorities have gotten a lot better at leveraging. You know, companies with cyber expertise like A T and T to conduct audits, hippo assessments and provide you know, security operations, centers management. It's it's gotten a lot better but we still got a long way to go because they're not going to rest. Yeah, that's comforting to hear that there is um some solution at hand as these changes are coming into play in real time and you mentioned some of these incredible outcomes and all of the potential here. How do you think the digital based health care will continue to expand in the future as a sector? Well as we move to the ability to constantly share our lifestyle and medical data with our with our care support network and we can do it. It's very self controlled ways we will always be under care and the word patient will eventually probably go away with proactiv and contextual care awareness. I'm not a patient, I'm Clint or you know, your asia and our care network knows us and with this reliable, secure and fast connectivity care in the home, not just monitoring becomes a reality that we can all get behind And our investments in 5G and fiber are connecting these distributed care networks and helping healthcare become what it has always wanted to be. And that's a care partner in our own journey. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that future. You describe that's Clint steady. Global director of strategy and innovation at A T and T Business. Thank you so much for joining us. Clint, Alright. In A T and T business is keeping your business connected with A T and T five G, of course, fast, reliable, secure, visit A T and T dot com slash network services for more information.