Welcome to “Meet the Innovators.” This is a series of stories that profile leaders and frontline change agents working at HCA Healthcare's Bureau of Digital Transformation and Innovation (DT&I, formerly Care Transformation and Innovation). Learn how they have reached it and how they help build a future of patient-centered care.
Meet Jake
It was a typical emergency department (ED). There, the sterile scent of preservatives mixes with the beep. The muffled footsteps of the doctor and nurse rushing from room to room combined with the urgent voices created a scene of controlled chaos. Jake, a 20-year-old college student, was standing in the area where he was observing after being injured in a car accident and motorcyclist was brought in.
Soon, Jake saw the ED team, including the doctor's uncle, and took action to provide practiced trauma care. This day was a fierce scene for the young man who did the job of a young man, but he saw the team treat patients with clinical expertise and compassion. This experience was exhilarating and humble, leaving a lasting impression on Jake and helped shape the decades of his life.
Growing up in Connecticut, his childhood memories include essentially many quality family time and writing programs on his personal computer. Before embarking on his own journey in medicine, Jake continued to be inspired by his family medical professionals, including his uncle, who provided a taste of his first true emergency medical care.
Given his scientific curiosity and his favour of research, young Jake applied for a scholarship with an essay on the possibility that computers could model therapeutic effects on the human body. This has become a reality with advances in AI and protein folding models. During this time, this type of interest and his academic experience led Jake to pursue a career in science at first. However, pivotal events at the university changed his research and future courses of professional life.
While at Dartmouth College, he received an urgent call warning him that his grandmother had been hospitalized with a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Talking to the family about his critical grandmother, he was driven to get out of his depths and to get a better understanding of more information and what was going on with her. At that critical moment, Jake wanted to understand medicine and advance the capabilities of modern healthcare. He enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Medicine, where he found himself energized by the opportunity to help people through medical practice. After graduating from medical school, he completed an emergency medical residency at the University of Pittsburgh and began practicing emergency medical care at a hospital in Virginia.
Career in Medicine: Intersections of Patient Care, Science and Education
Jake O'Shea, MD, MBA and FACEP are currently VP and Chief Hygiene Information Officer for HCA Healthcare and its Digital Transformation and Innovation Agency (DT&I).
“My career path was not linear. I observe my uncle through my grandmother's serious illness, I think carefully about feeling helpless through my grandmother's serious illness, I lead him to medical school and practice emergency medicine. And my passion for patient care ultimately led me towards medical informatics and healthcare technology.
As Dr. Oshea's career evolves, he will ultimately embrace the role of combining medicine and technology two areas of interest: the two. His professional life took a major shift when he was asked to advise on the implementation of a new electronic health record (EHR) in large health care organizations. The chance opportunity allowed him to blend his medical expertise with his passion for improving skills and processes. While serving as Medical Director for EHR, Dr. O'Shea focused on making the system as user-friendly and efficient as possible for healthcare providers. His purpose? It allows care team members to navigate EHR more easily and spend more time with patients.
This experience was the perfect segue for HCA healthcare, and his EHR insights have been an asset for over a decade.
Major Digital Transformations in Healthcare
Dr. Oshea's commitment to advancing healthcare through technology took him on a career journey reminiscent of his childhood. There, his early love of tinkering with his computer worked full time with the EHR platform used by HCA Healthcare.
He first joined the organization as the Regional Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) in the capital division of HCA Healthcare, and was responsible for implementing Meditech Advanced Clinical, including documented physicians and computerized provider order entry at 15 hospitals in Virginia, New Hampshire and Indiana. As the project approached completion, he assumed the leadership role in the capital division's ED service line, and was eventually appointed as the first Chief Medical Officer (CMO) at HCA Healthcare affiliate Johnston Willis Hospital, and later appointed at Chippenham Hospital.
In 2019, Dr. Oshea became the Chief Medical Officer of HCA Healthcare's Capital Division, where Covid-19 emerged, was tested early in his tenure and helped him navigate the department through the diverse challenges of the pandemic. His leadership opened the first Covid vaccine clinic for caregivers in late 2020, paving the way for new healthcare practices. These actions highlighted the importance of clear communication and support among healthcare providers.
Four years later in this role, his extensive background in HCA healthcare facility leadership, departmental leadership and informatics was perfectly aligned so that Dr. Ossia could advance to his current position. In this role, she also serves as an executive sponsor of the introduction of Meditech Expanse. It deploys new EHRs deployed in HCA healthcare companies that transform clinical workflows, as well as many ways to improve healthcare in the age of AI and other advanced technology.
“We are committed to providing a range of services that will help us to improve our lives,” said Dr. Mike Schlosser, Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at HCA Healthcare. “Dr. O'Shea is an incredible leader and healthcare innovator. He builds this key infrastructure around the EHR and informatics agenda, ensuring that our work maximizes the potential to support hospitals, care teams and patients.”
Change your healthcare forever
Founded in 2021, the DT&I division of HCA Healthcare, an evolution of the Care Transformation and Innovation (CT&I) team, aims to expand HCA Healthcare's digital and AI strategy. The department focuses on enhancing patient care, streamlining operations and optimizing business processes through advanced technology and data systems.
Dr. O'Shea's team ensures data standardization, essential for seamless processing and accurate results. The key driver for this is the enterprise's migration to cloud-based EHR Expanse. This drives consistent data collection from the start.
Related Article: (HCA Healthcare Magazine) Strengthen patient care across hospitals with modern cloud-hosted technology
As a modernized EHR, Expanse is more than just a data entry tool. The foundation of the Expanse platform is a standard build across the facility, bringing consistency across the enterprise. When healthcare providers order to hand over the medication to patients in this model, the standardized data behind the patient's journey fragments can be consumed by advanced analytical tools due to Expanse's open platform architecture. The data is analyzed, leaked and spread, informing care team decisions.
Expanse is designed to generate efficiency and improve patient care coordination, captures doctor orders and documentation, and sends information between care teams. Expanse also allows nurses to view patient charts, scan medications from mobile devices, and display print lab labels, to provide convenient access to patient information on the go.
In short, Expanse is an important pillar of HCA Healthcare's future innovation planning organization and relies on having an electronic health record connecting innovative technologies.
As the AI revolution continues, it offers great promises for the future of healthcare. Dr. O'Shea believes that AI is not a substitute for it, but will be deeply integrated into health care, as a tool to enhance human caregivers. One of the challenges he sees is the need to continue to evolve AI models for accuracy and specificity, while managing the critical computing power needed.
The key question for the next 10-15 years is how to reduce the power burden of AI models or find more efficient ways to calculate advanced healthcare solutions. This is extremely important as the demand for AI in healthcare continues to grow and is designed to better meet any touchpoint across patients, care team members and the entire health system.
Related Podcasts: (American Hospital Federation: Focused Hospitals) The Future of Medicine: The Role of AI in Healthcare
“Healthcare people pursue this job because they have a passion for helping others. My passion is to support our bedside caregivers and make it easier for them to help others every day.
Jake O'Shea, MD, MBA, FACEP
Advice from an innovator
The purpose of DT&I is to create a future of patient-centered care by solving longstanding industry problems in healthcare delivery through integration of clinically-led technology into care. In other words, clinical input – means that the clinician's voice comes first.
HCA Healthcare has a critical responsibility to leverage these advances to improve patient care and support healthcare providers. This focus on responsibility and co-innovation highlights the mission of HCA Healthcare. Above all, we are committed to caring and improving human life.
“We'll pursue more about our interests and learn more. If you're interested in AI or mobile technology, be sure you're forced to support others, as you can read related books and articles, listen to podcasts, or gain knowledge on topics, at your core, as they're the fundamental driver for everyone working on health innovation.
Jake O'Shea, MD, MBA, FACEP
