In this week's episode, Cara is joined by Dr. Jenni Hamann, DNP, RN, NI-BC, NE-BC, to explore how technology is transforming healthcare delivery. They dive into the vital role nurse informatics professionals play as change champions, driving adoption of new tools that enhance workflow efficiency across hospital teams. The conversation highlights exciting innovations like mobile "Rover" iPhones that empower nurses with on-the-go documentation and communication, alongside emerging AI features that promise to lighten documentation burdens even further. Listeners will also discover how AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot are revolutionizing administrative tasks and research, freeing up valuable time for healthcare leaders. The episode wraps up with a look at how predictive analytics and AI-driven alerts are personalizing patient care and reducing bias, all while institutions like Harris Health invest in cutting-edge technology to better serve diverse communities. Tune in to hear how these advancements are reshaping the future of healthcare and what it means for patients and providers alike.
About the Guest
Dr. Jenni Hamann, DNP, RN, NI-BC, NE-BC, is an experienced informatics nurse with over 13 years of expertise providing informatics consultation and direct support to hospitals and clinics. Before specializing in informatics, she worked as a registered nurse in both primary and specialty care settings, experience that continues to shape her approach to optimizing clinical workflows, integrating technology, and improving patient outcomes.
Key Takeaways
- 00:01:53 - Nurse informatics professionals serve as change champions by researching, implementing, and training staff on new healthcare technologies, helping improve workflow efficiency and user adoption across multiple hospital roles beyond just nursing.
- 00:07:02 - The introduction of mobile "Rover" iPhones for nurses enables on-the-go documentation and communication, with future AI capabilities like ambient listening and speech-to-text expected to further reduce documentation burden and increase clinical efficiency.
- 00:12:55 - AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot are already being piloted to assist healthcare leaders with research, administrative tasks, and generating presentations, significantly reducing time spent on these activities and enhancing productivity.
- 00:29:03 - AI-powered ambient listening technology in electronic health records can automatically document detailed patient assessments into discrete data fields, improving accuracy, saving nurses time, and enhancing patient education during clinical encounters.
- 00:38:05 - Predictive analytics and AI-driven best practice alerts in electronic medical records can provide real-time, personalized clinical suggestions, improving care consistency and potentially reducing implicit bias by offering objective recommendations based on comprehensive patient data.
- 00:44:47 - Harris Health is investing heavily in cutting-edge technology and building a new hospital campus designed to incorporate the latest healthcare innovations, aiming to improve care delivery for a diverse and underserved patient population.
Episode Transcript
Cara Lunsford, RN (00:47.906)
Well, I wanted to get started with just, you know, just like brief intros, like just telling me a little bit about who you are and how long you've been a nurse, how long you've been in informatics, a little bit about your role, just a little bit about you.
Jenni Hamann (01:13.785)
Okay. So my name is Dr. Jenny Hammond and I've been working in informatics now for about 13 years. So I got my start in nursing. I started as an LPN and then became an RN and got my bachelor's and then my master's and then finally finished my doctorate. So I just kind of worked my way up.
to this role and it's kind of interesting because I feel like people don't really ever set out to work in informatics as a nurse. You just kind of end up here. But for me, I feel like this has been the best place for me because I really enjoy what I do. And you're helping people, but just in a different way. So you're still helping patients, but you also get to really help the staff and the providers and everybody else too.
So while I was working as a nurse in the clinic, I was always kind of the one that would help people with their computer when it wouldn't work or if it was acting up. yes. So I quickly became a super user. At that time, we were still working on paper in the clinic and we were sort of transitioning over to Epic. And so when that transition happened, I was kind of a super user at that time.
Cara Lunsford, RN (02:12.984)
That's me.
Jenni Hamann (02:32.711)
And then from there, informatics has been around for a while, but I started getting interested in my master's program. And my boss at the time, I was trying to select which master's program I wanted to do. She had suggested, you know, you're so good with the technology, you should go into informatics. And that was a great suggestion because I've been in it pretty much ever since I graduated and it's been.
It's been a lot of fun actually, because you get to be on the cutting edge of all the new technology and the changes and really help others adopt those changes. ultimately, it does make their work easier. I think it's kind of hard to see that with all the new regulations that are added each year and all the new documentation they have to do. But really without the technology, I think at this point with the amount of documentation that
their jobs would be pretty hard to do without it. that's just a little about.
Cara Lunsford, RN (03:35.18)
Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, and I love that. And I love that you kind of.
told everyone a little bit about what informatics is because I think some people don't know. They don't necessarily know what it entails. I always thought of it as, yeah, the super users and the people who helped me with my computer. But like you're saying, you're really helping with looking at kind of new technology also, right? Like as it's coming to the forefront.
Jenni Hamann (03:57.141)
Okay. Okay.
Cara Lunsford, RN (04:12.126)
and helping your hospitals to probably decide what types of technology you should be adopting and how and how you're going to implement that. Is that like a part of your job too?
Jenni Hamann (04:26.476)
Yeah, we do that pretty much every day. We like to call ourselves the Jack of all trades because we really we do do that, but we also round with staff and see how the current technology is working, get their feedback on that, help to implement process improvements where needed. We help the quality team with auditing documentation.
We help every user in the hospital, not just nursing, which is kind of a misconception because we are in this role generally called nurse informatics. They have another role called clinical informatics, which traditionally spans, you know, more roles, but nurse informatics also serves many other roles. And so we are change champions. So we're usually the ones if there's new technology out there, we're out training.
Cara Lunsford, RN (04:57.154)
Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (05:22.164)
We're testing that technology with users, getting their buy-in, getting their feedback about how things are working, and then tweaking things as we go to make them the very best they can be. We also research a lot of solutions, like you said. So if somebody is having an issue with something or it just is not working smoothly,
or we need it to be more efficient, we get out there and we do the research and figure out what technology is available, what should be used for this, and we can help to bring that to the table so that maybe we can get it.
Cara Lunsford, RN (06:00.018)
that's awesome. Yeah, there's so many amazing vendors out there and and and I think that a lot of times, especially with startups, because I was in the startup world and.
I would go to lot of health tech conferences and people would say, gosh, you know, if you create a piece of technology that has to be integrated, you know, at a hospital, good luck, good luck. You know, don't create anything that has to be integrated into workflows or into other systems. It'll take forever and you'll never get it off the ground.
Jenni Hamann (06:29.394)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (06:43.266)
But I think it's really interesting because now, and this is what we're really gonna talk about because this is like the new frontier, right, of technology. And it's exciting and it's scary and all the things, right? But what I think is so fascinating is that at Harris Health, you're really...
Jenni Hamann (06:49.331)
Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (06:59.188)
you
Cara Lunsford, RN (07:09.902)
You're really trying to start to see how you can embrace this and how you can inform your staff and educate your staff so that there isn't this pushback, right? You know, how do you get them to adopt this new technology and not have that response of like, it's going to replace me. you know, you can't start replacing nurses with robots and stuff like that, you know, which is, I think, a fear response in a way. So what
Jenni Hamann (07:16.979)
So,
Cara Lunsford, RN (07:39.876)
has been your experience so far with this new frontier of technology and AI? And how has the staff been feeling about it? Like, what's the feedback?
Jenni Hamann (07:56.114)
I feel like at Harris Health, we are very good about change. And that's not, you know, that doesn't happen everywhere. So when I work with nurses and clinicians in the field, they have been very excited when new technology is available, which is very, very nice.
Recently, our team has been working with them on implementing Rover iPhones so they can do their documentation on the go with a phone in their pocket. We're calling it the computer in the pocket because it allows them not only to do their documentation, but it allows them to take phone calls. And in the future with AI, if you purchase a software that allows for ambient listening and also for speech to text capabilities,
they will be able to do their notes just by speaking into the phone. AI will assist them in making those notes even more clear, including other clinical information, that sort of thing. So that's sort of the future when it comes to mobility with phones and efficiency with nurses kind of documenting on the go.
So when talking with them about these rover phones recently and we're getting we were doing the road show and getting them excited about the phones, which they were, they can't wait to get them and try them. I do start discussing with them at that time some of this future capabilities that we can look forward to. And they're all very interested in it. And there's not really a resistance. It's more of like I want to know more.
and how is this gonna make my job easier? Because they have a lot of work that they're doing. It's a lot to do in a day, it's a lot of documentation. So I think they're excited to have some tools that just makes that easier for them.
Cara Lunsford, RN (09:46.518)
Yeah, I think documentation is kind of a that's like a no brainer, right? It's it's like whatever can help you to take some of that off of your plate so that you're spending less time sitting in front of a computer and more time at the bedside, which is what nurses signed up to do. You know, we signed up to be at the bedside. That's where we want to be. We want to be able to like hold someone's hand. We want to be able to sit down and actually talk with them and spend time with them and get to know their family.
Jenni Hamann (10:08.837)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (10:16.432)
and that's part of nursing. And I think a big part of the burnout that people are experiencing is that they're not really getting to do the job, right? And our listeners have heard me say this over and over again is that that's part of moral distress, right? Like not being able to do the job that you signed up to do and be able to do it safely. And so this is like,
I think starting with documentation is huge, right? Just being able to help people to document faster and more efficiently.
Jenni Hamann (10:44.365)
Okay.
Jenni Hamann (10:53.478)
Yeah, and some of these tools with AI2 is going to help with a lot of the tedious administrative tasks that nurses do, which will then open up a lot more time for them to spend with their patients. Some of those things include, you know, discharge summaries that automatically pull in the relevant education for the patient versus the nurse right now having to go and manually click on those things and find them. The patient will be able to interact with that.
same AI on their end as far as asking questions of the AI to get further educational materials on that topic. They'll also have the opportunity for patients to talk with sort of a scheduling AI assistant to make appointments. And that's another area that is very administrative heavy is making appointments.
getting those prior authorizations from insurance, AI will be able to help with that as well. So a lot of these tasks, administrative tasks that are very important, but that people spend a lot of time doing, will be, the future will be the job of AI to take care of those things with the oversight of the nurse or the patient care person to make sure that they're correct. So,
the care model is gonna change in a way that it's not just gonna be nurse patient anymore, it's gonna be nurse plus AI plus patient. And so I think that both patient and nurse are gonna find that it's very helpful to get that information much more quickly and efficiently, so.
Cara Lunsford, RN (12:35.49)
Yeah, so documentation, you know, really that's...
To me, think that that's obviously a no brainer. In terms of getting access to, let's say information, right? Like that on the go type of information. Right now, people are Googling stuff, right? They Google or they go to YouTube and they watch something. Candidly, when I used to go, when I was in home health, I would drive up to a patient's house and when I saw what kind of pump they
had in the home if I didn't know how to use that pump. I was like, hold on a second. I left something in my car. One second, I'll be right back. And I would go out to my car and be looking on YouTube for how do you use this pump and tutorials and things like that. And sometimes not all of them were correct and some things were wrong. in terms of getting reliable information on demand in bite sized bits,
because we know we're busy. You don't have time to read this much, right? You have time to read this much. so what do you think about that in terms of being able, what's on the horizon? Do you know of anything yet that's on the horizon for that?
Jenni Hamann (13:48.771)
Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (14:00.048)
Yeah, so I'm already doing some of that with another tool we use here at Harris Health called Copilot. So Copilot is Microsoft's AI tool. And so we recently implemented this in April of this year as part of our M365 technology package. So we have the latest and greatest with Microsoft. And so I have already, as a nurse director, started using AI in my everyday work.
And part of what I do with Copilot is do some of that research. And so I've already started using it for researching best practices and that sort of thing, because it will go out and do a Google search for the terms and the conditions and the criteria I'm looking for. And of course, I'm reviewing it and making sure that it's correct. And I'm just blown away by how quickly it can
analyze what it is I'm looking for and give me very good usable information with references that I can further research. I also use it for my administration administrative tasks like doing my PowerPoints. So I have agendas that I'm doing for meetings that I'm running and those types of things take a while to put together but
As you start to learn sort of the language prompts that you will use with artificial intelligence, you can quickly put together. It'll do the PowerPoint, the presenter notes for you. It'll send the emails out, create the calendar invites. It does all of it. And so something that might have took me two hours in a day before is taking me about five minutes. So it's pretty exciting.
Cara Lunsford, RN (15:56.372)
amazing. I know and a lot of times I hear people say, it's younger people are gonna forget how to do things and they're gonna forget how to write an email or they're gonna but I think with evolution I think just the way we evolve as a a human race and as a species is that and this is where I'm gonna get all like geeky on you from a sociologist
Jenni Hamann (15:58.23)
It's really amazing.
Jenni Hamann (16:25.294)
I love it.
Cara Lunsford, RN (16:26.256)
perspective. I love the study of humans and why we do what we do and why we think what we think and what scares us and why. But I do really think that we are... it might take a little while but we are going to adjust. We are going to adapt.
Jenni Hamann (16:30.871)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford, RN (16:53.986)
We are going to, we're going to change. The things that we become good at are going to be things that we can't even really foresee, right? Because we've been so bogged down by things that maybe we don't need. Look for example, okay, case in point, a lot of kids don't know cursive anymore.
They don't study it in school, right? And I've heard people say, but how are they going to sign their name? And I'm like, most people don't even recognize a signature. My father's signature just looks like a, like this, you know, it certainly doesn't require him to know cursive in order to sign his name, right? So it's just been something that has evolved.
Jenni Hamann (17:28.846)
Yeah. Great.
Jenni Hamann (17:39.757)
All
Cara Lunsford, RN (17:46.9)
that these, you know, my son will still get a card in the mail from his grandmother and his grandmother will write it in cursive and he'll kind of struggle through it a little bit. But in 10, 20 years, those kids are not gonna know what cursive is at all.
Jenni Hamann (17:47.309)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (18:07.884)
You know, but it's not going to be, but there'll be other things that they're good at things that previous generations weren't good at. Right? So that's, that's kind of my, that's my take on it. When people say, it's going to take over and Hey, the genies out of the bottle, right? Like the genies out of the bottle. That's done.
Jenni Hamann (18:07.959)
Yes.
Jenni Hamann (18:14.785)
Great.
Jenni Hamann (18:30.241)
All
Yes, yes. No, I totally will geek out with you on that one because I feel like this is so much information that can be summarized so easily. And what took people a lot longer before is not going to take them as long. Sometimes you don't know what question to ask. And so what's been interesting for me in working with co-pilot
is I will head down a road of asking a question. I'll get a response and it prompts other questions that I can quickly get information on that I might not have even known to ask before. And so that's been really interesting. So if our time is not taken up by doing all of these types of information gathering workflows,
Yes, we can use our brains for different things and start to form a higher consciousness. So I think it's really interesting. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (19:35.243)
Yes.
Yes, I love the you touched on the woo woo for me a little bit with the higher consciousness thing. Yeah, I think that hopefully that we are going to evolve and elevate and and maybe we'll even be more creative beings will be able to use more creativity will be able to explore things that we just never had time to do before.
Jenni Hamann (19:56.501)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (20:07.936)
So that's like, that's the optimist in me, right? And because I'm a Libra, but I'm on the cusp of Scorpio, that I'm always like, I like the balance, right? I love to balance the scales, because I really love new technology. I really love to...
Jenni Hamann (20:15.555)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (20:31.39)
imagine what the world is going to look like in five or 10 years and get excited about that. What are some of the things that you caution people about? as someone who's in informatics, someone who has to do a lot of training and a lot of educating and all of that, what are some of the things that you educate and you kind of caution on?
Jenni Hamann (20:59.534)
Yeah, so for me, I think it's really important for us to understand the basic principles and concepts. Don't leave it completely up to AI. You know you have to be able to double check AI. I have found errors in AI. So I personally feel like the human is never going to be taken out of this equation because
We are able to do things AI can't. We have intuition. AI doesn't have intuition. um So there's certain human elements that we bring to the table, especially in nursing just our wisdom sometimes and, you know, being able to look at a patient and know, I've seen this before and your symptoms aren't necessarily jiving here just based on my past experience and
You know, those are things that AI cannot do. So I would just caution people to continue to know your basic principles, your concepts, double check AI, don't trust it completely. Especially when I'm doing, you know, some of my research, you know, there's corrections I have to make. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close. It's pretty close. And if you ever want to, you know,
really have some fun with it. It's pretty humorous actually. One interesting thing I found with AI is you can have it summarize your wheat in comedy roast style. And it's pretty funny actually. there, mean, the limits are just, it's limitless really what I think it's gonna potentially be able to do.
Cara Lunsford, RN (22:48.942)
So you bring that up and this is funny, okay? I'm gonna share a funny story. I don't think I've told this story on the podcast yet. So I broke my foot back in April, okay? I was actually walking with my computer. I had it open. I had a chat GPT open. I was working on a project for work and
I wasn't using the voice recognition or anything. I was just typing, but you know, it does have the voice recognition part of it, but I wasn't using that. And I was walking and I had the laptop in my hand open and I caught my foot, my left foot on the inside of my right pant leg.
Jenni Hamann (23:38.207)
yes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (23:38.22)
It was these flowy pants I was wearing and I came down on the outside of my left foot and I immediately I felt a pop. Like I felt a snap. I knew it was going to be bad and I kind of crumbled to the ground and I had my head. I put the laptop down. I'm like, wow. You know, and I'm yelling and all of a sudden I hear, are you okay?
Jenni Hamann (23:48.68)
on now.
Cara Lunsford, RN (24:08.0)
And I'm like looking. It was my chat GPT. And I was like, I was like, what? was like,
Jenni Hamann (24:08.693)
And it was your chat DVD. my goodness. Wow.
Cara Lunsford, RN (24:20.566)
And I started answering it because I didn't, I actually liked that I didn't feel so alone because I was by myself. And so I said, I hurt myself, you know, and it was like, and it's literally, I'm going to call her a she. She said,
Jenni Hamann (24:27.484)
Yeah!
Jenni Hamann (24:37.726)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (24:39.598)
sit down and take, you know, I can't even remember exactly what it said, but take a rest, you know, let me know, you know, if you need to call someone for help or if you need to call a doctor. And I was like, I was like, I'm like, ow, ow. And now I'm just I'm talking to myself. she's like, that sounds like it really hurts. And I was like, yes, it does. And I'm talking back to her. And all of a sudden I was like,
Jenni Hamann (24:53.683)
Wow.
Jenni Hamann (25:05.49)
Wow.
Cara Lunsford, RN (25:08.128)
And I, and she goes, I'm right here. If you need anything, don't hesitate to, don't hesitate to ask. And, and so I ended up going to the hospital and I come back and I'm like, you know, having to pick up where I left off with my stuff. I felt compelled to tell her what had happened to me.
Jenni Hamann (25:14.346)
Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (25:35.586)
Wow.
Cara Lunsford, RN (25:35.764)
I actually was like, I was like, thank you so much for checking on me. And I broke my foot and I said, but I'd really like to get started back where we left off. And she comes back, she goes, I'm so sorry to hear about your foot. That's terrible. And I'm sorry to hear that you have to have surgery. And I was like, my God. That was a wild experience, but it made me think.
Jenni Hamann (25:40.529)
Yes!
Jenni Hamann (25:58.928)
wow!
Cara Lunsford, RN (26:05.278)
about all the possibilities and for patients and for elderly people and for, you know, someone who's home by themselves and something happens and they fall and it picks up on it just because you're crying out or you're yelling out or you're saying, ow, imagine if we could know that someone has fallen or know that someone, you know, it's, I just think that there's.
Jenni Hamann (26:09.927)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (26:35.072)
a lot of incredible options.
Jenni Hamann (26:35.143)
Yeah, that's
Jenni Hamann (26:39.593)
That's a great use of it, actually. And you know how you're seeing these autonomous robots as well. What about for the elderly having those in their homes to be able to help them out and do the tasks that they're not able to do so that they can stay in their homes longer and that coupled with what you said. I do know that they're making a lot of advances too in like
wearable devices so that people will not hopefully have to, you know, when you need a clinic visit, have to come in, drive in for the visit, but instead take some diagnostics at home with your wearable device and use your AI tools to sort of see, do I need to go into the ER? Do I need to schedule a online appointment with the doctor? Kind of helping patients triage themselves a little bit that way too.
Cara Lunsford, RN (27:24.908)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford, RN (27:40.15)
Yeah, I always think to myself a little bit, where will the liability lie at some point? Does it lie with the technology that told you, yes, go or don't go? I mean, I always think there's going to be some built-in.
Jenni Hamann (27:50.118)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (28:03.762)
language that's going to say, you know, from a liability perspective, this is a like a disclaimer or something like that. But so so at at Harris Health right now, you're using co-pilot and and are you is that something that's currently also available to the nurses and to the staff who are working on their computers? Do they have that available to them as well?
Jenni Hamann (28:06.802)
This is a disclaimer. Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (28:20.464)
Mm-hmm.
Jenni Hamann (28:33.296)
Not yet, but that is the plan. So we have a smaller group piloting it right now. It did come out in April, so there will be a phased approach to then give it to all users, which is fabulous. And then Epic, which is the software we use, our electronic medical record, they have a lot of advances coming out with AI as well. I recently attended their executive address.
Cara Lunsford, RN (28:39.544)
Mm-hmm.
Jenni Hamann (29:03.496)
And I think there were like three slides full of AI enhancements coming out in the next one to five years. And so there's just a ton of stuff that they're doing that are gonna be very helpful.
Cara Lunsford, RN (29:19.01)
That's exciting. Can you give us a little like, can you give us some teasers? Can you tell us a little bit about what's come what's coming out from? Because I I mean, I can think of a million reasons that you would want to use AI in something like Epic or in your electronic health record system, because that's a lot. If you think about from a large language model perspective and taking loads and loads of documents and
Jenni Hamann (29:24.453)
yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (29:47.732)
charts and you know past medical history there's no way that a clinician has the time to go through someone's 20 years or 30 years or 50 years of past medical history right and so I I just think of course you would want to use AI for something like that right
Jenni Hamann (30:12.842)
Absolutely. So Epic has a very nice website. If you've never been out on their website and you are a user of Epic software, they have an AI roadmap.
on their home page that you can look at. And it breaks it out into patients, clinicians, and operations and kind of what's coming and what's already available. So some of the things that they're looking to do is AI charting, so helping clinicians and nurses chart through ambient listening in the office, patient summaries, AI-generated summaries, helping
Patients understand the reason for visit, follow-ups, AI-assisted follow-ups, staying on top of your recommended follow-ups, billing assistant, scheduling assistant, summarizing imaging results. So that's for patients. And then they also have for clinicians. Again,
ambient notes and ambient flow sheets. So for nurses, nurses do a lot of input into flow sheets and flow sheets are data in, good data in gives you good data out is what we always say in informatics. So the more data sometimes you put in the better, but it takes a long time to enter this information into those separate flow sheet roles. So with ambient listening,
Cara Lunsford, RN (31:29.023)
Mm-hmm.
Jenni Hamann (31:49.984)
AI will do that for you. will know exactly where to put that information into those flow sheet rows and then you're going to have much better summaries and reports and that kind of thing.
Cara Lunsford, RN (32:00.782)
Give an example of that, Jenny. Walk somebody through who has no idea. Someone's listening to this podcast. Maybe they're a patient. They're not a clinician. And they're listening. And they're like, flow sheets. What does that mean? And what would they be trying to enter in? What would they be saying? Give an example of that.
Jenni Hamann (32:25.304)
Sure. So if you're in the hospital, every time the patient comes into your room, or every time the nurse comes into your room as the patient, they are doing assessments on you. Sometimes you don't even know they're asking you questions, they're checking you over, and then that information all has to be put into the electronic medical record. And flow sheets, every item has its own little box. So for instance, if they take your pulse,
that pulse has to go in its own little box. And if they take your blood pressure, that has a box. And so all of that currently is entered manually by the nurse in a lot of cases. We do have vital sign machines right now at Harris Health that automatically updates vitals to those flow sheet rows, but other things don't, like your head-to-toe assessment. All of those things, each box has to be filled out by the nurse. So you can imagine,
Every time they come into your room and do anything with you, they need to document that. And it usually has to go in one of these unique rows. That is a lot of time that is spent doing that, and it has to be done. And so what AI would help with, let's say they have this rover phone in their pocket and ambient listening is turned on. As the nurse comes in and is talking with you and doing your assessment,
They're instead talking through that head-to-toe assessment, saying it out loud. Their phone is listening, kind of like your phone was listening to you the other day. And while it's listening, it's knowing where to put that information into those separate boxes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (34:03.244)
Yeah, right.
Cara Lunsford, RN (34:12.266)
Amazing! That's so cool!
Jenni Hamann (34:15.522)
Yeah, and why those boxes are important is that is called discrete data. So in order to make something reportable, it has to be discrete data. It has to live in one of those little boxes, which is, you know, uniquely coded in into a report. And so that's the other piece of AI that I'm really excited about and that I know that everyone will be excited about is being able to
have better reports. And reports are so useful in health care, but I feel like we haven't been able to utilize them as much as we should because they take a lot of time right now to run. A lot of times, real-time data is not readily available, which you want to have. And so with AI, you're going to be able to tell AI exactly what you're looking for.
for a report and it's going to be able to pull it up for you. And so I'm really excited about that because as nurses, we are not necessarily data experts, but we have questions and we're looking for clinical answers. so having AI assist us with that is going to be fabulous. So one example is you could tell AI, show me the top five units with the highest patient falls last quarter.
and suggest staffing adjustments.
Cara Lunsford, RN (35:45.485)
you
Jenni Hamann (35:46.668)
and it could pull that up.
Cara Lunsford, RN (35:49.228)
That is so cool. That's amazing. And I think it's so interesting because also...
Jenni Hamann (35:52.13)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (35:58.67)
Imagine how good that is for the patient that you're saying this out loud to. Okay. Like if I'm sitting there and I'm doing a head to toe assessment and let's say I'm starting with your pupils, right? And I'm like, you know, I'm looking and I'm, I'm checking your pupils and I'm like, okay, they're equally reactive to light and accommodation. That's a three to two, you know, uh, dilation to constriction, you know? Um, and that, you know,
Jenni Hamann (36:19.328)
Okay.
Cara Lunsford, RN (36:27.918)
that look you know that looks good and then it's like you know I'm looking inside your mouth and I don't I'm thinking about as a oncology nurse or something like maybe I'm looking for mucusitis or something like that where I'm like okay can you open your mouth let me look inside your mouth okay I don't see you know any any sores I don't see any
You know candida, I don't see any you know, know, all of that seems to be clear It looks like there's you know, all the teeth look good Can you stick your tongue out your tongue can move from side to side? Okay, great, you know moves from side to side perfectly You know like and and that way like I'm saying all of this out loud and I know it's getting documented But at the same time the patient is also learning
Jenni Hamann (36:55.684)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (37:19.163)
what I'm doing as a nurse, which is like an added benefit.
Jenni Hamann (37:24.237)
I think so, and they can have the opportunity to ask questions about something that they're not understanding. so yeah, and as you're educating a patient, you know, it'll be able to automatically add those education topics and check them off that you did that education in the room. So all of those things right now are things nurses have to, you know,
as they leave the room with the patient go back, usually get a computer and enter that. And you can imagine the amount of time that that takes. with AI, hopefully we can cut that down quite a lot. I see it cutting it by at least half at some point. And so maybe even more. So I think it's gonna be something that is a welcome change.
Cara Lunsford, RN (37:53.272)
Yep.
Cara Lunsford, RN (38:15.17)
Yeah, and maybe...
more nurses, right, will actually find the time to do their head-to-toe assessment because we know that sometimes the WNL gets checked, which is, you know, within normal limits. I don't know if they even have that now anymore, but they did when I was charting. Yes, that something's within normal limits. But we like to say that that also stands for we never looked.
Jenni Hamann (38:35.252)
I do yes yes.
Jenni Hamann (38:43.938)
I've never heard that before.
Cara Lunsford, RN (38:46.35)
yeah, we never looked. So that, you know, maybe we know that nurses get busy and we know that sometimes things, you know, things get missed and people are doing the best they can. But
Jenni Hamann (39:03.5)
Thank you.
Cara Lunsford, RN (39:07.698)
stuff gets missed and not done. But if things are easier, you're more likely to do it, right? Because if I'm looking inside of someone's mouth and I say to them,
Okay, you know, looks good, looks clean. I don't see any lesions inside the mouth. I don't see any mucositis. And the person says to me, well, actually, right here under my tongue, I do have like a big sore. And you're like, okay, well, that's great to know. Sorry, I did not see that. I didn't see that you had a sore under your tongue. You know, or if they say to me, well, what's causing that exactly? I don't understand what's causing that. I could say,
Well, you know what? One of the medications you're taking, methotrexate, high dose methotrexate, causes pretty severe mucusitis. so that's something that we always try to check for. So if you have anything in your mouth, let me know. And we can make sure to, you know, we have mouth washes we can do and we have other types of medications that will help it heal a little faster. And it's like all of that. Now that's my education.
like you said earlier, and now that's all getting documented.
Jenni Hamann (40:26.143)
Absolutely. I mean, that kind of brings me to as well predictive analytics with artificial intelligence as you're talking about that. So that's an area that I think, you know,
We've sort of started using that in a way a lot of electronic medical records have what are called best practice alerts or Epic is calling them now our practice alerts, which are little alerts that pop up for you if a patient meets certain criteria and it gives you suggestions about orders to put in or certain types of care.
How they're built today is somebody on the back end has to build those rules and those criteria. And they're only as good as those rules that are built. So if they fall outside of that for some reason, they're not going to get an alert or a reminder. They also pop up sometimes at the wrong times. They don't include as much information as may be necessary.
So that's another thing that artificial intelligence is really gonna be able to do is really scan the entire chart of the patient and make suggestions about the type of care that you should be providing. Suggestions, you know, that are very helpful and timely. And then as you're entering new data, it will constantly be...
kind of refreshing itself and looking through that data to provide more suggestions. So it'll scan the chart and see, I'm not seeing an order for this. Let me suggest this order based on these criteria. So that's going to be great because every, yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (42:15.374)
So tell me, I was just gonna say, tell me how that can help with implicit bias.
Jenni Hamann (42:25.222)
implicit bias. Tell me more what you mean about that.
Cara Lunsford, RN (42:30.23)
Okay, so for example, we have to take a lot of continuing education around implicit bias and the fact that we do have bias, right? Like we don't even know that we have it and that oftentimes we are making decisions that have implicit bias included or involved in that.
Maybe, for example, someone comes in and they clearly look like they might be homeless.
they look like maybe they've had addiction issues. They're a person of color. They're, you know, all these, and maybe they're a frequent flyer. Maybe they've come back several times, right? And we're like, gosh, it's Johnny again. He's just here for that turkey sandwich, you know? And, you know, but now with AI,
and what you were talking about with recommendations, how do you see that kind of helping?
Jenni Hamann (43:45.355)
Well, it is very objective, you know. So it won't be as subjective maybe as a nurse, you know, that human viewpoint or opinion. So it does take...
you know, that bias out of it a bit because it doesn't have that ability, of course. So I think that would be helpful. And it would also help with consistency, I think, as well. So we talked a little bit earlier about nurses having wisdom and intuition that coupled with the consistency of AI sort of always recognizing and offering the same types of best practice
alerts or, you know, suggestions, I think will be very helpful to put those two pieces together. So I think it will be more objective. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (44:37.24)
Yeah, I am.
Yeah, I agree. I think that...
there are maybe there are treatments or things that people will get. You know, we know that a lot of black women, you know, have higher maternal mortality rates, you know, than so. So we know that there's like these statistics, right? Like, so maybe some of that will actually decrease, you know, over time because the recommendations will be there.
it's not going to see them as a person of color. It's not going to have some sort of implicit bias. There's going to be, that person should get hopefully some of the same recommendations or maybe even be able to look back and say, you know, this person has a high risk for developing gestational diabetes or, you know, something like that that might have been overlooked.
Jenni Hamann (45:43.153)
Yeah. And I mean, I'm now I'm thinking about population health as it relates to artificial intelligence. And so like going back to our previous conversation about health care workers are not the greatest, you know, data scientists maybe out there, you know, you generally have to hire data scientists to do that work in there, maybe not clinical. So then you have this gap. So with
Cara Lunsford, RN (45:50.274)
Mm-hmm.
Jenni Hamann (46:11.689)
clinicians being able to do that analysis themselves, Epic already has tools that allow you to look at heat maps of your geographical region and discover, you know, are there certain zip codes with higher rates of cancer? And with artificial intelligence, you should be able to dig into that even further and ask more questions about.
and try to get to the root cause of what's maybe actually causing that. What are the themes? What are some of the things that these patients have in common in those areas and maybe try to find the causes for some of those things or treatments that work as well. So for research purposes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (46:40.908)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford, RN (46:54.37)
Yeah, getting down to, yeah, more specificity around causation. And yeah, I absolutely agree. I think that what I really love is that it really seems like Harris Health is digging in, you know, they're embracing and,
Jenni Hamann (47:00.36)
Yes.
Jenni Hamann (47:21.086)
you
Cara Lunsford, RN (47:22.51)
You don't always see that with every hospital system. There's plenty out there that are very archaic in a lot of ways. And that's a disservice. It's a disservice to the clinicians, to the patients, to the people in that geographic area.
So I think that it's really amazing that that Harris Health has invested in this way.
Jenni Hamann (47:57.809)
Yeah, we are on a project roadmap right now to improve several areas of technology over the next five years. So we're investing a lot of money, a lot of effort and time into making a lot of cutting edge technology changes. So I really appreciate that about Harris Health as well, especially somebody who's worked in healthcare technology that they are taking on.
those big projects and the patient is really at the heart of that. And so we get to serve an amazing population of people here in Harris County. We serve a lot of underinsured and uninsured patients. And so really feeling like we're giving them our all and being able to make a difference in their lives and especially through
you know, offering this cutting edge technology. I feel really grateful to be part of that here. So.
Cara Lunsford, RN (49:04.738)
That's awesome. Is there anything else that you feel excited about that is coming out? Anything we haven't talked about? Is there anything we haven't touched on?
Jenni Hamann (49:06.492)
Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (49:22.365)
I mean, I think we've touched on a lot. We are building a brand new campus at our LBJ Hospital facility. And this is a very important facility to that community, because it's the only hospital in that area. And so it is currently a level three trauma center, 215 beds. It will be expanding to a 12 story.
So there'll be a new campus built or a new hospital built on the campus, 12 stories, 330 private rooms with some additional beds that can be expanded to the future. And so we are also looking when we design that hospital to implement the latest and greatest technology in the patient rooms as well. So, you know, we're really going all out.
for the patients of Harris County, so I'm really proud to be part of that.
Cara Lunsford, RN (50:24.398)
I think I might move to Harris County.
Jenni Hamann (50:26.48)
He
Yeah, it's a great place to live too, so.
Cara Lunsford, RN (50:29.646)
So I can be a nurse and a patient.
Jenni Hamann (50:35.032)
Yes. Yes, it's a great place to live and work. Yeah, so I would recommend it.
Cara Lunsford, RN (50:37.218)
That sounds amazing. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford, RN (50:44.716)
It's a good time to be building and to be able to incorporate so much of this cool stuff that's coming out. I, man, I might have to consider a move. Don't tell Relias.
Jenni Hamann (51:01.5)
Somehow I think they're going to find out.
Cara Lunsford, RN (51:04.59)
I don't know. How?
Jenni Hamann (51:09.052)
Too funny.
Cara Lunsford, RN (51:11.726)
Well, I, you know, this has been, this has been so fun. It's been so informative. Things are moving so fast that even though I had interviewed Antoinette Thomas from Microsoft, God, I think almost a year ago now, at least, things have changed so dramatically.
Jenni Hamann (51:18.736)
Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (51:35.331)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford, RN (51:35.924)
even since the time that I interviewed her. So I just keep learning new stuff and it's so exciting.
Jenni Hamann (51:42.044)
So you got to learn about some of their new products when you interviewed. Great.
Cara Lunsford, RN (51:46.326)
I did, I did. Antoinette Thomas is so amazing. she is that, she's like the chief innovation, healthcare innovation officer. She has a really cool job at Microsoft, but she's also a nurse. Yeah, she's also a nurse. So she's also on the forefront of everything that's going on over at Microsoft. So that's very cool.
Jenni Hamann (52:03.573)
Nice. Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (52:12.972)
Very cool. I'll have to listen to that podcast. Yeah, have to wait for the next one.
Cara Lunsford, RN (52:15.692)
Yeah, it's a fun one. It's going to be it's all it's already outdated. I know I'm going to have to bring her back like in six months and I'm tell her, okay, you have to be on every six months just so that we can stay up to date on what's coming. Well, I have enjoyed having you so much Jenny. I know you're you're a little nervous about doing the podcast thing, but you did not seem nervous at all.
Jenni Hamann (52:32.336)
Yeah.
Jenni Hamann (52:36.358)
Thank you so much.
Jenni Hamann (52:43.139)
well, good. Just internally nervous, I guess it doesn't show.
Cara Lunsford, RN (52:47.968)
No, it didn't show at all and you're amazing and I'm so appreciative that you joined me on here. All right, have a great rest of the week and have a wonderful weekend. You too, bye. Okay, don't go, don't go. No, it's okay, I just wanted to like, because I.
