Episode #4 - Ada Glover, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Zus Health

Written By Omar Mousa

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Description

Concept to Care speaks to Ada Glover. Ada is a Co-Founder and the Chief Product Officer at Zus Health, a patient health data platform designed to help provider organizations drive impact with a comprehensive understanding of their patients and populations. At Zus Health, Ada leads product development and clinical strategy teams. Before the founding of Zus Health, Ada was an Executive Product Director at Athena Health. At athenahealth she was responsible for the revenue cycle, clinical, and value based care products.

In our conversation, we discuss:

  • Discover Ada's journey transitioning from the field of education tech to health tech, along with her guidance for those contemplating a similar career shift

  • Delve into the founding story of Zus Health and their overarching product strategy

  • The customer problem Zus Health set out to solve and the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) for their customers

  • Deep dive into Zus Health’s Aggregated Profiles and Zaps

  • Introduction to healthcare data, their standards, and how Zus Health enables interoperability

  • Ada’s personal outlook on today’s electronic health record landscape

  • The sneak peak into the future of Zus Health’s product

  • Current state of the health tech industry with respect to data limitations, data standards, regulatory/compliance, and technical feasibility

www.concepttocare.com

Show Notes

Where to find Ada Glover:

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Where to find Angela and Omar:

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Referenced:

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ada Glover: You think, okay, great. I'll connect to this feed and I'll get the data and off to the races. Unfortunately, that's not the case. And so we do spend a lot of time educating folks that have not tried to go down that path themselves on the complexity, the number of different connections, the different formats, the multiple duplicates, even if it's all coming from something as simple as Google. A medication. Well, you have some data coming from the EMR, some coming from the pharmacy. How do you unify that into a single picture? 

[00:00:31] Angela Suthrave: Welcome to Concept to Care, where we hear candid stories of success and failure, discuss strategy, and dive into the details. details that offer advice on what to do and what not to do in health tech, 

[00:00:43] Omar Mousa: whether you're a seasoned pro growing your career or just starting out.

[00:00:46] Omar Mousa: Our aim for this podcast is to be relevant, real world, and tactical. We're dedicated to not only entertaining you all, but also empowering you with actionable insights that can be applied beyond the podcast, one concept at a time. 

[00:00:58] Angela Suthrave: This is Angela 

[00:00:59] Omar Mousa: and this is Omar. 

[00:01:00] Angela Suthrave: Welcome to concept to care. In today's episode, we're talking to Ada Glover.

[00:01:06] Angela Suthrave: She's the chief product officer and co founder of Zeus Health, a patient health data platform designed to help provider organizations drive impact. With a comprehensive understanding of their patients and populations. At Zeus, Ada leads the product design and clinical teams. She loves setting strategy, digging into complex data, and creating care team experiences that are simple and relevant.

[00:01:29] Angela Suthrave: You're going to hear about how she got to Zeus. Additionally, in this episode, you'll hear about the founding story of Zeus, what its strategy is. We're going to do an introduction on healthcare data, including interoperability, and we'll talk to Ada about her outlook on electronic medical records. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

[00:01:56] Omar Mousa: Ada, welcome to concept of care. We're excited to have you. I'm 

[00:01:59] Ada Glover: very excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:02:02] Omar Mousa: Yes, of course. We were really excited to get this on the books. Just to start things off, why don't you go ahead and tell us about yourself? 

[00:02:08] Ada Glover: Um, so I think from a career perspective, I'm someone that's really passionate about solving sort of big systemic problems, um, that have complex stakeholders, complex dynamics, um, and have a lot of room for technology to, to make a difference.

[00:02:22] Ada Glover: Uh, that sort of led me to a career in healthcare, although that's not where I started, and it's also led me to a role in product management that really brings together some of my business expertise, um, and skills. I started my career in management consulting. As well as some of my sort of technical intuition and expertise as well.

[00:02:42] Ada Glover: Uh, there were moments in my education where I thought about being a software engineer and have always sort of enjoyed tinkering and building things. So, a really nice way to combine those two passions. I'm currently the chief product officer at Zeus Health, which is a startup focused on the patient data interoperability space.

[00:03:02] Ada Glover: Prior to that, I was at Athena Health and led product teams across that organization. And then outside of work, I live in the Boston area, grew up here, love it here. I'm a busy parent of 2 elementary age kids, which is a really fun age. And then you'll occasionally in the warmer months find me on the Charles River.

[00:03:24] Ada Glover: I did rowing on and off and throughout my education and have picked it back up in the last couple of years and 

[00:03:30] Angela Suthrave: really enjoy it. You mentioned that you were in consulting. That's where you started your career and your career has spanned it in, um, ed tech doing product. And then, uh, you switched careers and now are in health tech at Zeus.

[00:03:46] Angela Suthrave: Tell us a little bit about how you were able to make those transitions. Both in function as well as industry. And what advice do you have for folks who are looking to make similar transitions? 

[00:03:57] Ada Glover: Yeah. Um, it's a great question. I think in all of those moments, it was sort of a combination of. Luck, uh, a lot of self reflection and thinking about both, what am I, where do I have skills and expertise and, um, what am I passionate about?

[00:04:13] Ada Glover: And then really thoughtful, intentional patient networking, um, with a clear story about why. So, uh, my first jump was from Bain where I did management consulting into the ed tech world. I was fortunate enough to do some pro bono work in education and really appreciated sort of the mission driven aspect of it and was also interested in doing something a little bit more operational.

[00:04:38] Ada Glover: Uh, somebody I worked closely with had the opportunity to start this new EdTech startup and I threw a number of conversations, was part of the founding team there, but was able to position sort of my expertise from that consulting work. As well as my education in the tech with a tech background, um, and just.

[00:04:58] Ada Glover: Desire to roll up my sleeves and work hard and join that team. I think my transition from Zurn, which is my ed tech startup to. Athena was a little bit more intentional. I was interested in moving. Back to the Boston area, I was interested in continuing that sort of mission driven thread. There were a lot of things I loved about education, but I also.

[00:05:22] Ada Glover: Understood that the role of technology in the classroom is often sort of secondary because that relationship between teacher and students is so precious. And so I thought health care would be a really nice sort of lateral move that had a lot of the same. Sort of ingredients of education, multiple stakeholders, big data problem, sort of structural mission, critical area on a national scale.

[00:05:48] Ada Glover: Thank you Um, but because the interactions were much less sort of consistent and much more disparate, I thought the role for technology would be, um, more powerful. And so I was able to sort of identify that to a ton of research on the various players. Athena Health came up time and time again, um, and I also learned about myself that I wanted to be in an organization that had a larger product management presence, um, I sort of.

[00:06:15] Ada Glover: Figured it out as I went in my first startup and really wanted to be part of a team. And then I sort of checked all of those boxes and then I spent a lot of time really perfecting that story of how does my education expertise translate to healthcare? Why is my startup experience compelling to a larger organization?

[00:06:34] Ada Glover: How does my consulting experience help me with some of the client management problem framing strategic thinking and then leveraging sort of my network to find the right introduction. Um, it was fortunate enough to have. You know, 4 or 5 months to do that job search and. In many ways landed exactly where I wanted to be, so a little bit of luck, uh, and some intentional thinking and storytelling along the way.

[00:06:59] Angela Suthrave: And Ada, you mentioned, you know, a piece of advice that you have is to be very clear about your ask. 

[00:07:04] Ada Glover: Yeah, so one of the things that I learned from that experience is to just You know, refine that story, be patient about who you want to be introduced to, um, make those asks really clearly, um, and concretely, uh, and have at least some constraints to your ask.

[00:07:22] Ada Glover: I think I often talk to folks that are looking for a career job. And are very open ended. I don't know if I want to be in a big company or a small company. Do I want to be in a tech centric company or care delivery centric company? Do I want to be on the data side or sort of the user experience side?

[00:07:39] Ada Glover: There's so many parameters. I find it really difficult to help folks in those moments. And so really doing the legwork of, hey, I noticed you are connected to these 5 people. I'm interested in these couple of companies. The reason is. You know, at the time I, I, it is important to me personally to be in the Boston area.

[00:07:58] Ada Glover: I want to be in a larger company. I want to be in a technology company that powers a core workflow, such as an EMR, like just having that clear story makes it a lot easier for folks to support, um, job seekers. And sometimes you have to guess and be willing to be wrong. But I think that ties into sort of my skillset as a product manager.

[00:08:19] Ada Glover: Hypothesis driven. I'd rather have a clear hypothesis and an ask and put it in front of a potential user to have them tell me, nope, garbage, uh, then to sort of ask very open ended, unspecific questions, and then be left, uh, you know, without that engagement. 

[00:08:37] Angela Suthrave: Yeah. So I heard you say a couple of things. So number one, don't be afraid to talk about transferable skills, even if they don't directly apply.

[00:08:45] Angela Suthrave: I think a lot of times what happens is you read a job description and it's, Completely intimidating what I need to have, how many years I need to have these skill sets. And, uh, that may not always be the case. And so if you have transferable skills, you should be able to speak to those. And then the second thing that I heard is a lot of times I feel like the tendency is to be very broad with keeping your options open.

[00:09:10] Angela Suthrave: And I'm hearing you say, no, you should put your intentions out there, be very specific so that people can help you. 

[00:09:16] Ada Glover: Yeah, I think that that's right. And it may mean that you have two or three sort of floating hypotheses on your intentions at a time. Um, you know, transparently, I was talking to a couple of health care organizations and a couple of education organizations, um, and, you know, had a slightly different story there, uh, and that's okay.

[00:09:35] Ada Glover: Uh, that's, that's a natural part of the search, but in those individual conversations being specific. 

[00:09:41] Omar Mousa: Yeah, I agree with all those sentiments. It's a bit frustrating sometimes when you get those conversations or those asks and you're like, well, please, like you need to do a little bit more work before you talk to me.

[00:09:51] Omar Mousa: But yeah, 100 percent align there. Um, let's talk about the founding story of Zeus Health a bit and how that was informed and the inspiration there. You are the co founder and the product leader of the business. What was the inspiration and founding story of Zeus Health? And then what sort of problems did you guys set out to solve and how has that evolved over time?

[00:10:14] Ada Glover: I'll start with my story and then I'll sort of, um, meshes up with the rest of the founding team of Zeus, uh, very nicely. So I was at Athena health and a lot of the problems that I was personally working on were how to bring more longitudinal care into the EMR. And I think EMR is driven by a lot of these top down meaningful use requirements.

[00:10:35] Ada Glover: As well as mostly fee for service foundation of our health care system are very transaction encounter oriented. And I was talking to a lot of customers that were saying, well, I'm a value based care organization. I want to treat a patient over time. I want to understand what's happening with them. Um, I want to bridge my population health strategy with my EMR, um, and watching this happen, uh, and yet having sort of a long list of requirements to check for the next round of certification and the next set of features, um, was something that always pulled at me.

[00:11:10] Ada Glover: And so this was a problem that I was very eager to solve. In parallel, so Jonathan Bush, who started and led Athena health for over 20 years, I had the opportunity to cross paths with him a handful of times during our mutual time at Athena. And then, um, this was also a problem that I think was near and dear to his heart.

[00:11:30] Ada Glover: And in fact, uh, there were. Many efforts in the organization to try to edge towards this problem, but after he left, he sort of popped back up a couple of years later and said, you know, I want to try to solve this problem from the outside in without the burden of all of these workflows, all of these, uh, requirements, all of the claim based, um, polls, uh, what would it look like to really create a.

[00:11:57] Ada Glover: Data platform that can serve ongoing comprehensive care. And so this is where luck comes in a little bit. Um, I was starting my job search and ended up being reconnected with Jonathan for just a career advice chat, uh, as I was starting to think about what I wanted to do next and, you know, start, he started talking about, I want to start this thing.

[00:12:19] Ada Glover: I want to make it real. Uh, I think I'm going to call it Zeus and that was the beginning. Um, and I ended up. Helping put together the vision, do some of the early research and become part of the founding team. And so I think, again, this passion about a specific type of problem married with the right opportunity brought me here.

[00:12:41] Ada Glover: From a business perspective, I think the fundamental problem we're trying to solve is that healthcare data is still, and patient data in particular, is very siloed. And moreover, when you do start to see interoperability happening, um, it's often happening with a delay, so that freshness that you can act on is missing.

[00:13:01] Ada Glover: Um, it's also been very difficult to make sense of because there are numerous different formats, things are still very much modeled after the document, the facts, so it's difficult to make sense of this data. And then it's difficult to actually build experiences on top of it, because often it's sitting in an analytical database or a stack of documents.

[00:13:21] Ada Glover: And so the vision was really, what if we broke down those silos? Made the data clean and usable and actionable and then let folks really innovate the kind of experiences you could build with, um, a different sub basement, a different sort of underlying infrastructure that led us to initially focus.

[00:13:42] Ada Glover: Pretty broadly, because we're thinking about that stack of how do you aggregate data? How do you keep it fresh? How do you clean it and make sense of it? And then how do you start building workflows on top of it? Um, in particular, we saw a lot of digital health startups that were all building very similar care team facing applications and thought, what if we could demonstrate the power of building in a less siloed way by building one of these applications?

[00:14:07] Ada Glover: I think what we found was It's a lot of scope, a lot of vision, and part of my role has been to focus us down. And so today our core product is called the Zeus Aggregate Profile, the ZAP, which really focuses on aggregating, monitoring, and keeping up to date, cleansing, and sort of micro summarizing this data for very specific workflows.

[00:14:30] Ada Glover: That was a lot, but, um, hopefully that'll give you all a sense. 

[00:14:34] Angela Suthrave: Yeah, we're excited for this episode and we're gonna, we're gonna break things down. Yeah. So we'll get into the data and it might get a little technical, which is fine. I wanted to know a little bit more about who your customer is. So you talked about these population health entities needing a longitudinal record.

[00:14:52] Ada Glover: Yeah. So I think what's interesting about Zeus is we have a, we have a somewhat diverse customer base. I think where we were born in the, in the middle of COVID and the era of this digital health boom. And so a lot of our early adopters, tried and true organizations where these tech enabled sort of digital health, um, sometimes call them like focus factories that really zero in on a single population and, and sort of leverage the best of hybrid care to deliver sort of an always on coherent experience.

[00:15:23] Ada Glover: Um, so some of these organizations are helping. Provide wraparound care for oncology patients, or maybe they're innovating in the primary care space. Uh, or maybe they're, you know, extremely focused on a subset of, um, populations that have, uh, certain mental health issues. And that's really the core, uh, place that we started.

[00:15:46] Ada Glover: I think what unifies this group is this always on care A focus on sort of technology as a, as a driver for innovation, um, and, uh, and also this role of being accountable for the full patient experience instead of outcomes, but not necessarily being in the middle of a health system where they have their tentacles in, in every last part of care.

[00:16:12] Ada Glover: So that was sort of the focus. Where we originated, I think where we've expanded as we've grown has been, um, two areas. One is kind of more traditional medical groups, um, often ones that are ambulatory focused. And so have this sort of blind spot visibility challenge around what's happening with their patients outside their practice, uh, as well as value based care organizations that again, Are providing these types of services on a greater scale, maybe working with some of these brick and mortar, smaller practices, helping them take on risk.

[00:16:44] Ada Glover: But I think the key characteristics are interest in that entire patient journey, that treatment relationship where they're providing care to the patient and. Oftentimes lack of visibility into what's happening and, and, uh, in, in scenarios where the patient is likely to move around outside the organization 

[00:17:03] Omar Mousa: that makes a lot of sense.

[00:17:04] Omar Mousa: Uh, totally could see how that is high value. You're broadly solving for an interoperability problem, but tell us a little bit more about the product aggregated profiles and zap. What is that? Exactly? How should. Folks expect to see that take form. 

[00:17:20] Ada Glover: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so the zap, we like kind of fun Z originating names is sort of our name for the patient profile.

[00:17:30] Ada Glover: Um, and we really think about that being a living breathing object. Uh, so we do a couple of things. First of all, we connect to as many external data sources as possible. Some of those are kind of out of the box. National networks that we pre connect to some of our customers are starting to also bring their own connections in the form of more local or regional data sources.

[00:17:53] Ada Glover: We also try to whenever possible connect to our customers directly so that we really bring together a comprehensive view. Uh, 1 of the other things we do in this phase is. Constantly refresh the zap. So the way a lot of these national networks are built, their query base, you have to go out there and refresh.

[00:18:11] Ada Glover: And traditionally that happens only when the patient is being seen in the office. Well, it turns out that these always on care models really need to take a proactive stance. So we'll do things like try to make sure that the discharge summary is available following a hospitalization, um, which is a more proactive mode of care.

[00:18:31] Ada Glover: All of this sits on a fire based data store. So, um, we're fortunate to have come about in the era of adoption of fire and agreement there. Um, and so we've adopted that holistically. Everything's in a patient centric view. So we. Unify a patient's identity, which means that if multiple folks on Zeus are treating the same patient, they get seamless care coordination as as part of the experience.

[00:18:57] Ada Glover: And then we build what we call lenses, which are different views of the data, and these can work at the individual patient level, or it could be rolled up. For more of a population of you, but really try to pull together data from across all of our resources to tell a coherent story. So you might have a lens for the chronic conditions that a patient has been diagnosed with, but in addition to just the last diagnosis date, you may want to know, um, information about.

[00:19:25] Ada Glover: Whether this is chronic information about who else has diagnosed it, what's the specialty of the provider that diagnosed it, all this metadata that lead to the second and third tier types of questions. Um, another example is again, that post discharge example turns out. You need to know when the discharge happened, but also what medications have changed.

[00:19:44] Ada Glover: And did the patient actually pick them up? And oh, what other orders were placed as part of that discharge? Is the patient home health? Have they been admitted to a SNF? We're trying to chase down that complete story through both our data networks, but then also how we summarize the data. We manifest those summarizations into our own UI, which is embedded in a handful of EMR partners.

[00:20:05] Ada Glover: Uh, we also have our own application, and then we provide our customers with an analytics based access, uh, that they can use to power their own analytics. Uh, we're working on some out of the box tooling there, um, that's fairly lightweight, or they can unify it, um, with their existing analytics, uh, stack.

[00:20:24] Omar Mousa: That's really cool. I, as you were talking, I mean, Angela's nodding as well, but I just, I feel like all these, some of these, these cases, like, we're in many of the startups that we've been a part of, we were trying to solve those with data or different tooling sets. And so it resonates a ton, um, for the unfamiliar buyer, um, healthcare is riddled with lots of different.

[00:20:48] Omar Mousa: Specialties, personalities, expertise, skills. Um, I could imagine a technical product like this is pretty difficult to understand or like really conceptualize. Cause you mentioned a lot of constructs there, like lenses and, uh, you know, like, so in various profiles. And so like, what are, I guess, how do you guys solve for that?

[00:21:08] Omar Mousa: Cause I imagine it's like pretty abstract at first and hard to explain. Like, where is the, where's the magic happening? How are you getting it to be more palatable? 

[00:21:17] Ada Glover: Yeah, I think, um, I think that's a great point. Um, and I think the fact that we span across these various steps and create this more unified, um, experience is also unique.

[00:21:28] Ada Glover: So you might have somebody that's an expert in one string, but helping tie it all together. Into a coherent product is definitely something. That's a challenge. I think 2 things. Um, 1 is just explaining the complexity of the problem, right? You think, okay, great. I'll connect to this feed and I'll get the data and off to the races.

[00:21:51] Ada Glover: Um, unfortunately, that's not the case. And so we do spend a lot of time educating folks that have not tried to go down that path themselves on. the complexity, the number of different connections, the different formats, the multiple duplicates, even if it's all coming from something as simple as a medication.

[00:22:08] Ada Glover: Well, you have some data coming from the EMR, some coming from the pharmacy. How do you unify that into a single picture? What if the patient switches from a generic to a brand, but is essentially on the same medication? How might you treat that? How might you group those, right? All of these little nuances, the more we can bring examples, use cases, and then statistics on the complexity of the data, the more this really comes to bear.

[00:22:33] Ada Glover: And then. There are, uh, you know, increasingly folks somewhere in these organizations that have rolled their sleeves up and poked at some of these things themselves and are realizing how painful it is. 

[00:22:44] Angela Suthrave: I think along those lines, you, one of the things that you talked about was, uh, FHIR, which stands for, uh, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.

[00:22:53] Angela Suthrave: Can you talk about What that means and what why that's important. 

[00:22:57] Ada Glover: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and thank you for breaking down the acronym. We have so many acronyms in health care and I know those can be hard to keep track of, um, so fire is sort of in the long list of different health care data standards that have come about over time.

[00:23:12] Ada Glover: Um, I think. Two things in my experience that make it unique. I think one is it's not necessarily transaction oriented. So I think the first places where interoperability really blossomed in health care was I need to send a claim from here to there. I need to send an eligibility transaction, an order, a prescription, right?

[00:23:32] Ada Glover: But that doesn't have the depth of the full picture of the patient. You then have these lovely things called CCDAs, uh, which were documents, XML behind the scenes that are assembled, um, to represent an entire encounter or sometimes a longitudinal view of the patient, but they were documents, right? It's a snapshot or a one time event.

[00:23:52] Ada Glover: I think FHIR is a big push in the industry to break things down into their component pieces. So you may have a condition resource, even medications are broken down into a medication statement. Sort of a statement that a patient is on something versus a request. So a prescription most often and a fill.

[00:24:11] Ada Glover: Um, and so I think it's the 1st standard that really gets to that, that layer of depth and is really targeted toward the provider user. There are a few other standards that have gained traction in more of the research and realm. And so I think a, the design of this, I think, is purpose built for a lot of what we're trying to accomplish and do.

[00:24:34] Ada Glover: And second of all, is we saw as part of this 21st century, um, cures in the latest round of certification, sort of a more, uh, government driven enforcement of adoption. Um, so this is across the board, you know, some of the first patient access APIs for payers are leveraging FHIR, for providers leveraging FHIR.

[00:24:58] Ada Glover: Um, there are multiple industry groups that are really thinking about how to transact and how to integrate through FHIR. And so, um, it's really becoming a common language. In a way that I'm really excited about still a really long way to go. Most of the data we see today is still kind of these older school formats.

[00:25:19] Ada Glover: Although there are pushes to adopt fire, most emrs and payers may expose data to be read in fire formats, but you have to write it back in proprietary. Uh, forms, so a long way to go, but a lot of progress. 

[00:25:34] Omar Mousa: So I, I'm very familiar with the, the discharge use case. Um, my current place, the current startup, we leverage ADT feeds.

[00:25:42] Omar Mousa: We, we want to look at the, like, I'm just going to name drop the file, but the ADT, I think it's like a 0 3, right? There are fields that we're looking for. We're trying to find our patients that are getting discharged and we want to catch them as soon as possible so we can impact conversion really like that's for us.

[00:25:57] Omar Mousa: Um, so that's like one jobs to be done, right? Product people love the jobs to be done framework. What are the jobs to be done broadly, and what are you seeing most commonly? Like, what is the number 1, if you were to say the distribution of your customers, like, what are they all trying to do predominantly?

[00:26:14] Ada Glover: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think about it as like 3, I'm a framework person. Three categories. I think one is finding these blank or stale slate moments where you're about to see a brand new patient. You might make so many decisions if you understood more about who this patient was. You know, how long should their appointment be?

[00:26:38] Ada Glover: Who should be at that appointment? Can I pre populate some of my documentation? Can I tailor some of the questions I'm going to ask? Organizations put a tremendous amount of work at the patient level and helping support these, these new moments. And so that was sort of our first area, this get up to speed moment.

[00:26:57] Ada Glover: And that's where embedding in the EMR and extracting and summarizing all this data has been really powerful. Uh, a lot of it is just getting a reasonable portrait of. Two things. One is the patient's medical history. So you just understand from a human to human perspective what's happened to you. Um, patients are not, they're reliable sources of that information.

[00:27:20] Ada Glover: I know we've all been handed the clipboard. And then two, what's the sense of this patient's risk level? Is this somebody I have to sort of bear hug and work really closely with and give tons of support? Did they just get discharged from the hospital last week and suddenly I'm, it turned out they had no PCP and then here they are, or is this a reasonably healthy person so you can change the resourcing, the tone of the conversation, et cetera.

[00:27:46] Ada Glover: So that's a really major job to be done. That actually has a, a lot of subcategories before it, I think. Catty corner to that is reengagement. And we work with a lot of folks that work with very vulnerable populations that phone numbers may change who may be difficult to reach, even though, you know, they need you.

[00:28:08] Ada Glover: And so we have these really magical stories of. A difficult to engage maternity patient that suddenly went on a baby aspirin, and that's an indicator of a, of a key symptom that indicates rising risk. And suddenly, with the new phone number, you found, or the new, um, piece of information, you were able to reach re, engage that person in the, in a more effective way.

[00:28:34] Ada Glover: So that's another piece is sort of in these in between care moments. How do you make sure you don't have those blind spots? The next area is how do you provide extra support when emergent care happens? Yes, the discharge summary is, is a really simple one. But again, our value proposition is really how do we provide all the context behind that?

[00:28:56] Ada Glover: It's not enough to have just that ADT. You need to know what happened. Where are they going next? What instructions were they given? Did they follow those instructions? Who are the, who are their other caregivers and family members? Like, how do you really help support them in that moment? Um, so that's a really important one.

[00:29:14] Ada Glover: We're looking at other, Similar moments like, oh, this patient might have an upcoming appointment with a specialist. Maybe this is a moment to follow up afterwards, really see how things are going. And then lastly, there's this ongoing care. So quality measures, care gaps. One thing that we often see is some of these quality gaps really require clinical Uh, data points, um, that might not be available through a claims feed, for example, and so how can we marry that information with a more clinical view, um, and save somebody an extra trip to the lab or realize that no, actually, this is a worthwhile outreach.

[00:29:54] Ada Glover: Uh, how do you see if that patient did follow through with that specialist? Get a grasp on what those notes were and whether their meds changed so you can follow up accordingly. So those are some of the use cases. I think the common thread here is these moments where you need to summarize, um, and where you as this sort of responsible provider may have some of these blind spots, but a lot on the line in terms of the patient's outcomes and your own performance and some of these value based care arrangements.

[00:30:25] Omar Mousa: Ada, from a product perspective or the technology perspective, this is all made possible by sitting on top of. A couple data networks, there's an orchestration piece here, and there's obviously a lot of proprietary on top of that. But can you just talk a little bit about the networks that are being leveraged and why you leverage them?

[00:30:46] Omar Mousa: And then, like, what's actually IP versus not? And, you know, there are competitors in the space. So if I know it's like a 3 parter here, but if you could talk about the competitors as well, like, would love to understand. Kind of get that breakdown. 

[00:31:00] Ada Glover: Yeah. So I think we're really fortunate to stand on the shoulders of giants.

[00:31:04] Ada Glover: I think there's a wave of both more government funded local and national, um, networks as well as, uh, other organizations that have, have realized this need and so, uh, infinite gratitude to those that came before us, as is always the case. Uh, we leverage, uh, Partners across a couple of different areas, EHR data, um, mostly through Commonwealth care quality, these big national health data exchanges, although I'm starting to tap into more regional players as well, the hospitalization we've talked about ADT.

[00:31:38] Ada Glover: Pharmacy and some lab data as well. And so having that multi layered combination, I think, is something that's really powerful and providing a little bit of that 1 stop shop from the perspective of not having to then unify all of that data and invest, uh, You know, for our customers to invest their own resources in in building that single view.

[00:32:01] Ada Glover: I think in terms of what's unique, I think it's a couple of things. I think 1 is, as I mentioned earlier, because we have access to a diverse set of data sources, really trying to think. Uh, critically about how we can bring that together whenever possible. I also mentioned we try to understand what's happening to the patient within our customers walls so that we can use some of the hints they may have to think about what's coming next.

[00:32:25] Ada Glover: And so really building out that intelligence, I think, is something that's unique to Zeus. I think 2nd, just all the normalization cleansing. A lot of folks are doing it. I think one of the things that's unique to us is because we're building some of the summarizations, some of the UIs, starting to build out some of the analyses, we see all of the complexity and the warts and the mistakes and the opportunity to improve.

[00:32:49] Ada Glover: It's very different, I think, to look at a data quality score of what percent of your conditions have a, you know, valid code on them and look at it from that technical layer versus. To identify the, you know, 99th percentile of most longest problem lists and go through them side by side with a clinician and realize that you could rule out a chunk of those because they're actually symptoms and not conditions that you could collapse a bunch of them into a single grouping because they're all just one big group.

[00:33:22] Ada Glover: Variants of the same diagnosis, um, that aren't clinically significant. I think that's the kind of work that I think makes, uh, Zeus unique, um, and helps continue to fuel that, that, that value proposition I'd say the last piece is because we have that sort of unifying patient behind the scenes, um, longer term, I think there's an interesting opportunity to really feel care coordination, um, beyond this more.

[00:33:50] Ada Glover: Network based, more ambient, um, observation of, of what's happening with the patient. 

[00:33:55] Angela Suthrave: Thanks for sharing that. So with Zeus, there is this longitudinal record versus. I think historically the data has been more fee for service oriented where it's episodic. And so with a longitudinal record, can you bring it to life and talk about what it means for a member or a patient and maybe share any success stories that you've heard from your customers?

[00:34:18] Ada Glover: Um, I think from a member's perspective, there are a couple of things that are really important. Um, I'll touch on three of them and I think some common themes. I think one is not having to be the carrier of all that information. It's one thing to roll your eyes when you have to fill out the same patient history that you always do in the, in the office.

[00:34:37] Ada Glover: But it's another thing to really have a complex set of conditions that you You just truly don't know what medications are you on, what happened, um, or maybe there's something you're not quite confident about and not a, not willing or comfortable talking about. I think having an informed counterpart in the form of a provider that can really tactfully guide you through that.

[00:35:04] Ada Glover: Um, make you feel comfortable, take that burden off of you is, is really powerful. So I think that's one. I think two is, um, the ability to, again, have that proactive intervention when you need it most. Um, so, you know, we go through our lives mostly. Hopefully reasonably healthy and not wanting to go to the doctor.

[00:35:29] Ada Glover: And in these moments, when something does happen, it's often overwhelming. You have to navigate a phone tree, figure out. Who do I even call, um, having a more proactive sort of partner on the side of the care organization, I think really changes the tone. And then I think lastly is those additional resources and right sizing the care.

[00:35:52] Ada Glover: How do you make sure that you are given the resources that make sense, given your situation? Um, and we, you know, recently had a, a provider that we work with talk about a patient she was seeing who's. You know, a veteran and had spent some time in the VA system and now was seeing her and she was like, he couldn't explain his medical history to me.

[00:36:14] Ada Glover: Um, you know, using the tools I previously had access to, I never would have understood that, but I was able to see sort of this complete picture of his, his past history and totally change the tone and be much more prepared, um, in, in that conversation. And I think have a much better start to the patient relationship.

[00:36:33] Ada Glover: And then I think one interesting thing in the industry is we do have this push towards more patient mediated access, all of the APIs. And we have often played in this area, especially that intake moment, like this question of, does it make more sense to have the patient bring together this data, review it, confirm or deny it, and take on this burden, or arm the provider with the information and let them facilitate the conversation?

[00:36:59] Ada Glover: I think so far we focused on that latter use case, because especially given most of our customers are treating more complex populations, there's so much for them to process and they can bring that additional layer of nuance and intact and their own approach to the conversation and just think about it.

[00:37:17] Ada Glover: Take that burden off the patient. I do think that long term there's a accessibility piece. And then, um, as we brought in our scope and touch a diverser set of populations, there may be some where the patient is a more critical part of the conversation, and I'm excited to step into that world as well.

[00:37:36] Omar Mousa: Switching gears here a little bit, uh, looking for a spicy take here, but let's talk a little bit about the EMR landscape. I, you know, we, we saw the consolidation of EMRs a couple of years ago. And then now I feel like. That narrative doesn't even make sense to me anymore. I, I encounter new EMRs like when I think I know them all, I actually don't.

[00:37:56] Omar Mousa: And given that from where you're coming from, and then the, a lot of your customers are trying to integrate EMRs. Can you just tell us a little bit about the landscape, like. What is currently out there? What attributes should like a health tech builder be looking at? Like, I'm often asked, like, what should I pick?

[00:38:14] Omar Mousa: And I just, I don't even know anymore. 

[00:38:15] Ada Glover: Um, I'll, I'll do my best to carefully answer this question. So I think you're right that like the, the bigger players haven't. Evolved a ton. I think we encounter a lot of folks using Athena and Alation, which are both, you know, we're integrated with both of those. Um, I do think we've seen a lot of sort of innovation at the smaller end.

[00:38:36] Ada Glover: And I'm excited by a lot of the, the efforts there. I think those newer EMRs, some of whom we work with, um, have worked really well for folks that are really trying to you. Build their own or innovate on the workflows. I think where it's tricky is as you start to hit scale and start to have more complex requirements when it comes to revenue cycle, when it comes to departments and organizations, when it comes to quality reporting, like EMRs have become.

[00:39:06] Ada Glover: This smushed together long, long laundry list of features that are expected, uh, and from an industry perspective, I think that's going to be really interesting to see, like, either all of these point solutions get easy enough to integrate and comprehensive enough that you can truly sort of build a bear, uh, for your EMR.

[00:39:29] Ada Glover: Or we're going to continue to see little pockets of innovation and workflow and APIs in certain places. But it's going to be really hard once you start worrying about claims and quality programs and like just all of these must dos to Hit every last requirement, which pains me to say, I think the other trend you see is okay.

[00:39:52] Ada Glover: I've got an Athena. I've got a little I've got a bigger and I'm going to build on top of it. I'm going to build my own veneer. And I think folks have been really successful for many workflows. Um, and I think the Mars have. I've leaned into that and responded to it really nicely. There are still a few holdouts, especially for these critical transactions.

[00:40:10] Ada Glover: Like you still can't really sign a pharmacy script or an order. It's tough to really sign off on a note without them logging in. And I think until that's solved, it's going to be hard to bridge. Um, so what I've seen people do is core clinical workflow. I'm in an encounter documenting that happens in my EMR kind of everything else happens in.

[00:40:31] Ada Glover: A newer, more flexible tool or something I built myself, and then I sync the critical data. What's cool is we see, um, a lot of folks. Using Zeus embedded in their AMR and Zeus embedded in their care management, homegrown platform to help be that bridge. But yeah, I'll be curious to see what it looks like five, 10 years from now and whether anyone's broken through, uh, or maybe we start to unbundle some of those long tail of requirements.

[00:41:01] Ada Glover: I don't know if that was spicy enough. 

[00:41:03] Omar Mousa: Might've been too 

[00:41:04] Ada Glover: careful. It's 

[00:41:05] Omar Mousa: good. It's spicy. I, so I want to like the veneer model. I'm a big fan of the veneer model. As you call it, um, where does that going to hit a wall? Cause I'm still waiting to see, uh, you know, I'm going to run into something. I'm sure. So what, what, what do you think folks are going to start to hit and where they can't move a, maybe a metric or a use, solve a use case or something?

[00:41:26] Ada Glover: Um, I mean, I think the simplest wall that I see folks hit is just the, um, like that ordering moment, right? It's still a moment where folks have to hop in and out. Um, I think the other piece is. I think where the underlying construct is very encounter note based, I think there is also this question of like, okay, my veneer has a mental model of something a lot more longitudinal.

[00:41:54] Ada Glover: My underlying system is something that is much more, that's either an encounter or it's a, a very lightweight note. And so how do I, how do I solve that data model problem? I think that's the other piece that's, that's tricky. Um, and then. I'm sure there's just a long tail of detailed settings, preferences, things that are important for optimization on the back end that, um, are probably solvable, but maybe some of those aren't exposed by API.

[00:42:27] Angela Suthrave: You mentioned that you have partnerships with Alation and Athena. Talk to us more about those partnerships. Why are they valuable for Seuss and how does it help with your go to market? And maybe even their go to market. 

[00:42:39] Ada Glover: And then I also, we also have integrations with Healthy and Canvas. So I don't want to, they were our early partners and definitely don't want to skip past them.

[00:42:48] Ada Glover: So I think a couple of things, I think, first and foremost, just providers and care teams hate contact switching and dual pain of glass. And so anything we can do to alleviate that off the bat, um, the better. And so, uh, I think that's been tremendous. Um, I think we've also been able to leverage either sort of Deeper partnerships or the more mature APIs to create more integrated workflows.

[00:43:17] Ada Glover: So, um, it's great if you can see a summary of your patient, but how do you actually incorporate that into your chart, into your encounter, because folks still really think of the EMR as kind of their source of truth that they're accountable to and, um, document in. And so being able to bridge that has been important.

[00:43:34] Ada Glover: From a go to market perspective, um, I think we've done a lot of really exciting work with the EMRs to share, um, what we're doing. Uh, I think some of their sales teams have been really great about bringing this to folks that might be interested. And I think the biggest lever has just been the. Ease of implementation.

[00:43:53] Ada Glover: I think customers that aren't using one of our integrated EMRs could get started with our app, but that's a new screen, something new to log into. And so while that's great at a smaller scale, it's just difficult to roll out. Whereas, um, if we are in a supported EMR, we can flip a couple of switches and suddenly everybody's up and running, which is really powerful.

[00:44:17] Omar Mousa: Big fan of flipping a switch and get up and running. Uh, 

[00:44:21] Ada Glover: exactly. 

[00:44:23] Omar Mousa: Uh, so where does Zeus go from here? Tell us what's next. 

[00:44:27] Ada Glover: Yeah. So, um, I mean, in many ways, I think Zeus has hit, has been around for a couple of years and we've got the core product up and running and a lot of what I'm excited about this year is refinement.

[00:44:39] Ada Glover: So, uh, you know, back to the being self aware of what you're passionate about, what gets you going. Um, 0 to 1 is, is, Really interesting and fun for me, but it is uncomfortable as well. And I feel like we're finally in that one to two phase where the use cases were used, we're focused on are resonating.

[00:44:58] Ada Glover: People are asking us for more and better. Uh, and so a lot of the theme is that, uh, and. I know that's not, it doesn't make headlines in the same way, but personally, and as a product manager, it's really a fun phase to be in. Um, so we're continuing to make our sort of, uh, get up to speed experience better.

[00:45:19] Ada Glover: We just rolled out the overview that summarizes not just by data type, but. Tries to bring together a picture of key indicators. We're starting to think about how can we layer on risk factors on top of that? Do we start looking at more advanced techniques for summarizing that data beyond filtering and grouping and et cetera?

[00:45:40] Ada Glover: Uh, so a lot of it is about how do we take the capabilities we have, make them better, smarter, more reliable. Um, I think the other piece where we're looking at is, is taking that core asset of that universal patient identifier and starting to think about what are these collaboration care coordination moments with that summarization of the ZAP.

[00:46:02] Ada Glover: What if you attach that to an outbound referral? So the specialist has a visibility into what's happening. That's the second thread that we're looking at. And then I think third, there are some key indicators that there's room for us to support our customers on the analytics side. Um, we have some pretty frequent query requests, workflows.

[00:46:24] Ada Glover: We're not trying to be, uh, you know, at least anytime soon, the behind the scenes heavy duty quality engine. But our data is uniquely positioned to identify certain types of care gaps, certain types of risk factors, and can we be better and smarter about surfacing those the same way we do at the patient by patient level.

[00:46:44] Ada Glover: Um, so those are the, some of the things we're doing and then we'll continue to work with new EMRs and, and kind of grow our partnerships. 

[00:46:52] Angela Suthrave: I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about how Zeus is thinking about using AI or already using AI to make your, um, processes better, your product better. 

[00:47:03] Ada Glover: Yeah, it is.

[00:47:04] Ada Glover: It is the question that everyone's asking and looking at. Um, so I think right now, one of the areas that that we're thinking about it, and we've done some small experiments ourselves is on the summarization front. The long tail of complexity unstructured data is just so long. Um, we are trying to focus on certain use cases and really break it down.

[00:47:28] Ada Glover: I think our, my perspective is that for a very long time, you're going to have to have really good prompt engineering to use AI effectively and safely. And so I'd rather us be the ones doing that, applying that rigorous testing, ensuring that we have traceability for the questions that we get responses to.

[00:47:50] Ada Glover: And so that's, that's where we're, we're starting our, our exploration. Well, it makes a ton of sense. 

[00:47:55] Angela Suthrave: We are going to maybe zoom out a little bit and talk about health tech in general. From where you sit, where do you see limitations of technology and what's actually feasible in terms of payment models, data limitations, data standards, regulatory and compliance, technical feasibility?

[00:48:16] Ada Glover: Uh, I think a couple of things come to mind. I think. One that will come with time, and I mentioned earlier, is I think we're very focused on reading data, I'd like to see us equally as focused on writing data, especially as we think about not just tossing information over the fence, but actually being able to drive workflow in an interoperable fashion.

[00:48:36] Ada Glover: So hopefully FHIR starts getting its legs there, and I think in some cases we're starting to see a little bit more sort of workflow based exchange. I think from a regulatory compliance data perspective, uh, one of the things that I think from my angle can't come soon enough is the payer provider data exchange modernization, I think, I think.

[00:48:58] Ada Glover: In cases where, where folks are taking on risk, it's all flat files, SFTP, several weeks later, and the truth is payers and providers have complimentary views of patients, um, and there's some comfort to work through. And I know we're starting with use cases like prior authorization. But I, I'd love to see some of that accelerate and we should see it happen over the next couple of years.

[00:49:23] Ada Glover: Um, I think CMS has also done some cool things with data at the point of care and other pilots. Uh, but I think that's an area that I'm really eager for. And then I think I'd be remiss to not sort of talk about TEFCA a little bit. Um, so I think this whole data exchange ecosystem, um, could look, Very much the same, or I'm hoping it looks very different several years out.

[00:49:47] Ada Glover: We're at this moment, um, where we've got the first big wave of QHINs, um, and folks are starting to participate, but haven't seen full uptick, uh, where. Expecting to start participating in those exchanges at some point this year. Um, so I'm very eager to see how that all plays out. And there are a couple of different layers to it.

[00:50:11] Ada Glover: One, it could help consolidate, right? There's that network of network approach that could help just create more seamless integration. So that's exciting. I think 2, um, they are looking at expanding to additional use cases. The first one is individual access, so patients could more meaningfully gain access to some of their records.

[00:50:30] Ada Glover: We'll be curious to see how that plays out. And then 3, while today I think there's an acceptance of CCDAs and sort of these document based exchanges, I think there is a look ahead to um, buyer sort of more granular data based exchanges that could be really exciting. So, um, you know, we're Staying close, um, working hand in hand with others in the industry and would like to see all of those things happen.

[00:50:56] Ada Glover: Um, and one of the active participants in that journey. 

[00:50:59] Omar Mousa: Incredible. Given all that it's, it's a lot, right? Like it's complicated, it's archaic and sometimes it's, you know, or not, right. Or there's a lot of. I don't know if red tape's the appropriate word, but there's a lot to go on there. And so for, for either like newer product managers or some of the IC product folks, like Take those constraints.

[00:51:22] Omar Mousa: Like, how does one still innovate? Like, you know, I'm coming from fintech and I was, or maybe not fintech. Like, I've come from other tech environments and I've been able to do so much. Like, how do I still build the stuff I need to build for the user when all of this has gone on? 

[00:51:36] Ada Glover: Yeah, it's a, it's, it is a conundrum.

[00:51:39] Ada Glover: And I think, um, I think it's important not to get immune to it and become complacent. So I think that's the first piece is stay close to other industries, see what's going on, ask the questions because, uh, I do think it's easy to sort of live by the latest checklist of certification requirements or whatever, and lose sight of some of these things.

[00:52:00] Ada Glover: I think one, um, is. A lot of while these limitations exist, there is constant progress in the form of these pushes these waves of innovation. You know, I just talked about one of them. I think it's important to lean into them and find ways to, you know, stand on those shoulders and innovate further. Right?

[00:52:21] Ada Glover: So you could easily take these networks and do the bare minimum and have a list of documents, but But what else could you do? There's actually so much potential within the constraints. Um, and if you map that back to the jobs to be done, sort of the user, the quality of the user experience, um, I think punching through can be very valuable because that may then mean.

[00:52:46] Ada Glover: That the next round of innovation, um, unblocks, uh, some of the, the constraints, uh, and some, and that might look different. Like sometimes that means you have to participate in committees and help sort of roll up your sleeves and become more active. Uh, sometimes that means proving the bright spots of actually between all of these constraints, there, there is that, that crack of light.

[00:53:12] Ada Glover: I think the other piece is just really paying attention to what users need. I guess in a similar vein, there are a lot of solvable problems in addition to the unsolvable, to the more difficult to solve problems, and so continuing to add value there I think is really important. 

[00:53:32] Angela Suthrave: We have reached the very exciting concept closing call portion of the podcast.

[00:53:37] Angela Suthrave: And so the first question that we want to ask you is, are there any concepts in healthcare that excite you right now? 

[00:53:43] Ada Glover: A little bit outside sort of my core realm. I think one of the interesting areas is folks that are trying to modernize some of the less core, at least less in my sight lines, uh, parts of the industry that, that are still very, Um, nascent in terms of how the role technology plays, uh, so one that comes up, um, the folks at house are X are doing some interesting work around specialty pharmacy and modernizing that infrastructure and even figuring out how to shorten sort of the distance between the prescriber of some of these complex drugs and how they're filled.

[00:54:20] Ada Glover: Uh, and again, this moment where there's a lot of complexity burden placed on patients that are in a vulnerable moment. Um, so I thought that was an interesting one. There are a bunch of companies looking at DME as well. Uh, and I think that's, that's really, really cool to see. Uh, I know not a sexy sort of gen AI type example, but, um, was the first tick that came to mind.

[00:54:44] Angela Suthrave: But it's very real, right? If you are discharged from the hospital, you don't have your durable medical equipment, like a bed, special bed. That's a problem. Yeah. 

[00:54:52] Omar Mousa: Are there any, uh, frameworks, methods, processes that you've found to be especially useful in your work and you think others may find useful? 

[00:55:02] Ada Glover: Yeah.

[00:55:02] Ada Glover: So I think two things come to mind. Um, one is I think at the high level strategic decision making front, I love just the simplicity of a, what you'd have to believe type conversation. I think folks get really sort of passionate about their. What they, um, think is the answer. And I think really breaking things down to those underlying assumptions and having the conversation of, do you believe this market is growing?

[00:55:28] Ada Glover: Then this is the answer. And if you believe that this other market is growing, this is the answer. I think just, it's such a simple. Framework and especially as I've moved to more executive roles and engaging kind of broader audiences, that's kind of a go to and it's very simple as well. And it can be used at a number of different levels.

[00:55:49] Ada Glover: So yeah, that's the one that came to mind. 

[00:55:51] Omar Mousa: Um, Ada, do you have a shameless plug? 

[00:55:53] Ada Glover: Um, other than this whole podcast being a shameless plug for, for the company that I work with, maybe a shameless plug for taking the time to, to help somebody and look, being creative about your like resourcing. I think the industry is in a, um, moment where a lot of folks are in transition, looking for new opportunities.

[00:56:17] Ada Glover: We've had some great folks do contract work or otherwise be extended members of our team in a way that never be possible on a traditional full time basis. And I think having a lot of those conversations and then, um, getting creative has been really inspiring and hopefully helps folks, uh, as they figure out their next steps.

[00:56:40] Ada Glover: So a little bit of a. Shameless plug to, to look out for those hidden gems and help your, your, 

[00:56:48] Ada Glover: fellow health tech or in the process. 

[00:56:50] Angela Suthrave: And lastly, where can people get in contact with you? 

[00:56:53] Ada Glover: So probably the simplest thing is on LinkedIn. Um, there aren't many Ada Glovers out there. Uh, otherwise, um, my email is, is fine too.

[00:57:03] Ada Glover: Uh, but, uh, LinkedIn is probably 

[00:57:05] Angela Suthrave: the easiest. Ada, thank you so much. This is awesome. I learned so much. Awesome.

[00:57:13] Omar Mousa: Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show. If you liked this episode, don't forget to leave us a rating and a review on your podcast app of choice and make sure to click the follow button so you never miss a new episode. This episode was produced and edited by Marvin Yue with research help from Aditi Atreya or Angelin Omar.

[00:57:31] Omar Mousa: And you've been listening to Concept to Care.

 

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