Expert Spotlight: Matt Lavin – Empowering Tech Teams

Matt Lavin, a fractional CTO with a background in health data storage and analysis, talks about the role of technologies in healthcare and empowering tech teams in this exclusive interview. Follow him on LinkedIn here.

1. How do you see the role of technology evolving in patient care over the next decade?

Technology will continue to enhance patient care by collecting more data and offering personalized interpretations to guide treatment. We can expect an increase in data sources from wearables, advanced imaging, and genomic data, all while reducing the cost of data collection.

With this influx of data, both individual and population-wide, we will be able to generate increasingly personalized treatment recommendations, identifying key areas for improvement and the most effective actions to drive positive outcomes.

2. Which emerging technologies do you believe will have the greatest impact on healthcare in the near future?

It feels inevitable that AI/ML will have a big impact over the next couple of years. The ability of LLMs to ingest large amounts of text, like research papers or patients notes, and to extract answers from it already seems superhuman. As we build experience with using LLMs, we will develop approaches to make sure that the outputs from the LLMs are accurate and reliable and not “hallucinations.” The combination of AI’s data processing power and clinicians’ intuition and experience will greatly enhance patient care.

The recent headlines have been about text and LLMs, but machine learning models that process numeric data are also advancing rapidly. These models will similarly improve our ability to understand and utilize large datasets. Despite being in the early stages of development, the progress in AI tools shows no signs of slowing down.

3. What role does/will artificial intelligence play in your current and future projects?

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a pivotal role in our projects by enhancing human capabilities and efficiency. AIs can serve as a partner to help professionals quickly explore and sanity check ideas through a reduction in research time.

The time savings allows experts to quickly experiment with many ideas and find better solutions. Additionally, AI can be used to provide personalized explanations tailored to the reader’s level of understanding, making complex information more accessible. For projects that are further in the future, custom AI models can be trained for better prediction risks and suggested treatments both improving treatment and reducing costs.

4. Can you share an example of a major project or initiative in healthcare technology that inspired you?

A recent healthcare technology product that inspired me was the product from Cleerly. They address the problem of reducing cardiac deaths through early detection of soft plaques using CCTA scans.

They have applied modern data science tools to extract more data from scans than a human could and provide those insights for clinicians. Going beyond a pure data science tool, they have also built a beautiful interface with visualizations of the findings so that clinicians can understand what was discovered, make a treatment plan, and track improvements over time.

5. How do you foster a culture of innovation within your technology teams?

Fostering innovation in your technology team is both easier than you expect and also scarier. The key to success is letting go and empowering people.

Technology teams are full of problem solvers, and often they are full of people specifically interested in the business domain. The best engineers have many opportunities for jobs, and they have chosen your company due to their interests. What you need to do is unleash their problem solving on the right problems.

The scary part is that you need to relinquish control over the details of what people are doing. You need to give people big problems to solve and give them the space and time to find the best solutions. Do not tell them what to build. Instead, tell them which problems need solving. Specifically, you need to:

1. Hire people who are passionate about the problem you are trying to solve.

2. Make sure they understand the guardrails. Tell them which types of solutions are allowed and which would be rejected.

3. Give them time to explore to find solutions.

People will surprise you with innovative solutions you would never have thought of.

6. What are the key skills and qualities you believe are essential for a successful CTO in the healthcare tech sector?

A successful CTO in the healthcare space needs all of the qualities of a ‘regular’ CTO along with a special focus on data privacy and security. As the healthcare industry accelerates their adoption of new technologies and faster development cycles, the skills of a healthcare CTO become closer to a non-health CTO.

The basic skills for any CTO follow from the answer about building an innovative culture. You need to be able to hire a team of qualified and passionate engineers. You need to be able to define the business problems that are worth solving to the team and keep the team on track to iterate on solutions.

A CTO needs to be able to stay focused on using technology to solve business problems, not just using technology because it’s new. A CTO needs to be relentless in getting the solutions into their customers’ hands, listening to feedback, and responding with new changes. It’s an endless cycle of problem solving, and the teams that can respond the quickest will find the winning solutions and business success.

Matt Lavin is a fractional CTO with a background in health data storage and analysis. As a founding engineer at LifeOmic, recently acquired by Fountain Life, he played a pivotal role in developing a robust platform for healthcare applications, including genomic analysis, biomarker visualization, patient-focused mobile apps, and medical device data management.

With a talent for taking ideas from concept to production, Matt excels in building the technology and assembling the teams necessary for successful product launches. He is currently advising companies on how to leverage technology to solve their business challenges. Connect with Matt on LinkedIn to make a plan for your business.