Expert Spotlight: Christopher Miller – Creating Balance Between Risk Aversion And Innovation

Christopher Miller, a tech leader with over 25 years of experience bringing software products to market in the healthcare and retail domain talks about AI in healthcare, allowing room for mistakes and creating a fine balance between risk aversion and innovation. Connect with Christopher on LinkedIn here.

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

It will become more and more seamless. As AI becomes more embedded into devices and interaction, patients will be given more advice in real time from AI than ever before. Doctors (younger ones) will utilize AI to help diagnose difficult conditions.

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

AI as the primary one. It will be device-embedded as well. But devices themselves will also become more and more ubiquitous and acceptable. They will mostly remain specific to disease states and utilize local apps and cloud services more.

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

This one I need to determine what I can answer under NDAs.

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

We began evaluating patients in skilled nursing facilities for preventable hospital readmissions and scored their risk, reducing readmissions by up to 50% per facility. Of course, it required the users of our system to actually use it. Just like buying a treadmill doesn’t make you healthier. It must be used.

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

Put simply, we allow mistakes. But we do it within confined scenarios for which we don’t put patients at risk. This is done via parallel logic and environments.

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

A fine balance of risk aversion and innovation is key. Healthcare CTOs need to be willing to be restrained by their CISO – which can be difficult.  But security, both HIPAA/HITECH compliance and best practices, must never be ignored.

Christopher Miller has over 25 years’ experience bringing software products to market, focusing primarily on healthcare and retail.  His ability to connect with leadership teams and convey product vision to the technology disciplines within an organization has let to dozens of successful product launches, generating >$1B in revenue. Connect with Christopher on LinkedIn here.