Expert Spotlight: John Schneider – Creating A Safe Space To Fail

John Schneider, a seasoned technology executive with extensive experience talks about the need to be constantly learning in the ever evolving healthcare landscape and how giving the team a safe space to fail is key to fostering a culture of innovation in HealthTech. Connect with John on LinkedIn here.

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

Healthcare providers are on the brink of a crisis in care. More people than ever in America are 65 and over and the number of healthcare providers is on a material decline.

Technology is going to need to fill the gap to address this increased demand for care with a decreasing supply of providers. Healthcare providers will need to do more with less.

Processes need to be more streamlined and efficient, AI will need to help accelerate analysis and diagnosis and virtual communication will need to be further employed to allow providers to see more patients rather than spending time traveling to them.

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

AI is probably the most prevalent as it will have wide ranging effects from the ability to improve diagnostics, optimize scheduling and take on admin work and move it away from doctors and nurses so they can spend more time with patients versus filling out reports.

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

Right now I am spending a lot of time helping healthcare providers use AI to improve their patient/customer experience from a marketing perspective.

As it will do in other areas, I am seeing AI tools help Healthcare Marketing teams increase their productivity by 2-3x allowing them to catch up on an ever growing backlog of maintenance work and make more time to create better customer/patient experiences to help better inform their patients.

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

Recently I worked with a Children’s Hospital to create a new communication and collaboration platform for the hospital that helped them reduce busy work, improve collaboration between providers and ultimately spend more time with their patients.

As a parent of a child who had open heart surgery as an infant I know how hard these healthcare providers work to provide compassionate care to the kids as well as to provide emotional support for the parents, who can feel helpless when their child is going through major care. Being able to help make that a bit easier for them through my role as a technologist was tremendously inspiring to me.

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

To foster innovation I believe you need to give teams a safe place to be able feel free to fail but to always look to learn from failure.

Combining this with giving teams time and space to innovate both in the way you direct them (i.e. provide goals not instructions) as well as giving them a bit of whitespace in their week to tinker is key.

Finally, you need to ensure there is a light shone on innovation by creating a venue for teams to share their learnings.

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

I believe my success has always come from my ability to be constantly learning, to think strategically and to know how to put strategies into action. Nothing is every static in healthcare or technology, so you have to constantly learn and adapt but you also have to meter that with showing results.

Finally, having a rigorous focus on why you are doing what you are doing is key. We don’t do technology for technology’s sake, but rather to serve a higher purpose which in healthcare is often about being able to create highly effective, highly empathetic care environments.

John H. Schneider is an accomplished technology executive with decades of success transforming organizations. He has a rich history of achieving sales and revenue gains in the dozens of millions while evolving work cultures, building high-performance teams, and authoring effective digital strategies.

John has guided prolific industry giants like Coca-Cola, NASCAR, Hilton, and UPS to prosperity by overseeing complex technical initiatives harnessing robust Customer Experience, eCommerce, Data, and AI solutions. Connect with him on LinkedIn here.