Expert Spotlight: Michael Ciano – Building Trust In Healthcare Technology

Michael Ciano, CTO with 20+ years of experience talks about building trust as a key for leveraging technology in healthcare, building a robust business architecture and building an organization culture that fosters innovation. Connect with Michael on LinkedIn here.

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

Patient Care is seeking greater insight and ease of access to high quality healthcare. Patients seek transparency into appropriateness of care, quality and costs while being enabled to make informed decisions, have availability of care at the right time and right cost, and personalized experience to their individual needs.

These needs of patients and an increased need for greater mental health access and insights are enabled through product and technology by building solutions which are data driven, AI enabled, and offer personalization however are best realized with a emphasis on building trust early and often in a patients journey.

Trust is the key to success in leveraging technology solutions which offer multi-modality access and the ability to the patient to determine how and where they want to be met.

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

I believe a digital first approach to healthcare with emphasis on building trust early and often will have the greatest impact on healthcare and must be rooted on a robust business and data architecture with AI enablement.

Building a robust business architecture can best be achieved by breaking down “operate” and “innovate” requirements, mapping to available marketplace products (broad and niche) and developing deep integration across core elements of the architecture and the development of a proprietary intelligence layer driving innovative actions such personalization, enablement of next best actions of advocacy and clinical teams, and content on member and provider apps/portals.

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

SmartSelectMD is a dynamic physician quality tool which includes billions and billions of healthcare records and data points across relative experience, appropriateness of care and quality metrics, diagnosis, procedures, and pharmaceutical definitions, patient reviews and costs which required to be normalized, transformed and calculated into demographic, rating and quality outcomes by physician, specialties and related information.

In addition, these outcomes required transformation into a consumable value and visualization by members / patients of all learning levels. AI was present throughout the entire development process and execution of such project taking into use of Reactive Machine AI, Narrow AI, AI General and Limited Memory AI with future generations of the product using all seven types of AI.

The designs and considerations of AI in SmartSelectMD will be leveraged in all future data driven initiatives and have been inclusive in recent architectures of a care traffic controller and integration module.

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

Partnering with key business leaders and investors, I was instrumental in delivering a product/technology roadmap at ConsumerMedical which transformed a legacy of manual processes and barriers to growth into a data-driven, informational experience powering operations to serve members from a standpoint of insight and knowledge while streamlining digital experiences internally and externally.

In my role as CTO, I designed and delivered a robust business architecture built upon Salesforce HealthCloud, Communities, Marketing Cloud and Data Connector coupled with an AI enabled data infrastructure.

A significant initiative which I am most proud was the opportunity to  co-author and deliver SmartSelect|MD, a dynamic physician quality tool with 6 cohesive data engines defining quality to include Relative Experience, Quality metrics, Patient Experience, Appropriateness of Care and Cost.

Leading a steering committee of physicians, clinical, product and technology experts to develop requirements, member journeys, UI/UX and implementation roadmap was challenging yet rewarding in the execution of SmartSelectMD where as no standing in the US exists in the definition of physician quality.

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

Building a team of talented, engaged and innovative experts I believe begins with an organizational culture where leaders and team members are valued and feel apart of a mission where each individual is respected, has a voice, can color outside of the lines and together have a bit of humor to offset the business demands and timelines.

In my opinion, titles, roles and responsibilities can be blurred when you are seeking to develop new and innovative products or redesign legacy solutions by leveraging select aspects of Agile processes to engage differently beyond traditional ceremonial processes. Engaging cross-functional team members offers new ideas, approaches and pathways to innovative outcomes while most importantly building relationships beyond organizational structures.

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

With a career of both CIO and CTO, my success has been a direct result of an organizational philosophy where leaders and team members are valued and feel apart of a mission where each individual is respected, has a voice and can color outside of the lines.

My personal success stems from being a delivery person at heart and sharing that vision with teams I have built from ground up, teams acquired or teams merged, and hiring or mentoring leaders to share the same passion and drive for outcomes that matter. I believe failure is a part of success and together we fail, succeed, and course correct in near real-time.

My most successful careers have been built leveraging a balanced use of Agile throughout  business, product and technology initiatives and it is crucial to have a hands-on approach with cross-functional skills when building a PMO to lead all others across such initiatives.

Lastly, partners and consultants regardless of onshore / offshore models must be part of the team and feel included in the same organizational culture, draw out those offshore experts from respect of the customer to sharing valued input at critical times of design and development, and build valuable relationships between partners which can often lead to partnerships where niche innovative products integrated can lead to healthcare innovation solutions.

Michael Ciano is a proven leader with more than 20+ years of experience and proven track record of driving transformational change, data-driven personalization, stakeholder engagement, and operational excellence through enabling technologies, innovative products solutions, and partnerships/acquisitions.

Michael was most recently the Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of XO Health, Inc. where he was responsible for the development of business architecture, technical product roadmap, and advocacy and connected care model for this pre-revenue startup technology HealthPlan. Michael was instrumental in the identification and negotiation of innovative partner solutions, integration and architecture of an AI-enabled data driven engine for members and provider personalization, and development of technology enabled operations.

Prior to his role leading XO Health, Inc. Michael was the CTO Of Healthcare Navigation at Alight
Solutions post-acquisition of ConsumerMedical where he led a diverse team including PMO, technical product, software engineering, business intelligence, and quality assurance in the delivery of Medical Decision Support and 2nd Opinion Services.

Michael has also co-authored, architected and delivered SmartSelect|MD, a dynamic physician quality tool with 6 cohesive data engines defining quality to include Relative Experience, Quality metrics, Patient Experience, Appropriateness of Care and Cost.