[00:00:00] Mark Holmes: I liked how you introduced it, it’s like, you know, just from a contextually is that, look, healthcare, especially in hospital providers, and again, you know, what we’ll be talking about here today is, you know, like, if you can’t, you can’t find the right product at Target or Walmart, okay, it’s not so bad.

[00:00:16] Mark Holmes: But look, if you can’t have a procedure and you’ve been expecting a procedure because of a health issue, and you can’t have the procedure, uh that’s a, a lot different. Uh, it’s impacting, uh, like you said, life or death situation. So ​

[00:00:42] Scott W. Luton: Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luton and Scott DeGroot, a.k.a. The Professor, with you here on Supply Chain Now.

[00:00:51] Scott W. Luton: Welcome to today’s show. Hey, Scott, how you doing today?

[00:00:53] Scott DeGroot: I am outstanding. Thank you very much, my friend. Um, uh, weekend is coming up and, uh, exciting summertime plans are on the horizon

[00:01:02] Scott W. Luton: They– Man, you must have a lot up your sleeve. Well, hey, exciting is the theme for today. We’ve had a lot of hits lately on some conversations you and I have been a part of. This is gonna continue in that vein. Uh, today we’re gonna be talking about the healthcare industry, folks. In particular, we’re gonna be talking with a few industry leaders on a really a variety of topics, including a few of the chronic challenges that plague healthcare organizations just about everywhere, especially in inventory visibility, data fragmentation, and a whole bunch more.

[00:01:33] Scott W. Luton: But the good news is we’re gonna be talking about innovation in a space that not only will be solving these problems and many others, but will be driving optimized patient outcomes and organizational success on all sorts of levels. So stay tuned for a fascinating discussion. Now, Scott, given all of your years, and we’re not gonna break the 20-year rule, right?

[00:01:55] Scott W. Luton: But longer than 20 years of proven supply chain leadership experience for a major player in the Fortune 500 space, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on what we hear today. You ready to go?

[00:02:04] Scott DeGroot: I’m ready to go, my friend. Yes

[00:02:07] Scott W. Luton: Well, folks, stick around for a great conversation that’s gonna offer up tons of actionable insights by the truckload.

[00:02:12] Scott W. Luton: So with that in mind, I wanna welcome in our wonderful guests joining us today. First, back by popular demand, we have Mark Holmes, head of Global Supply Chain Market Strategy at InterSystems, and he’s joined by Mike LaRocca, founder and CEO at Ready Computing. Let’s welcome in Mike and Mark. Hey, Mark Holmes, great to have you back.

[00:02:36] Scott W. Luton: How you been?

[00:02:37] Speaker 3: Great, Scott. Thank you very much. It’s, uh, great to be back Well, I’ll tell you what, I know you’ve been traveling the world as you help all sorts of organizations. Uh, I’m envious of your travel schedule, uh, but we’ll dive into some of the cool stuff you’re doing here today. And hey, Mike, how you doing?

[00:02:53] Michael LaRocca: Good, Scott. How are you?

[00:02:54] Scott W. Luton: It is wonderful to meet you. Uh, uh, yeah, I’ve been doing our homework, uh, uh, my homework on you, and I understand you’re, uh, 11 foot two inches tall, bulletproof, and you wear a cape.

[00:03:05] Scott W. Luton: Is that right, Mike?

[00:03:06] Michael LaRocca: Pretty much, yeah. Pretty

[00:03:07] Scott W. Luton: Okay. Okay. Well, me and, uh, me and Scott, the group, have been looking forward to this conversation, and let’s dive in with a fun warm-up question first. So Mike, I understand, as we were doing our homework, that you are, um, a car guy, and you have lots of passion around automobiles, much more than, than myself, who I’m the proud owner, I think, of five Honda Accords in my lifetime.

[00:03:36] Scott W. Luton: Uh, tell us about this passion of yours

[00:03:38] Michael LaRocca: Well, you know, Honda Accords, at least, you know, you could put a million miles on them and they keep going. So it’s not a terrible choice. But yeah, I don’t know. I, I– You might think it’s a midlife crisis. For me, it’s probably a lifelong crisis. I have loved cars really as long as I could remember. I mean, everything about them just has fascinated me.

[00:03:56] Michael LaRocca: I kinda think that they’re the perfect balance between form and function, you know, which is true in a lot of parts of our life. But I feel like it’s very obvious in the car market. You know, you, you, you pick a car ’cause you like the way it looks. You know, it’s sporty or whatever it is that might catch your eye, but it has to do what it’s meant to do.

[00:04:16] Michael LaRocca: You know, if it’s a sports car where you want to go fast, you want it to brake right. You know, if it’s a race car, even more so, or maybe it’s a family car, you know, that you need a, a certain function ’cause you have children, right? I just think this form versus function thing is really, really, um, fun to see in the car.

[00:04:33] Michael LaRocca: Now, I feel like it’s a good time to like cars too. I think all the manufacturers are on their A game. You know, I, like, mostly consider myself a Corvette guy. I’ve always loved Corvettes. Um, I think they’re great, great cars, you know, built right in America. Um, but you know, some of the things that I, uh, that I think is exciting, even relevant to the conversation today is, you know, when you think about what it takes to produce a car and even race car editions of those cars, right?

[00:05:01] Michael LaRocca: You, you, you really touch so many areas of supply chain, and it’s amazing how many things you can learn just from watching what it takes to just get to the point where you’re actually producing and assembling the car. You know, I’ve always thought too that they’re– it’s exciting to see how teams work together, whether they’re building the car or supporting a race team.

[00:05:20] Michael LaRocca: You know, optimizing the people around the production, around the use of the car is something I’ve always found really fascinating. So, so yeah, I could probably talk your whole b- podcast about that, but I shouldn’t do that today.

[00:05:32] Scott W. Luton: No. Oh, you could tell. You could see he li- uh, Mike just lit up when we broached the subject of automobiles. And, and Scott DeGroot, I think we’ve just launched an automotive podcast series and didn’t even

[00:05:43] Scott DeGroot: love it. I love it. We have a whole different distribution channel, uh, I got a

[00:05:47] Michael LaRocca: I’m not, Scott. You’re just telling me.

[00:05:49] Scott W. Luton: Love it. We’re gonna make it happen. Uh, all right. So Mark Holmes. Um, Mark, now I understand that you have had some exciting scuba diving moments with the family. Tell us more

[00:06:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, so my daughter and I, we’ve been… It’s kind of our thing when we go on vacation. So my son and I, we golf, and when it comes to my daughter, we end up, we scuba dive. And so we’ve scuba dived for probably a good 15 years now, and we’ve, like you said, we’ve seen a lot. We’ve seen about the t- tortoises to unique fish, to one time there was a, a Navy SEAL, literally, we were 65 feet down, runs out of oxygen.

[00:06:33] Speaker 3: And of course, we all have separate regulators. We get him up and running. And then one particular, more of a recent dive, my daughter and I were diving in the Caribbean, and we knew that the, there was a fairly strong current, so we knew once we went down, again around 60, 70 feet, the boat would pick us up about five miles down.

[00:06:53] Speaker 3: And so we come up. As we get close to the surface, uh, my, you know, she takes off her mask and says, “Dad, there’s a…” There’s like, this is only like five yards away, you know? There’s a kilo of, we’ll call it contraband, that perfect sealed square, and they c- the boat comes over, quickly brings it on board. And, and so what came to mind to me was two things.

[00:07:17] Speaker 3: Number one, how did she know what this contraband was? Number one. And then number two was, I have my supply chain hat on, and I said, “Look, there’s, there’s someone disappointed here. On time, in full.” Obviously did not happen 

[00:07:35] Scott DeGroot: Yes.

[00:07:35] Scott W. Luton: right, Mark. All right, so Scott, I got to come to you first. Uh, that is the one of the most unique, fun warm-up question responses I think we’ve had in Sapajunai history. Your reaction, Scott

[00:07:45] Scott DeGroot: I, I love it. You know, I’ve, I’m going to the beach in a few weeks and, uh, I don’t know that I’ll have that exciting of a story, but, uh, good on, good on you, mate, for getting it out of the supply chain. Whatever the contraband was, I’m glad it didn’t get where it was supposed to go

[00:07:59] Scott W. Luton: That is right.

[00:08:01] Speaker 3: Exactly

[00:08:01] Scott W. Luton: All right. So Scott, uh, with an opening like that, it’s gonna be a great show. We got a lot more good stuff to get to here today. Um, so I’m gonna start with, uh, level setting on the current roles.

[00:08:12] Scott W. Luton: We’ve got a ton and tons of expertise here today. Uh, Mike, let’s start with you. If you would, since this is your first appearance on Supply Chain Now, tell us briefly about what Ready Computing does and your role there as CEO

[00:08:28] Michael LaRocca: Well, Ready Computing’s been in operation for a little over 15 years, and we’re headquartered in New York. Uh, we also have a, an office in the UK, and we’ve got some dreams of growing in the EU, so we’ve got some initiatives happening there. Uh, we’re a little over 170 people. Um, we’ve always, since our inception, built connected systems of one form or another.

[00:08:53] Michael LaRocca: We’ve generally focused on health and social care, um, that is our primary focus, and there’s a lot to do there, both on the clinical side and the supply chain side of the health systems and the social systems. Uh, but we’ve also worked in other industries like financial services and food and beverage, insurance, um, you know, other things.

[00:09:13] Michael LaRocca: So we’ve, um, we’re a very engineering-focused group. You know, most of us, a lot of us come from software development backgrounds. I actually used to work at InterSystems, so you know, it is a great experience of my life and, you know, at somewhere around 2011, I decided to branch out and start Ready Computing.

[00:09:32] Michael LaRocca: Um, but, uh, my role as CEO ha- has changed over the years. So you– as you can imagine, as in the early days, in its infancy, I kinda had to wear 100 hats and then do everything, right? But the, the company’s a lot more mature now. I get to sort of take a different position at the company where I, I focus on vision and strategy, I focus on partner relationships, I focus on our key customer relationships, um, building a culture, you know, that, that’s great for the company, great for the, for the staff, um, and ultimately always looking to find ways to grow the company, whether that means growing in geography or finding new sectors we could work in.

[00:10:13] Michael LaRocca: Um, but that’s really my focus now. Yeah, I have a great, great team of people that support me and support the business and our customers, and I’m really grateful to them

[00:10:22] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. And that terrific team is powering some innovation, which we’ll touch on here in just a second. Um, Mark, if you would, uh, we’ve enjoyed your past appearances here. W- we’ve created lots of great conversations over the years. Uh, InterSystems continues to be on a roll. Tell us for our new, especially for our new audience members, a little bit about what the organization does and, of course, your role with InterSystems. 

[00:10:43] Speaker 3: Sure. That’d be great, Scott. So look, we’re a global data technology leader. Uh, we solve complex data challenges with mission-critical solutions. We do that for… Been doing it for about 48 years, a little over 48 years, across 80 countries and nearly every vertical. Uh, we’re privately held, uh, 1.3 billion in revenue.

[00:11:09] Speaker 3: We have zero private equity, uh, investment in the company. And the reason why I like to point that out is, uh, because it allows us to really focus on what the customer wants. Also, just like what Mike was saying, you know, we, we, healthcare, CPG, manufacturing, uh, retail are, are large verticals for us, along with the public sector.

[00:11:34] Speaker 3: My role, as you were saying, I head up the global supply chain market strategy for the company, so it’s finding the, the right fit by market, by region, of where we can take our supply chain products. And it allows me to really deal, uh, around the world with a lot of really good people, good organizations, and like Mike, and what we’re gonna be talking about today

[00:11:58] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. All right, Scott McGroot. I think we can just about solve all the world’s ills between what Mike and Mark do. What do you, what do you think?

[00:12:07] Scott DeGroot: I was just thinking, you know, these are two very, very, um, active world, active circles that are coming together, healthcare and the need for healthcare r- and aging population coming together with technology and supply chain. I mean, this is at the heart of so many different conversations. I’m very excited to, to learn more over the next few minutes

[00:12:29] Scott W. Luton: You and me both. So, uh, as Scott mentioned, and as we’ve mentioned a couple times, healthcare is going to be the main theme here today, and, and for good reason, ’cause as what Scott just mentioned, uh, if we think there’s tons of demand right now on our healthcare system, just wait. Give it a month, give it a year, give it a decade.

[00:12:47] Scott W. Luton: It’s gonna be remarkable. Um, so, you know, when people think about supply chain disruption, some folks may think of retail shelves or manufacturing delays, uh, delays. But in healthcare, the stakes are much different. It’s life and death. So I want to st- set the stage around our conversation a bit first. And Mark, I want to come back to you, uh, first ’cause I want you to tell us, if you would, what are a few of the common supply chain challenges in healthcare, 

[00:13:15] Mark Holmes: Yeah. Thank you, Scott. You know, like you said, and, and I liked how you introduced it, it’s like, you know, just from a contextually is that, look, healthcare, especially in hospital providers, and again, you know, what we’ll be talking about here today is, you know, like, if you can’t, you can’t find the right product at Target or Walmart, okay, it’s not so bad.

[00:13:35] Mark Holmes: But look, if you can’t have a procedure and you’ve been expecting a procedure because of a health issue, and you can’t have the procedure, uh that’s a, a lot different. Uh, it’s impacting, uh, like you said, life or death situation. So 

[00:13:48] Speaker 3: challenges that we see, interesting enough, when you look across verticals when I was talking about the company, is that they’re, they’re common from the standpoint.

[00:13:55] Speaker 3: We see, uh, significant disparate data, lack of visibility throughout the supply chain, not being able to bring that visibility of what’s in inventory together. So that whole requirement for the unification of disparate data throughout the hospital network is, is, is an issue. And it’s an issue that if we can’t bring that together, then there’s many things that we can’t do, like inventory obsolescence becomes a big issue.

[00:14:25] Speaker 3: Of course, we talk so much about that now outside of healthcare, CPG, manufacturing. Ob- inventory obsolescence is a big deal. But at the same time, on time in full, when we were talking about that, uh, earlier, you know, on time in full, not having the right product at the right time for the right procedure is a big, big issue 

[00:14:46] Scott W. Luton: Hmm. Mark, that y- you’ve already filled the plate, but folks, there’s more, uh, facing our healthcare organizations. Mike, what else would you add to Mark’s already full plate?

[00:14:56] Michael LaRocca: Boy, well, I thought Mark did an outstanding job responding to that. I agree with everything he said. I, and, you know, f- seeing, um, you know, all of the preparation that goes in to making a health encounter successful, successful for patients is often something that we don’t even think about as patients. You know, you show up for your procedure, you don’t necessarily know everything that went into ensuring that the procedure is successful.

[00:15:23] Michael LaRocca: And Mark touched on that, you know, just making sure you’ve got the right supplies at the right time, in the right room, and all of those things takes quite a lot of logistics management. Um, and, you know, it’s one of the things that is a real challenge for hospitals and health systems. But, you know, technology is there to, to, to help, help with those processes.

[00:15:43] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. Uh, all right, so Scott, two things before I get your thoughts on what we heard there from Mark and Mike. Uh, number one, some of the words that Mark was using earlier, uh, mission-critical systems, high complexity. I mean, you find that, um, by the truckload in healthcare. Uh, earlier in my career, I spent some time working with hospitals, rural hospitals in South Georgia, and even for someone that’s been in industry for quite some time, seen some pretty big challenges, very unique in healthcare.

[00:16:10] Scott W. Luton: But Scott, what’d you hear there from Mark and Mike?

[00:16:12] Scott DeGroot: Yeah, I– what I’m hearing and thinking about, Scott, is this idea that, um, number one, the demand for healthcare, as we said, is, is growing, and the capability, uh, outside of metropolitan areas is, um, probably getting stressed. And I also think about the fact that in every supply chain, especially the healthcare supply chain, you know, the, the, the difficulty from going from eighty percent service to ninety percent service, it’s X.

[00:16:40] Scott DeGroot: Ninety to ninety-five, it’s X times two. Ninety-five to ninety-seven, X times a hundred. To get to the levels that we’re talking about to- here– today require outstanding operational excellence, and it requires tightly connected systems. And, uh, that’s why I’m so excited to understand how Mark and Mike are, are making a real difference, because I know it’s got to be extremely difficult and probably pretty expensive

[00:17:05] Scott W. Luton: I’m with you. I am with you. So, uh, that begs, all of this begs the question a bit, Mark, ’cause I think this next question I wanna pose to you and Mike kinda brings it home, right? ‘Cause we’re all, just like we’re all consumers in supply chain, we’re all patients in the healthcare world. So Mark, how often are hospitals still dealing with delayed or canceled procedures because supplies simply, they’re not where they need to be?

[00:17:28] Scott W. Luton: Mark 

[00:17:29] Mark Holmes: Yeah, I think it’s got… Around the world, if you look at it, some countries are a little bit more than other countries, but we’re looking on a- on average probably about a, a 10% cancellation rate, which is, which is quite high. And, and in other countries, uh, even higher, if not much higher. And really the impact that it has, and it, it goes back to what we were talking about before, about managing inventory and disruptions and being able to bring decision intelligence into that.

[00:17:58] Mark Holmes: But just think about, just say, you know, we have one canceled orthopedic surgery. The revenue impact to the hospital can be anywhere from 75,000 to 250,000 just for one procedure. One procedure. Think about if you have hundreds of procedures that are being canceled or delayed, depending upon the type of procedure, can be, uh, uh, quite an impact, uh, for the organization.

[00:18:22] Mark Holmes: And that doesn’t even consider the, the impact that it has to the patients. You know, the patient, uh, the dissatisfaction, the, the health. And I had one quote, I won’t mention the hospital, but children dying. Because they, they anticipated the procedure done, they couldn’t have the procedure done 

[00:18:40] Scott W. Luton: That, that gets, should get everybody’s attention, right? ‘Cause the, the, again, life and death. Uh, Mike, uh, speak to that, gosh, 10% on average, these procedures getting canceled, uh, when you look at healthcare globally. What else would you add, Mike, the impact here?

[00:18:56] Michael LaRocca: Well, I, you know, I would start by, by saying that the role of technology is becoming increasingly more important to support these things, right? I mean, all the sort of the business cases that, that Mark just brought up. You know, what if we could do something at a technical level to help, right? What if we could reduce or hopefully eliminate the number of postponed or canceled procedures?

[00:19:18] Michael LaRocca: You know, that’s really the… You know, if I sort of view the world through the eyes of a technologist, it’s, I feel like it’s my job or company’s job to try to figure out how to apply the right technology to deal with those things. And, you know, it’s forever challenging, you know, because it, at the end of the day, everything starts with having good data, having well-integrated data.

[00:19:39] Michael LaRocca: You know, hospitals in particular, uh, could be very challenging for a lot of reasons. We’re dealing things with, uh, such as mergers and acquisitions. You know, what happens when a health system takes on a new hospital? You know, think of the load that that puts on the IT team and the technology stack. You know, you’re gonna inherit now all this technology.

[00:19:57] Michael LaRocca: You have to decide, do we figure out a way to integrate with it? Do we replace it? Do we migrate, you know, from one cloud to another? There’s all of these technology decisions that need to happen and to actually be able to implement, you know, whatever’s decided. You know, and even in a, in an, I’d say a technical ecosystem that’s fairly well-healed, there’s always challenges.

[00:20:17] Michael LaRocca: You know, one, the EMR will get upgraded, or the lab system, the inventory system will go through upgrades. So things that used to work may not work as they u- as they once did. You have to look at your interfaces, right? You have to look at your things like your data transformations, making sure that all the data is flowing as intended to support things.

[00:20:36] Michael LaRocca: So when you really look at it and you start at, with the sort of technology viewpoint, you could start to understand that the importance of a sound technology platform to make sure that we don’t h- are missing 10% of our procedures. You could start to connect those dots.

[00:20:53] Scott W. Luton: All right. So Scott, I’m gonna drive a little bit further with Mike and Mark, and I’m gonna welcome your comments here ’cause I wanna get to one thing that’s already come up several times in just the start of this conversation between Mark and Mike and s- and what you shared, Scott. Hospitals, it’s prevalent.

[00:21:08] Scott W. Luton: They’re operating with disconnected systems and fragmented data. Is that right, Mike?

[00:21:13] Michael LaRocca: Oh, it sure is. Yeah, it sure is. There’s, um, been many initiatives, you know, sponsored, uh, by our own government, both at the federal and state level, uh, to, to try to address those things. And, but there’s a lot of work in the industry that I think, you know, deserves a call-out. The way t- you know, technology, at least the interfaces that piece systems together so that they could talk to one another, or there’s standards for interoperability that are developed, right, and supported.

[00:21:41] Michael LaRocca: Things like in the healthcare world, things like HL7, like DICOM, you know, CDA, Phire, you name it. Then add to that all the supply chain standards like GS1 and, and EDIFACT and other things. The industry as a whole, I would say, is doing a lot of things to try to help. And it’s up to us as the technology implementers, right, to figure out and, and ensure that we’re using those standards so that we could communicate with other systems in, in an efficient and accurate way

[00:22:11] Scott W. Luton: Mike, love it, and empower our healthcare professionals that, look, we’re not throwing stones at all. These folks want to serve. They want to take care of the patients. A lot of the workarounds, at least from what I’ve seen in my career, are because they’re trying to help people, right? And so what Mike just finished, and Mark, I’m gonna get your comments here, is we can create a better system leveraging modern-day technology and empower our healthcare professionals to serve more while enabling the organization to be more successful so they can serve more people.

[00:22:39] Scott W. Luton: Uh, Mark, what would you– We’re talking about disconnected systems and fragmented data that’s real prevalent across healthcare. Your thoughts 

[00:22:45] Speaker 3: Yeah, so exactly what Mike was saying and what you were just alluding to, uh, da- what we would call data readiness. So data readiness meaning having trusted unified data that can lead to decision intelligence. And the key of being able to make that happen, as we’ve been talking about is, is you have, you have clinical data and you have supply chain data.

[00:23:06] Speaker 3: And one of the biggest issues that we’re seeing in the market today is not being able to bring those two sets of data together. And that’s not easy to do. And being… But we have to do that. We have to make sure clinical data and supply chain data are coming together so that that data is ready to then be able to optimize, uh, within the environment that we want to optimize with 

[00:23:28] Scott W. Luton: All right, Scott, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We heard a lot of, uh, a lot, at least to my ears, adds to the why we’ve got to do better. Uh, what’d you hear there, Scott Twin, what Mike and Mark shared?

[00:23:40] Scott DeGroot: I heard that, um, you know what, we’re– The situation that we’re in is getting better, and that we are making strides to get better. But there’s a lot more work for us to do, and the gap between the multiple, um, interfaces, the multiple protocols, and the, the urgency of bringing clinical data, patient data together with, do I have enough of the things that I need?

[00:24:04] Scott DeGroot: You know, these things are vitally important, and I’m, I’m an- makes me anxious, Scott, to learn some more about, you know, how is technology bridging those gaps? Because I can think about a hundred questions I would ask about how can we go faster to close those gaps, and, um, I’m sure that’s where we’re gonna go next.

[00:24:23] Scott W. Luton: It, it is, uh, except I wanna, I wanna dive in a little bit deeper into the problem, a couple problems we’ve identified here, because you could say that this is all what we’re talking about in terms of fragmented data and, and, uh, siloed, um, uh, data sources, anything but integration is a symptom of a bigger problem.

[00:24:43] Scott W. Luton: So Mike, there’s a couple… There’s a two-part question I wanna pose to you, okay? And as Scott said, we might have 1,000 questions for y’all. Uh, but Mike, what are some of the inefficiencies that place burdens on hospital staff, one? And then as an example of that, you know, it sounds like from what you and, and Mark are sharing, a lot of labor is still consumed by people man- you know, doing things like, um, manually reconciling spreadsheets or, um, perhaps spending time updating multiple systems.

[00:25:13] Scott W. Luton: And then of course, we’ve seen it time and time again, folks chasing down missing items. Uh, Mike, speak to that if you would

[00:25:22] Michael LaRocca: Boy, e-e-everything you just said is, is very much true. You know, I, I think it starts with the fact that there are still too many manual processes. You know, I think as an industry, you know, striking this right balance between automation and manual processing is something that we’re always, you know, trying to get better at.

[00:25:40] Michael LaRocca: But boy, those manual processes, A, there’s just human error, right? If you’re doing things manually, you have to worry about those sorts of things. But the efficiency is also a real problem. You know, there’s only so quickly a person is able to do things if, if all the processes are manual. I mean, if you’re working with spreadsheets and sticky notes to sort of get through your day and to figure out, you know, have I done all the tasks I need to do, well, you’re gonna have a lot of challenges.

[00:26:07] Michael LaRocca: You know, and I think technology offers a chance, um, to bring some automation to the processes, also to standardize the processes, you know, give people a sort of a guide or a protocol, if you will, for resolving things that might come up or making sure tasks are brought to completion, et cetera. But to me, manual processes is the very first issue, right?

[00:26:29] Michael LaRocca: I think another issue that we sometimes talk about, we call it the, the swivel chair effect. Um, so imagine a person who doesn’t– is working in an environment where the systems aren’t integrated and you have to do manual data entry. You know, maybe you have to enter something into the, you know, the base EMR, and then you also have to enter duplicate information, you know, perhaps into the ordering system, right?

[00:26:54] Michael LaRocca: And those sorts of things always are, are recipes for trouble because you’re entering things twice. There’s that human error element that might come up. There’s the lack of efficiency, et cetera. So that’s another thing I think with technology and, and, and highly integrated systems that we could really resolve And, you know, another thing that comes to mind is this idea of, um, staff sometimes hoarding supplies.

[00:27:17] Michael LaRocca: Like, if you think about this, like just from a supply chain and a su- um, a supply availability issue, you know, sometimes the staff doesn’t always trust that they’re gonna have what they need at the right time, right? Mark talked a little bit about that before, making sure you have the right materials at the right place at the right time.

[00:27:35] Michael LaRocca: Sometimes what could happen is this, if the staff doesn’t have full confidence that they’ve got what they need when they need it, they’ll over-order, right? They’ll order in excess, which if, if the product has a long shelf life, maybe the problem doesn’t immediately present itself. But some products do have a shelf life.

[00:27:54] Michael LaRocca: Some things, you know, will only last, uh, so long. Some things need to be re- refrigerated, right? There’s a lot of complexity to these things that are ordered, and having, um, excess ordering really leads to just massive inefficiency and really high cost and a risk that things are gonna get thrown out. So these, in my opinion, are just some of the, the sort of the key inefficiencies that staff go through and I think technology could help with.

[00:28:21] Scott W. Luton: Uh, fascinating stuff. And Scott, a couple points here. First off, can’t you tell Mike’s been in a hospital or a thousand? Clearly, he’s been in healthcare for quite some time. Uh, and then secondly, you know, healthcare, as we’ve established, is a unique industry, right? Uh, there’s plenty of– And there’s plenty of things I think, frankly, other sectors, other industries could learn from healthcare.

[00:28:42] Scott W. Luton: However, when we talk about those, those common challenges, spreadsheets, manual updates and systems, lots of systems, that swivel, that swivel chair effect, if I got that right. The good news is healthcare can also learn from global supply chain because those are issues that we’ve been solving for, for quite some time, have made some big gains in.

[00:29:03] Scott W. Luton: And of course, drawing from Mark’s and, and InterSystems’, um, um, years of, of, of work in the space, we are gonna talk about how it’s, it’s all coming together. But Scott, uh, big opportunities, but, you know, healthcare can learn from supply chain, huh?

[00:29:18] Scott DeGroot: Well, I absolutely think that that’s right, and, you know, probably because the fact that the, the outcomes are so, um, urgent in the healthcare industry, and, you know, quite honestly, in the– as a society, we’re all struggling with the cost of healthcare and the, the speed of outcomes, you know, and these kind of things.

[00:29:37] Scott DeGroot: Nobody wants to pay more for healthcare, but they sure want the right kind of outcome. So if we have people typing in the wrong things or hoarding supplies, you know, which is a normal, maybe human behavior. Like, I don’t have enough, I’m gonna order extra. The bullwhip effect that causes costs to go up and inventory to go up, and it’s in the wrong place.

[00:29:55] Scott DeGroot: So absolutely, these are supply chain principles, um, that absolutely need to be applied in the most excellent way possible

[00:30:03] Scott W. Luton: And, and the other thing is, uh, and, and we’re gonna move into the, um, an exci- some exciting technologically driven innovation here in a second. But, you know, technology’s not optional. It’s gonna be the only way we, we fix these challenges and more. We’ve got to lean in to modern day cutting-edge technology, and that’s where we’re going next.

[00:30:21] Scott W. Luton: So Mike and Mark and Scott, the good news, and there’s always good news if you go looking for it, we can counter all these challenges and a lot more. And one of the things, one of the, the recent developments, uh, Mike, comes from you and the Ready Computing team, because y’all have built this intriguing solution that’s, that’s brand new.

[00:30:40] Scott W. Luton: However, it taps into something that’s not brand new and is proven, and that’s the InterSystems Supply Chain Orchestrator. Um, so let’s do this. Let’s kind of break this up a piece and make s- uh, a bit, and make sure all our audience is with us. Uh, so Mark, let’s assume the audience has not seen any of your previous conversations here about, uh, InterSystems Supply Chain Orchestrator.

[00:31:03] Scott W. Luton: But let’s start there, ’cause that’s a critical part of this, this, um, healthcare, um, innovation we’re gonna be talking about. Tell us about how that works at a high level Yeah. Thank you, Scott. Yes. So t- think of Supply Chain Orchestrator as a decision intelligence data platform with four key embedded technologies that creates a single advanced data orchestration layer. So there’s four key technologies. So the first one is, is that we wanna create, harmonize, and normalize unified data so we can bring all the disparate data sources together.

[00:31:37] Speaker 3: That is the first technology that we use from any source inside or outside the, the organization. The second technology is where we, we harmonize that data on demand by the special processes of how we do that, bringing processing to the actual data so that we know that when we want to run the analytics, it’s real-time and accurate.

[00:31:57] Speaker 3: So once you have the harmonized, normalized data, you have the ability to then analyze in real time data that is accurate. Then we apply a third technology, which is AI-enabled intelligent business process integration. We’ve been talking so much about integration, but the product itself helps you integrate and bring the business processes together that through our AI technology that is either application or enterprise with, uh, within the organization or outside the organization.

[00:32:27] Speaker 3: And then lastly, and the fourth technology that comes together is our own advanced ML, AI, agentic AI that ultimately helps you lead to prescriptive insights. So all four of those technologies are coming together as one product. And as you stated, we’re just, we’re really excited about how this technology that we’ve been talking about with you, Scott, over the last couple years, uh, is, is now, uh, embedded, uh, with, uh, Ready Computing. 

[00:32:59] Scott W. Luton: So we’re gonna pick back up with Mike and what they’re doing with the Channels360, um, application, in particular the supply chain edition of that. But really quick, Scott, Mark just listed four compelling aspects of the supply chain orchestrator by our friends at InterSystems, and I’m not gonna capture all of that ’cause he’s a lot smarter than me.

[00:33:19] Scott W. Luton: But, uh, uh, real-time analytics, it helps with integration, and we get away from these silos of, of, of intelligence and data. Of course, the data is cleaned and harmonized and normalized, and on top of it all, or powering it all perhaps, machine learning and artificial intelligence. That is quite a recipe, Scott, huh? 

[00:33:40] Scott DeGroot: Yeah,

[00:33:40] Scott DeGroot: it is. And I, I think that the methodology is right on. Mark is obviously onto a good thing here in terms of we have to describe what is happening. We have to have insights on what should be happening, and then we need to make proactive recommendations about how to fix something that should not be happening.

[00:33:57] Scott DeGroot: This idea of moving to prescriptive, um, intelligence where we’re solving problems before they cause bad outcomes, I think that’s really intriguing. And, uh, not only do I say kudos to Mark, but I’m also interested in, um, you know, in an application in the real world. Uh, so I’m sure we’ll, uh, get into that

[00:34:17] Scott W. Luton: Well, you read my mind. Uh, Mike, well, let’s talk about how all of that, uh, is combined with your team’s innovation and especially a, a powerful why, because we’ve, we’ve established really all the challenges that, um, or a lot of the challenges at least impacting the healthcare industry. Tell us about how all of that is powering the Channels360 application.

[00:34:38] Scott W. Luton: Again, you’ve got a couple editions, but we’re gonna talk about really focusing on the supply chain edition. Tell us more, Mike.

[00:34:45] Michael LaRocca: Right. Well, yeah, as Mark said, we embed the InterSystems technology. And, and if you think of the application, R Channels 360 as a multi-layered technology stack At the lowest level of the stack, we have our data platform. That’s where InterSystems serves a just absolutely critical role for us. I mean, at the lowest level, it does everything from persisting data, all your database CRUD operations, I’ll call them, right?

[00:35:13] Michael LaRocca: Does all of those things for us, but it’s also what allows us to integrate with other systems. Nobody in today’s age is gonna build an application that’s siloed and only supports one department in the hospital. Everything you build needs to be a connected application of one form or another, and we use the InterSystems technology to make those connections and deal with all the standards, like I spoke about earlier, and transformations and all of those things.

[00:35:37] Michael LaRocca: But down- now add on top of that supply chain orchestrator, right? It, it’s doing quite a few things for us, right? It, A, it gives us a framework. So there’s this d- smart data fabric, you know, within supply chain orchestrator that gives us a, a way to, a standard way to do certain things. It’s sort of like integrate one system to another, um, perform, uh, structural and semantic transformation of the data.

[00:36:06] Michael LaRocca: You just imagine there’s this sort of concept of a data pipeline, and as the data’s moving from one system or another, there’s a handful of things that have to happen. And so at its most basic level, we’re getting this framework that we could operate within. But now you’re also getting, A, support for these s- or supply chains standards, things like GS1 and EDIFACT and other thing, things that we do.

[00:36:27] Michael LaRocca: We’ve got the AI, uh, capabilities that Mark mentioned. You know, we can do this for all kinds, uh, or use it for a lot of things like automatically ordering i- into stock to, to make inventory to certain par level if it looks like, you know, we don’t have enough supply on hand to deal with all the procedures that are coming up.

[00:36:46] Michael LaRocca: There’s all these uses for AI that we could use, so we use InterSystems for that. And, and also supply chain orchestrator gives us what I’ll call an API first architecture. So as, uh, you’re building a technology, you want to find a way to sort of encapsulate all the key behavior of the, of the application in services that could be reused in different contexts, whether it’s our own front-end application calling into an API or it’s a partner’s application calling into an API.

[00:37:17] Michael LaRocca: This API first architecture of supply chain orchestrator gives us a lot of capabilities that we can use, um, and even offer to our partners that we’re integrating with. So, so we use it quite a bit. And maybe if I could just take a step back, because I feel like I was a bit in the, a low level there for, for a while.

[00:37:35] Michael LaRocca: Channels360 at its core is a case management tool, right? At its core. It’s applied, um, as you s- mentioned earlier, Scott, to different sort of scenarios through different editions, right? So you have kind of different flavors of it. But ultimately what we’re doing is registering new cases that, and coordinating people and systems around that particular case.

[00:38:02] Michael LaRocca: So some of the tasks that might be performed within that case are done by people, right? Some of them are automated, but it’s all sort of managed within a common workflow. And this really brings quite a lot of consistency to sort of how we approach a particular implementation. And I think one of the unique things about Channels, and the name, by the way, comes from this idea of channels of communication.

[00:38:24] Michael LaRocca: So, but the idea of this is we’re integrating people and systems together, right? And, and the system starts to almost learn from itself over time. In the beginning, maybe you have, and I’m just throwing numbers out, maybe a health system has 80% of its processes are manual and 20% are automated, but the system gets smarter.

[00:38:45] Michael LaRocca: We start to find ways, well, maybe we could al- automate that, maybe we could automate this. And little by little, we start to be, uh, automate more and more of those workflows, um, which has, you know, quite a few advantages. But, you know, within supply chain, Channels serves this role of being able to make sure that orders from the time they’re placed to the time they’re fulfilled, and everything in between, can be sort of managed through a consistent workflow and get end-to-end visibility of everything that happens along the way.

[00:39:16] Michael LaRocca: So somebody who’s using Channels at any moment can see what’s the status of an order, what’s the status of the shipment, you know, could I possibly have gotten, uh, a cheaper product through a- another supplier? Maybe the discount levels were better. There’s all kinds of intelligence that you could get within this from the end-to-end operation

[00:39:35] Scott W. Luton: So Mike, you almost get as excited about talking about Channels360 as you do Corvettes. Uh, so I’m looking forward. We’ll have to have you back in a year and we’ll talk about all kinds of outcomes and applications. But let me stick with you for a

[00:39:48] Michael LaRocca: I need a Corvette edition of Channels360. I’m not sure

[00:39:51] Scott W. Luton: It’s coming. It’s coming. Um, all right. So really I want to stick with you for a minute because I want to ask, um, in practical terms, uh, c- you and Mark both have mentioned, uh, ML and, uh, AI a couple times. How is AI leveraged in practical terms as it relates to the supply chain edition of Channels360?

[00:40:11] Michael LaRocca: Well, I would say at a 50,000-foot view, we support, um, RAG-oriented AI, I’ll say, and agentic

[00:40:20] Michael LaRocca: AI, right? And they each have a role, and they kind of work together. I’ll give you a couple of examples. When it comes to RAG, we’re basically generating content, right? Um, what we’re– Examples of that might be generating documentation for a patient, right? Maybe given a certain context, a certain condition, whatever the situation might be, we could generate a care plan.

[00:40:42] Michael LaRocca: We could generate educational materials. We could generate all those things. We could also do things like generate a list of supplies that are needed to satisfy upcoming procedures, right? So that’s one way that we use AI quite a bit to do these sorts of things. Now, the agentic side of things is another step.

[00:41:02] Michael LaRocca: It’s even a, a little more powerful. It’s meaning that we’re actually not just generating content, but we’re taking action on that content, right? And we’re finding ways to use AI to automate those things. So that could be things like, uh, automating an order of supplies because the par level was low in inventory, right?

[00:41:21] Michael LaRocca: Uh, or maybe ordering, um, a pr-renewal of a prescription even for a patient because the renewal period came up, right? There’s all of these things that we can do to, at even an agentic AI to use that. And I feel like one of the things I know all of us in the industry, and I, I know myself and Ready Computing, we put a lot of thought into ethical use of AI.

[00:41:47] Michael LaRocca: Um, there’s a lot of things that we do as, as a company not to just say, “Okay, we’re gonna use, uh, AI everywhere.” You know, we’re very specialized in where we use it or don’t use it. Um, everything is done with purpose, um, and with ethics in mind, and to just make sure that we’re using the technology in a, in a very trustworthy way.

[00:42:05] Michael LaRocca: ‘Cause it is powerful. You could almost do anything you want with it, right? And it’s up to us to decide exactly where we plug and play those AI capabilities

[00:42:13] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. Governance, governance, governance. Uh, okay, so Mark, before I get Scott to comment, I know he’s chomping at the bit, but Mark, tell us more when we talk about AI and, and the practical usage, uh, your thoughts, Mark 

[00:42:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, I just, uh, obviously Mike did a great job on, on using the different types of AI. Uh, I wanted to focus just a little bit on the prescriptive insights. And we brought it up a couple times. And the reason why it’s so important just, you know, obviously, you know, beyond healthcare, but sticking to what we’re dealing with now, is that you’re dealing with…

[00:42:46] Speaker 3: And when a decision has to be made to, let’s say, optimize a procedure, but, you know, beyond, you know, patient level, just optimizing could be working capital, operation cost, transportation cost, all of that. There’s thousands of different touch points and data points inside and outside the organization. AI helps you do that real time very quickly in an optimized way to be able to come up with that, that outcome that affects the patient in the most optimal way for everybody. 

[00:43:21] Scott W. Luton: Hmm. All right. So that goes back, Scott, what you’re talking about. The, the visibility is not good enough. We need to, we need to take action. A lot of it can be automated. Mike and, and Mark both were talking about that, and, and the example Mike used was, you know, uh, automating, uh, orders of supplies. So hopefully rather than, you know, tracking down seven manual spreadsheets, “Oh, we do need some XYZ.”

[00:43:45] Scott W. Luton: It’s, it’s autonomous, and so the supplies are there, which limits all those procedure cancellations. And that, that’s just one small little example. Um, Scott, weigh in. We’ve covered a lot of ground since I came back to you. Weigh in what you heard there from Mike and Mark.

[00:44:00] Scott DeGroot: Well, I, I put my mind, uh, I was thinking a lot during the, the conversation about, um, what it’s like to be in the hospital procedure room or in the office when something is happening. And, you know, if I’m in that spot, if you’re a user or a consumer of that, you want everything to go perfectly. You don’t want someone to go searching for, you know, some more items that are needed or updating a spreadsheet, or you never want to hear someone typing go, “Oops.”

[00:44:29] Scott DeGroot: You know, you don’t want to hear that. So, you know, just like on the shop floor in a factory or distribution center, I mean, even more so in these cases, we really need to have the mindset that whatever makes that job easier and better and more efficient is what we have to do, and, uh, not concern ourselves with, um, you know, oh, so much is, is this coming from AI?

[00:44:51] Scott DeGroot: If that makes the job easier and better, w- we should be all for it. And then I love the idea of prescribing insights and s- orchestrating better outcomes before the oops, you know, happens. And, um, so I, I think we’re really onto something here

[00:45:06] Scott W. Luton: Well, we, and we have massive opportunities, uh, to act more proactively, uh, right? And, and again, lessen all the decisions that, um, healthcare professionals have to make each and every day. Um, one more element, uh, and, and, and Mike, I want to circle back, uh, to you here in a second. Um, but one element that I don’t think we touched on that I think speaks to the demand of why we got to do more of what Mike and Mark and their respective teams are doing is, uh, beyond the, the sheer demand that’s coming onto our healthcare systems everywhere, not just here, here in the States.

[00:45:37] Scott W. Luton: But in the States, uh, we’re seeing tons and tons of MA, uh, M&A activity across, um, the healthcare industry. And when you think about, you know, one company acquiring 10 different systems, and those systems themselves are gonna have the, you know, the gaps in the data and the systems and all that stuff, well, then all that’s compounded, I’m not sure the math behind it.

[00:45:59] Scott W. Luton: Uh, Scott, you were sharing math, uh, you know, earlier, 100x, 1000x, who knows? But the problem gets bigger. The problem gets bi-bigger. So this is a very timely discussion we’re having. And Mike, I’m, I’m thrilled for the Channels360 that you and the team at Ready Computing are launching. Um, and I think it’s just now hitting the market, uh, Mike, but what do you expect?

[00:46:24] Scott W. Luton: Look deep into your crystal ball. What do you expect some of the most powerful outcomes are gonna be, Mike?

[00:46:30] Michael LaRocca: Well, the most important outcome is patient care, right? I, e-every… That’s number one, it’s paramount. So I think one of the outcomes from here is going to be a better patient experience, a better experience for the staff, but ultimately better clinical outcomes for the patient, right? So everything we’re doing sort of serves that greater goal.

[00:46:52] Michael LaRocca: I think at a supply chain level, at a lower level, I think one of the major outcomes is resiliency. I mean, you think of how many stakeholders there are in a supply chain and all of the points where something could go wrong. You know, if, imagine being able to make that whole end-to-end process as resilient as possible, so anywhere there’s a failure, the system could predict the failure, work around the failure, right?

[00:47:20] Michael LaRocca: Or things like that, or alert the right people. But anything we can do to build a resilient supply chain is, is critical. Um, I think another outcome, of course, you know, every hospital’s a business. They, the costs need to be right, right? The time, uh, to a solution needs to be right. So I think all the technology, one of the big outcomes in here is, you know, making sure that the hospital runs effectively as a business.

[00:47:47] Michael LaRocca: You know, making sure that all of their processes are running as efficiently and as accurately as possible

[00:47:53] Scott W. Luton: Yep. You know, uh, ’cause you’re right. At the end of the day, hospitals, so many of them, so many healthcare or systems are for-profit businesses. Well, a lot of them are non-profit as well. But the better they can be run, Mike, I would argue the more facilities and infrastructure they can build out to serve more folks, um, especially, uh, in all parts, and leave no one behind, all parts of the world, whether it’s populated or unpo- or, or less than, uh, or not very populated.

[00:48:19] Scott W. Luton: Uh, all right. So Mike, sticking with you for a minute. Once hospitals and their staffs, their managers, their leaders, their professionals gain true real-time visibility on the integrated basis, what, what do you find that they’re often surprised to discover?

[00:48:36] Michael LaRocca: Oh boy, they’d discover a lot. That’s for sure. Uh, I would say they’re gonna discover, well, something we spoke about earlier was wasteful ordering,

[00:48:46] Michael LaRocca: right? Right. I thought you were gonna say contraband, but not contraband, right?

[00:48:51] Michael LaRocca: Well, presumably this, this question will go to Mark after me. Maybe I’ll let him

[00:48:55] Michael LaRocca: answer that one. That’s right. That’s right

[00:48:59] Michael LaRocca: yeah, I think wasteful ordering. I, I, I, I believe health systems might not even be aware of just how much waste there is, or at least it’s hard to quantify. So imagine, like, this technology suddenly is gonna give them all of this insight into how their ordering systems are, what their inventory systems are, right, in real time, and to be able to show that in a, in some kind of control tower or dashboard.

[00:49:20] Michael LaRocca: You know, I, I think that’s gonna reveal quite a lot. I think the hospitals are also gonna really realize just how much of their labor expenses are spent spinning to get supplies, right? To call the supplier ’cause something went off the rails. I mean, imagine you have your, your clinical staff, your nursing staff dealing with these sorts of issues instead of patient care.

[00:49:45] Michael LaRocca: I have a feeling health systems will discover some of, I’ll call them distractions from patient care, because they have to deal with all these sort of infrastructure and supply chains issues. I think that’s gonna be a big discovery. Um, I think they’re going to discover where bottlenecks are. I, I, you know, th- I think there are generally are certain patterns to these bottlenecks that hospitals will be able to see.

[00:50:12] Michael LaRocca: It might be a certain supplier has a history of always being a little late, right? Or a certain shipping company, a logistics company that maybe is adding delay, or maybe for cold shipments, you know, they had something break down and, and product was delivered that couldn’t be used. I think they’re gonna gain all kinds of insights there.

[00:50:31] Michael LaRocca: You know, ultimately, at the end of the day, once they have their systems connected, and as Mark mentioned earlier, it’s sort of like making sure the clinical side and the supply chain side are talking to one another. Once those systems become integrated, and now you could show the true end-to-end visibility of everything that’s happening, oh boy, they’re gonna learn a lot

[00:50:51] Scott W. Luton: Mike, I’m with you. And that, and it’s like the Corvette going from six- from zero to 60, right? Uh, Scott, really quick, Mark might have a comment too, but really quick, Scott. You know, in your career, uh, you haven’t been in healthcare as a practitioner, but you, I’m sure, can relate to a lot of the, the innovation and a lot of the unlock that’s gonna take place in healthcare that Mike’s talking to.

[00:51:11] Scott W. Luton: What do you think healthcare professionals and managers and leaders are gonna be discovering and the eureka moments that are gonna be going off? What do you think, Scott?

[00:51:21] Scott DeGroot: Yeah, I, I think that, uh, you know, what Mike said is really right. And then most, like senior executives, they get some new technology like, “Oh my gosh, look at how bad we were.” You know? And that, it’s just always that kind of, kind of moment where, hmm, you kind of swallow hard and say, “Well, we have to do something about getting better.”

[00:51:40] Scott DeGroot: And this idea that we’re over-ordering, we have delayed shipments, we have, um, staff spending hours, minutes every day, times hundreds of staff, times thousands of minutes, you know, millions of dollars of waste that is not being pointed toward patient care. Uh, I think that we’re gonna find that, um, we have a lot of improvement.

[00:51:59] Scott DeGroot: As good as our system is, we still have a lot of improvement yet to go. And that’s why it’s exciting. What Mike is doing and what Mark is enabling here is exciting. You know, people have rightly so want to complain about healthcare costs and service times. These are some of the steps we take to solution set.

[00:52:16] Scott DeGroot: That’s, um, it makes me very happy actually

[00:52:18] Scott W. Luton: Scott, I’m with you. And, and thinking about it, uh, you mentioned kind of some factory, uh, crossover analogies. You know, these things are, I think, are going to greatly increase the capacity and the throughput of, uh, hospitals and, and healthcare organizations out there, and we need it. We need it. We needed it yesterday.

[00:52:35] Scott W. Luton: We needed it last year. Uh, so th- this is very exciting and, and, and practical. Uh, Mark, anything you wanna… I mean, we’re, I think we’re, um, I think you can tell we’re pretty excited about, uh, the rollout of Channel 360 and, and the partnership here. Uh, ’cause again, we’re all, we’re all healthc- we’re all patients, we’re all consumers of healthcare.

[00:52:56] Scott W. Luton: Anything you wanna add, Mark, before I, uh, circle back to Mike, uh, and, and, and check out the health of his crystal ball real quick? 

[00:53:04] Speaker 3: Yes. Uh, just really two comments. Uh, one, when you were just talking about everybody’s talking about inventory obsolescence, and I tell you, I was just recently in Japan and there was a particular medical distributor, and it’s not that many really that come together as a consortium really, um, providing medical supplies.

[00:53:20] Speaker 3: And I was in one particular one, and they said, “Look, I wanna take you to the section of, of this, this warehouse that is just for them, obsolescence of, of medical supplies that are about to, because of the, uh, either close to their a- aging or past.” And it was as far as the eye could see. And you think about that, uh, it’s, what a, a terrible, terrible situation to be in for so many reasons that we’ve been talking about.

[00:53:48] Speaker 3: So that was a really live, uh, experience that was eye-opening to me that, that we can address with what we’re talking about today, you know, beyond… And obviously there’s an indirect impact on the patient or direct impact on the patient. Uh, so that was number one. And I think number two, I just didn’t wanna lose sight either too, and we’ve been talking about, and you brought it up, Scott, uh, uh, maybe indirectly, but, you know, think about it.

[00:54:13] Speaker 3: When I talked about in the beginning that we’ve been in business for over 48 years, uh, our healthcare, we- that was day one for us. We’re healthcare day one for over 48 years, and day one for Mike’s company. And the combination of the two, ev- everything that we’ve been talking about is clearly a differentiator in the market 

[00:54:33] Scott W. Luton: Hmm. Well, it– all that means we’ll have even more to celebrate on the fiftieth anniversary of, of InterSystems coming up 

[00:54:39] Speaker 3: Exactly. Well, you will be invited 

[00:54:41] Scott W. Luton: Oh, uh, I, I look forward to that. Um, Mike, uh, all kidding aside, this is really, really cool stuff. Uh, kudos to you and the team. But I got a couple more questions. M-maybe not the, the thousand questions that Scott mentioned earlier, but I bet we could.

[00:54:54] Scott W. Luton: Uh, there’s a lot, a lot of moving parts here. So if you look ahead, let’s check out your– how your crystal ball is working here. If you look a little further ahead, Mike, what else do you think that we haven’t touched on that all this innovation means for healthcare and how it impacts the current need, immense need for innovation and real action?

[00:55:16] Michael LaRocca: You know, you know, Scott, a- actually, I would say, or one of your comments earlier, you actually did touch on something that I think is worth coming back to, to highlight. It’s this whole idea of rural health and the healthcare system expanding within our own country to reach every corner, right? And to make sure that anyone in need of healthcare services has access to those healthcare services, whether you’re in a big metropolitan city or you’re in a real rural area, right out in the countryside.

[00:55:46] Michael LaRocca: So I think that as those initiatives continue to grow and move forward, and in, in America, that, that initiative’s really gaining quite a lot of traction, I believe what you’re– we’re going to see is a much, a much greater demand on the supply chain. I think now rural hospitals are gonna be providing more services, right, more procedures than maybe they did in the past.

[00:56:13] Michael LaRocca: There’s gonna be a greater need for, uh, supplies and inventory management to be on hand for those things. I think we’re gonna find the sup- supply chain

[00:56:21] Michael LaRocca: use cases starting to really, really, um, grow, and that the role of technology is, is going to be imperative to make sure that everything goes right

[00:56:31] Scott W. Luton: Uh, imperative is, uh, is absolutely the right word. Uh, Mark, do you see? 

[00:56:37] Speaker 3: Yeah, so well said by Mike. The only thing that I would add is it, by going to rural health, it extends the supply chain. By extending the supply chain, you have even more instances of disruptions that could happen. And as we all know, the whole geopolitical events from state to state, country to country is, is it just makes it a much more complicated environment that needs to be managed 

[00:57:08] Scott W. Luton: E- so true. Uh, the complexity is off the charts. It really is. Um, and Scott, that complexity is not gonna stop. We’re gonna address some of it, but, you know, disruption is the name of the game when it comes to supply, the intersection of supply chain and healthcare. Uh, how, how do, how do you think this is all gonna play out based on what Mike and Mark shared?

[00:57:28] Scott DeGroot: Well, I tell you, I, I am feeling, uh, very much more hopeful I- uh, right now than I was 45 minutes ago because, um, I absolutely know, as all supply chain practitioners know, they, uh, envi- the environment will continue to be more unstable, and traditional supply lines cannot be always trusted. And if we have excess inventory or the wrong inventory in the wrong place, it means, um, bad outcomes, either from a cost or from a patient health standpoint, or if you’re trying to buy gum on the store shelf.

[00:58:01] Scott DeGroot: Whatever it is, um, we have to use technology to overcome some of these headwinds and some of these, um, the volatility that is now built into the way the world operates. So I’m, I’m excited that Mark and Mike are doing this, this amount of work to help us get to those better outcomes

[00:58:19] Scott W. Luton: I’m with you. Um, let’s get the manual work out of our healthcare organizations, and let’s leave it… If you wanna wash your Corvette, hey, that’s all the manual work you can knock out in the afternoon or on a weekend. But really, we gotta– we, we can do so much better, and I’m excited about what Ready Computing and InterSystems is doing here together here today.

[00:58:38] Scott W. Luton: Um, all right. So I’m sure we’re gonna have some audience members across the SCN global fam that wants to connect with y’all, wants to learn more, whether it’s about, uh, Channels three sixty or if it’s about InterSystems Supply Chain Orchestrator or talking healthcare and supply chain, which is a really fascinating intersection.

[00:58:55] Scott W. Luton: Let’s make sure folks can, can, uh, can connect with both of y’all, and let’s start with Mike LaRocca. How can folks connect with you and Ready Computing?

[00:59:04] Michael LaRocca: Well, I think the easiest thing is LinkedIn. I, I use it quite a bit. I would welcome any invitation from an audience member. I, I would love the contact and, you know, so I’m on there, Michael LaRocca, Ready Computing. You should be able to find me okay. Uh, you could also email me at michael.larocca@readycomputing.com.

[00:59:22] Michael LaRocca: Uh, we also have a general inbox if people want to send a general inquiry in to just info@readycomputing.com

[00:59:30] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. Especially, uh, hospitals and healthcare systems out there. I bet you’d be happy to sit down and have a business and a, um, a how we do better conversation with all of them, huh?

[00:59:41] Michael LaRocca: Absolutely

[00:59:42] Scott W. Luton: Good stuff, Mike. All right, so Mark Holmes. Uh, y- and you get out. You, uh, you do tons of, of virtual work too, but you’re getting out, talking with the business leaders, meeting their teams.

[00:59:53] Scott W. Luton: You were describing some of your global travels earlier. I’m very envious, Mark. I’m very envious. But how can folks track you and the InterSystems team down? Sure. You know, the same as Mike. LinkedIn, I’m very active on LinkedIn. You know, reach out to me. Make sure it’s Mark S. Holmes on LinkedIn. Believe it or not, there’s another Mark Holmes, and we never knew each other, and we both agree to how we would put ourself out into LinkedIn. So M.S. Holmes on LinkedIn.

[01:00:20] Speaker 3: And then from a website standpoint, to learn more about what we do within healthcare, within supply chain, go to intersystems.com/supply chain 

[01:00:29] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. And don’t do any more scuba diving for a little while, okay,

[01:00:33] Speaker 3: Or maybe I will. 

[01:00:34] Scott DeGroot: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, 

[01:00:36] Scott W. Luton: Mark?

[01:00:37] Scott DeGroot: Side gig.

[01:00:38] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[01:00:38] Scott W. Luton: Uh, that’s good. Uh, Mike and Mark, I’m telling y’all, uh, this has been one of my favorite recent conversations. And again, I really appreciate the innovation y’all are driving. And again, we’ll have y’all back, and we’ll have plenty more use cases and outcomes to dive into. Um, okay, Scott DeGroot, you have got– We asked Mark and Mike some tough questions, but you’ve got the toughest one of the day because as we’ve sh- me and you, me and you have both shared, we’re pretty excited about all this information and, and innovation we’ve unpacked here today on this episode.

[01:01:08] Scott W. Luton: But what is your patented one key takeaway here today, Scott?

[01:01:14] Scott DeGroot: Well, I think it’s this, that the, um, the crisis in the healthcare system together with the tech– advanced technologies that are coming our way are being packaged in a way through the work that Mark is doing and the way Mike is executing that work that is really making a difference. And so my key takeaway is, let’s make sure that they have all the support they need to continue to do this important work because you know what?

[01:01:37] Scott DeGroot: We need healthcare outcomes that are even better than today at a lower cost, and these guys are on to how to get that done

[01:01:44] Scott W. Luton: Hmm. I like it, Scott. Optimistic key takeaway. I’m always game for that. Uh, uh, well, what a great conversation, folks. I wanna thank our esteemed panel again, uh, Mike LaRocca, founder and CEO at Ready Computing. Mike, thanks so much, my friend

[01:01:58] Michael LaRocca: Thank you, Scott. And Scott, thank you both for having me here. I really appreciate it

[01:02:02] Scott W. Luton: You bet. What a great story. And Mark Holmes, head of global supply chain market strategy at InterSystems. Mark, a pl- always a pleasure to reconnect with you

[01:02:11] Speaker 3: Same. Same. Love it. Thank you very much You bet. Uh, all right, Scott Negrete, uh, always a pleasure co-hosting these sessions here today, and this was a special one, huh?

[01:02:20] Scott DeGroot: Yeah, no, it’s very good. And, uh, you know, it leaves me with a feeling of optimism and a, a positive view on how we use technology to make our, our lives better. So I thank you very much for having me

[01:02:32] Scott W. Luton: You bet. Uh, to our SCN Global fam, the smartest audience in all of global supply chain, hope, hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we have. But you know you got homework, right? You gotta take just one thing from all the good stuff that Mike, Mark, and Scott shared here today, and you gotta do something with it.

[01:02:49] Scott W. Luton: Deeds, not words. That’s how we’re gonna transform healthcare. That’s how we’re gonna transform, uh, global business and leave no one behind. So with all that said, Scott Luton here on behalf of the Supply Chain Now team, challenging all of our audience members out there, do good, give forward, be the change that’s needed, and we’ll see you next time right back here on Supply Chain Now.

[01:03:08] Scott W. Luton: Thanks, everybody