This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Katherine Sager, chief consulting officer at Nordic Consulting.
This Madison-based firm provides various services for the health care industry in the United States, Canada and Europe, ranging from staffing to health IT support and more. It has more than 700 health care customers, including large multi-site health systems with thousands of workers and smaller community hospitals as well.
Sager shares insights from her time in the health sector, touching on some of the top trends defining modern health care IT. She notes the industry is still feeling the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as staffing shortages, provider burnout and higher costs are posing challenges for health care organizations.
“The other thing that we see as a major theme right now is cybersecurity,” Sager said, adding the Change Healthcare breach earlier this year may have affected as many as one-third of all Americans. “The impact on hospitals and clinics was huge.”
She’s also tracking the role of AI in the health care industry, especially as it relates to electronic health records.
“How can it be used to help with decision making? What are the right ways to use it, what are the ethics around that? There’s a lot of really interesting research being done on that right now,” she said.
Sager says curiosity and interest in the technology’s potential is tempered with trepidation, noting AI likely has a role in low-risk tasks or work that’s not directly related to patient care.
“AI can be tuned over time, it can learn, it can continue to become more precise,” she said. “And so there’s lots of ways that over time, as you continue to refine it, it can become very effective and very helpful … Like any tool, it has to be applied appropriately.”
The interview also explores Nordic’s approach to staffing support, how the business has evolved over the years and the path ahead for future growth.
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
