玩偶姐姐

Cathy O'Sullivan:? Hello and welcome to 玩偶姐姐 Leadership live. I'm Cathy O'Sullivan, editorial director for 玩偶姐姐 in Australia and New Zealand. And today, my guest is Dr Rachna Gandhi, who is the Global Chief Digital and Data Officer at Ramsay Health Care. Hello, Rachna, welcome to the show. ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi:? Cathy, lovely to see you again, and a pleasure to be on the show. Thank you. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan: ? Great to chat with you again, and you and I have spoken before, and I love hearing about 玩偶姐姐s' professional journeys.

So, can you share a bit more about your career and some of the milestones that have led up to your current role at Ramsay Health Care? ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: Certainly. So I think to start with, I haven't actually had a career in tech, so I did come to kind of a digital career in a maybe somewhat unusual way. My early career was very much in strategy, and particularly in customer.

Strategy is the area I was very passionate about. My PhD is linked to the topic. And my focus in this earlier Jobs was very much about how you build customer centric and focus cultures, how we leverage data around it.

I had a lot of exposure and working as a data scientist, and then in strategy, the transition really to, I guess, more into technology or digital happen through my passion for leading change, and probably found its roots in my time at service New South Wales.

I had the pleasure of being part of the startup, startup team there, and a lot of that transformation was around how we digitally enable a better service experience our border citizens of peace, out bales.

And that's where I think what connected with me most is what I love about change and transformation is how you set an organization up for the future.

It's very much about creating future fit businesses and technology and data and AI and digital modernist play a very critical role in that. So since services, I've gravitated more towards digital and data roles.

Having said that, I've spent time in my career working in large operations roles, leading large operations teams. But again, there, the focus has been on, how do we actually enable a better experience through better use of technology and data?

So it's been an absolute privilege to be in the role that I am at Ramsay. It's industry that I've come late into, but feel very passionately about, and the profound impact digital AI and data can actually have on healthcare.

It's kind of what gets me excited every morning to show up to work so kind of unusual pathway but really enjoying what I'm doing right now. ?

: Cathy O'Sullivan:? So let's get into the role. Then give us an overview of what that encompasses at Ramsay Health Care and the organization itself. Tell us about its purpose and what you and your team look after. ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi:? Sure. So the Ramsay purpose is something that really resonates with me. It's people caring for people. I think it's very apt in terms of the industry it's in, but also it's lived. It's a lived purpose. It's something you experience in the organization my team.

So essentially, when I came into Ramsay, my role prior to that didn't exist. So we had, you know, an IT team, particularly in Australia and the global focus was not mature either. Every region in Ramsay was running its digital agenda. So I wear two hats.

I am leading the more directly the digital transformation in Ramsay Australia, but I also, I guess, guide the digital ambition in the other regions.

We do have a structure where there is reasonable amount of autonomy in other regions, but there is a global focus to make sure that as one of the few international companies, we actually leveraging synergies that come from all of us pursuing a digital agenda.

And of course, we operate in the Nordics, in Europe and UK and Australia, within Australia, as I said, my role didn't exist the I guess the focus in the last three years has very much been about developing a team, taking a strategy to the board, a bold one, and being on this journey to digitally enable the organization.

We've had dual focus really. If the way I would describe the strategy is there's a lot of emphasis on closing tech debt, because health care as an industry that.

To be quite low maturity when it comes to digital and data, and equally, having a focus on making sure we're driving innovation improving the experience for our people and for our patients and customers.

So we have had a bit of a bifocal view of, you know, what do we need to do in the near term to improve the experiences? But how do we also architect to create a digital business for the future, and that's an area I'm extremely passionate about.

As I called up, I called out before, yes, digital is an enabler for the business, but equally, digital setting up the organization for the future, the future fitness component, in my mind, is really driven by the digital infrastructure you put in place, and it can be a distinct competitive advantage having that platform, you know, a scalable digital platform underpinning your business.

So, they've been the sort of two lenses we've been bringing to the work. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan:? So talk to us some more about that digitalization journey. What have been some of the key achievements of your team in recent years? ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: Sure, so we, and I'll maybe talk about it in both those fronts, is we've certainly taken a very considered approach in how we want to architect the future platform, and that's because One of my realizations coming into healthcare was, it is a very digital, low digital maturity setting the industry.

So you have an advantage, particularly when you've come from a different industry to go. We don't really only want to play catch up. It's not about, you know, going on the journey everyone else has been through. You have a late mover advantage, in fact.

And the benefits actually comes from leapfrogging and not and learning from what other industries have learned.

So if I break it down into three things in terms of achievements, I think one would certainly be that we bought that start with the end in mind lens, and we are architecting for the future. It's not just about throwing a few digital solutions in.

We're actually building the infrastructure required for the future.

To that extent, some big wins have been we have created a data, a single source of truth for our data, with a common with common definitions data model, a really good data governance around it to improve the quality and keep it secure. And this single repository.

We call it the data fund is democratized, so it is creating self service and your security policy. And we have radically uplifted the insights we can produce for the business to create real bottom line impact.

We've also created a whole new experience for our patients to go through the administration process which is completely digital on your app. And that's been a big win. We've seen, you know, close to 8.1 out of 10 satisfaction scores, very high adoption rate by our patients.

We've also moved to digitize, or at least make electronic, a lot of our scan, lot of our digital record, I'm sorry, medical records to ensure that we are while we are moving towards more digital workflows, we're at least taking the impact of paper away as soon as we can, and having them on scanned or digital versions.

There's a whole bunch of work we're doing on AI, which I'll maybe go through in a bit, and some good proof of concepts there, and we have done some of the basics as well. You know, we rolled out an HRIS system. Ramsay didn't have an HR system.

We're very close to rolling out some really impactful solutions in procurement, in healthcare, outside of your people cost, procurement is your largest cost, so getting some good data and systems in that is a huge benefit to the organization.

And we have actually been doing, we've had a lot of focus, in a good way, on process optimization. So creating, and I don't mean by that just the tactical fixes, but creating the maturity in the organization to understand its process catalog. What are the metrics? Right?

How does process optimization work and taking out friction from those processes? So, it's fair to say it's been a very holistic program of work, going from data to process to technology, AI, etc, and doing that in a way that is architecturally future fit. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan: And you mentioned earlier, you know, the patient being the focus of your team. And of course, your team won Team of the Year customer value at last year is the IO 50 awards.

But can you share a bit more with the audience about that focus on the patient and how your team has been driving those initiatives. ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi:? I think this is one that's been a cornerstone in pretty much any role I've had in my career. Maybe because I started my career in customer strategy is, you know, how do you ensure that you.

The people, but particularly patients are at the heart of what you design, where you start from, etc.

So one of the key things we did at Ramsay, it was probably a month after I'd started, I bought in a team to partner with me to build out some of our core patient journeys for our core therapeutic areas, you know, to be a cancer, mental health areas that we are, we prioritize in terms of service that we want to provide our patients.

And we mapped out the entire journey from a patient perspective, but also from Doctor perspective, our administrative teams perspective and the kind of the systems and the data that's that been beneath it, I've found that usually a really good place to start is understand the experience your patients are having today and what's the vision for where you want to go with that experience in the future.

That way, it means that even when you're thinking about the architecture, when you're thinking about solutions. You keep coming back to, what is the holistic experience you're trying to create for the patient?

As opposed to, I want to put a widget in here, and I want to take cost out of there, and I want to, you can achieve all of that, but you're kind of coming at it from, you know, this is Cathy. She's, you know, undergoing this treatment.

This is what the experience looks like today, and this is what we wanted to look like tomorrow. And that becomes your North Star. So that was an important thing for us to bring in.

The other aspect of it is making sure, which I'm sure you hear all the time, is that the patient experience, the consumer experience, is embedded in any product design in a really tangible way throughout the entire product's life, not just when you're designing it, but when you're maintaining it, when you're taking it to market, when you're upgrading it, whatever it is that you know you have the consumer of that experience embedded in the design and what you do with it.

So we have made sure that, you know, I had the advantage of setting this team up from scratch. So we've ensured that we've embedded those things in our ways of working.

Don't get me wrong, there's always areas for improvement, particularly in this space, because often you get caught up in deadlines.

So if you know this has got to go live on this date, and you kind of have to remind yourself to step back and say, have the people who are really going to consume this? You know, have they really been involved? You know?

Have they given it the take? Have we tested it with them? So, it's been a cornerstone of how we are trying to work certainly. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan: ? Yeah, absolutely fascinating. I love that focus on the patient and their journey, and I think there were some things that their family members could also see when they were going through certain treatments, when, when they were finished in operation and whatnot. ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi:? Yes, so that, sorry, I should mention that, because that was part of the win for the team, as we did introduce the patient tracker.

And it's a good it's a good one to talk to, because the team actually built a proof of concept within, you know, 60k and within a few weeks, we took it out really rapidly to test it, we found that really resonated, but particularly the kid once more than the patient, because it sends a text.

If you walked in, it sends a text to your loved one or your carer of where you are in that journey of whatever treatment you're in there to receive, reduces a lot of calls to our nurses who get called up by loved ones to say, get our SS person out of surgery.

How did it go? Etc. So, it was a very patient centric and carer centric solution that we could actually scale quite quickly. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan:? And of course, we can't go a day without talking about AI. You did mention that Ramsay is playing in this area. So, what are you currently using or exploring with this technology, and what are the benefits that you are hoping it will bring. ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: Yeah, I'll talk to the approach, because there are, at least my reflection Cathy in the spaces. You know, there's a lot of conversation about hike, there's a lot of conversation about, you know, scaling and creating value.

Certainly, my perspective on this has been that you gotta get in early. You absolutely because this is not just about the solutions you roll out. It's actually about creating AI literacy in the business.

So that means the more, the sooner you securely get AI in the hands of operations, you know, HR, finance and the tech team, not just the tech team, the sooner you're educating them and bringing them on the journey on a technology that's going to be very, very relevant, is already very relevant, but will be even more relevant in the future, and you're starting to build the confidence and literacy levels of how to deal with, you know how to interact this technology in.

A secure way. The great thing about generative AI is that it is very user centric. It's really easy to use, so it's not hard to get people to adopt it, unlike other technologies.

The second thing I firmly believe in is the team starting to test and learn very quickly, because we are likely to have more failures or learnings, if I can put it that way. And that's the only way to scale, you know, is to fail fast, to fail forward.

So we have two or three prototypes that we are actively pursuing, two that we are scaling. And there are challenges to spaying this. And interestingly, like a lot of other technology, that the challenge is not an adoption.

I found AI adoption is just so much easier generative AI adoption, it's actually in being able to securely scale it and to manage the hallucination, manage the inconsistencies of the output, etc, and then remembering the third thing, which is sometimes important, because people tend to forget the generative AI is you still need good data, you still need good foundations.

People seem to think that it just works, but for it to actually deliver tangible value, there is an iceberg effect. There are a whole bunch of things underneath, like good foundations, good data, good security, that you do have to have in place.

It's not a plug and play that people might think sometimes, at least not in a scalable way, probably in an individual way. Yes. So they have been cornerstones. We are, as I said, doing a few proof of concepts and a couple that we've scaled already.

And they have been in the administrative engagement space rather than the clinical because you want to get more things right before you go in, applying AI in the clinical space. But something I'm extremely excited about.

I also think its impact in healthcare will be quite profound in the long term. But the runway required to prepare for it, you need to have that in place.

So it's not something that you wake up two years from now and go, Okay, now I'm serious about AI, and you turn key, you know, you actually have to put the work in from now, which is what very much the team is trying to do. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan:? And so how do you and the team then balance that, you know, looking for the innovative, the next big thing you know, that use of emerging technology, but also balancing it with, you know, there is that still, that need for maintaining existing, IT stack and legacy infrastructure.

So how do you balance that? ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: ? Yeah, that's, the constant question, isn't it? And that's true in any industry, really, it's not so much. I think the challenge we've had in healthcare is because so many foundations are lacking because of under investment in the past.

It's not just about maintaining you're actually still building some foundational things. So it's a balance between constantly innovating absolutely but also, I guess, playing catch up on building your foundation so you can innovate more sustainably. So how do we approach that?

I think one is being really clear on you're never going to close your entire tech debt, what are the most critical pieces that are needed for you to innovate and to create value, and kind of prioritizing that and with innovation, maybe taking two views of one is who can you partner with to help you accelerate innovation?

Not all, not everything that needs to be built internally, rediscovered internally, and you have to find the right partners, though, but sometimes finding the right partners can absolutely help you get out of the door quicker. And then, what are the pieces of innovation you want to drive?

Because that IP is just so critical to your way of doing business, or critical to your digital ethos and strategy, so we've been a bit deliberate on that, you know, what do we want to do internally, and what's important for us to do there?

And we debate that constantly things could change. And where will partners, you know, be the right approach to accelerate, to help us accelerate. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan: ? So what do you look for them when it comes to technology partners. I mean, what does good look like from a partnership point of view and who do you involve in the decision making when you're going out to market? ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: ? So let me start with the second part of the question. There has to be operational or business ownership. It's not just about the digital team or the technology team looking for a partner, unless it's something as intrinsic as your cloud partner, for example.

But when we're looking at AI, we're looking at patient facing or US employee facing solutions. You absolutely need business ownership for a two. Work.

So usually it is joined, you know, it will be the digital team procurement and the business owner looking to find, identify and progress partners together. What do we look for?

I think it comes down to the word we just used as partner, you know, and it is harder than one things, because inevitably, what you find are vendors, right, who want to sell you things.

If they're good vendors, they'll deliver what they've actually said on the box and do it in a timely sector way. But that's not really what partnership is about. You know, the partnership really is that you have vested interest in a common outcome.

There is investment at both ends to get to that in various forms, to get to that outcome. And it benefits both equally, that there is benefit created for both.

And that means it's not a window, essentially, it's someone you want to do long term business with, with vested interest and a win, win outcome there.

And in my experience, it's harder than one expects it to be right now, and it's really important that you carefully pick those partners. And it's getting a little bit harder in technology, also, because technology is changing so rapidly.

So you do want to have enough choice in your partnerships. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, because there's so many advancements happening that you want to keep those options to some degree open. ? ?

Cathy O'Sullivan: And with technology changing so fast, then what are you thinking about when it comes to the future of the IT workforce? What kind of roles do you think will be in demand in the future, and maybe, what are ones that won't possibly exist in the future?

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Dr Rachna Gandhi: ? Yeah, that's an interesting question, because I think there's a whole bunch of roles, you know, we had, you know, as much as two years ago, that are not critical anymore. You know, that are equally can equally be substituted.

Yeah, I tend to look at it a little bit differently. In, in, I guess, where, where does having human capability do something, you know, create a truly, especially in health, humanistic and relatable experience for our patients or our customers.

So yes, you can go say, you know, we'll be writing code. We already are writing code with AI, etc. So those things are quite, you know, well documented.

But I think the skills that be really important are ones that can bring technology that deep human understanding and understanding of where a business not just technology, but what the future of a business is, or a sector is, or industry is, to creatively create, to creatively solve for the challenges we have today.

So even today, when I recruit in the technology team, or at least the ambition is that you're bringing business savvy leaders, consumer centric leaders who have a deep subject matter expertise in how to use technology to solve problems you're not really only looking for.

Okay, this person is just a crazy, astute solution designer, you know, understands just architecture. You actually want that horizontal thinking, and I think it'll head there more. It'll hit far more, because some of the really specialist things will be easy, more easily done to AI.

So, you want that more horizontal thinker, and particularly one that brings the ability to design for the future, you know, not just for what's needed in the business today. ?

Cathy O'Sullivan: ? And there seems to be a push back against diversity, and, you know, in other parts of the world, shall we say, at the moment.

But what do you think we can do to attract people from different backgrounds, you know, to have those different ways of thinking in our organizations. Are there any practical things that can be done? ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: ? Yeah, I think the, in a simplest way, the most practical thing to do is to just do it right.

I think there's just so it's actually, if you're intent on having a diverse team, which is good business, good thought leadership, because brings more diversity in how you solve for things. It's more reflective of the patient base you serve. It's more reflective of your entire workforce.

You gotta just, you know, it's not going to be a plan. It's got to be action. You know, you just have to do it.

You have to make sure that the people you're bringing into your recruitment shortlist, the people you reach out to, the people you put in front to be role models of the kind of people you're recruiting for. You have diversity embedded in all forms in it.

So for me, typically, through my life, Cathy. For this in particular, the mantra has always been, just be the change. You know, you know, just don't expect everyone else to do it before you will follow you if you intrinsically believe. And for me, it's been a personal value.

You just have to be the change. Secondly, I think what really helps in from a practical perspective with this, is we have in healthcare or any industry, you have a good feel for your customer base. You know. You do know the kind of people you serve.

You should keep that in mind when you're when you're building a team that is going to design solutions for that customer intrinsically, you just bring a bigger customer centric lens.

When you have a more representative workforce solving for that particular audience, you know, whoever that might be, so And the final thing I always ask myself, and this is someone else's quote that I loved is, you know, constantly saying to yourself, if you're if you really want to be the change, what are you not going to let happen under your watch?

Right? It's not, it's not about what's happening elsewhere. It's not about what somebody else said, about whether dei is important or not. It's about what your values are and what will you not let happen in your watch?

And I certainly feel passionately that at least in my watch, we are inclusive and respectful as a workplace ? ?

Cathy O'Sullivan: And reflecting on your own journey, then you know, what advice would you give someone who was aspiring to be a Chief Digital Officer. 玩偶姐姐, maybe they don't have that hard tech background, but they really do. They're really passionate about the impact that they can have.

What advice would you give them? ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: ? I think that there is no don't assume that there is only one path that leads there, right?

It's and it's not just me as this whole bunch of people I've come across in the space who come at it from, you know, very different backgrounds and perspectives.

One, certainly don't think that there's a set part and you're not on it, so that's not somewhere you can get to. And two, yeah, in any role. This is not just a CDO role or a 玩偶姐姐 role. I think, passion to have impact, passion to make a contribution.

The perspective of you know, what purpose does the organization? What purpose do I need to play in this organization? What role do I? How do I need to show up for this is usually a better place to start then. How do I get to a 玩偶姐姐 role?

Because you need both. You need to understand your trajectory and where you're trying to get to. But on a day to day basis, the focus has to be on, how are you having impact. You know, how are you making a difference?

How you showing up for the organization and for your teams and for the person that you report to? And those characteristics actually really help you in your career journey. From a pure CDO perspective, having a good passion for what technology can enable is important.

I don't think having a engineering degree is the end of it, but having a good passion, which means you read up on it, you follow it, you understand how technology can change businesses, lives, etc. I think that is needed.

You gotta feel passionate about what technology can achieve, or data can achieve, ?

Cathy O'Sullivan:? And finally, Rachna what's important to you and the team in the months ahead? Are there any other exciting initiatives in the pipeline? ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: ? Yes, actually, for what it's worth, we have a massive quarter full as in our financial year, quarter four, we've got some very large deliverables coming up.

So what's important to me, which actually just spoke to the team about earlier this week, is accelerating outcomes for the business.

So delivering on our promises, because we do have a very big waterfall, but I think looking at a little bit stepping back and taking a more holistic view is, how do we actually accelerate we've had, you know, a couple of years of laying some important foundations delivering value, how do we start to accelerate the impact that a lot we can make, you know, for the benefit of our patients and our people, ?

: Cathy O'Sullivan: ? Dr Rachna Gandhi, Global Chief Digital and Data Officer at Ramsay Health Care and thank you so much for joining me today. ?

Dr Rachna Gandhi: ? It's been a pleasure. Cathy, thank you.?