Scaling Up (Part 2). How Dr. Rasu Shrestha is Steering AI & Innovation After the Megamerger that Created Advocate Health

Many physicians today choose to pivot their careers and apply
their clinical knowledge to the innovation and digital
transformation side of healthcare. Dr. Rasu Shrestha was an early
pioneer of this trend and as he explains, went from “the dark
side of radiology to the dork side of informatics” more than two
decades ago.

In addition to spanning both technical and clinical roles, Dr.
Shrestha brings a worldly view of medicine to his work as EVP and
Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer at Advocate
Health. He attended college in Malaysia and medical school in
India before becoming a visiting fellow in biomedical engineering
at Imperial College London and a research fellow in informatics
at the University of Southern California, where he also earned
his MBA.

Among many other positions, Dr. Shrestha also served as Chief
Innovation Officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center, and Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Atrium
Health. After the December 2022 merger of Atrium Health and
Advocate Aurora Health, Dr. Shrestha landed in his current role
at the newly formed Advocate Health, now one of the nation’s
largest nonprofit health systems.

In an earlier Healthcare is Hard episode, Scott Powder provided
his perspective on the megamerger from the Advocate Aurora side.
In this episode, Keith Figlioli talked to Dr. Shrestha to hear
his perspective from the Atrium side, and his thoughts on many of
the biggest topics driving healthcare transformation. Some of the
issue they discussed include:



Financial realities in the post-pandemic era. With
health systems facing some of their worst financial years ever
and confronting an urgent need to transform in fundamental
ways, Dr. Shrestha shares his ideas about how they can think
differently. He says health systems should move beyond the idea
of coopetition to the notion of strategic partnerships done
right. He urges health systems to embrace the headwinds and
tailwinds of the of the pandemic, while staying grounded in
their mission and the reality that the old way of doing things
will no longer work.


Examining AI with a critical eye. There’s unprecedented
excitement around artificial intelligence and generative
language models like Chat GPT, but issues like hallucination
bias raise serious concerns. As Dr. Shrestha explains, large
language models do not really answer questions; they create
responses that look like answers. These responses always sound
authoritative, which means they always look right, even when
they’re wrong. While these technologies will undoubtedly have a
role in the future of healthcare, they must be carefully
examined and regulated first.

 Inoculating against the shiny object syndrome.
Dr. Shrestha discusses how important it is to separate the hype
from the hope in the era of AI and startups promising other
breakthrough innovations. To remain grounded, he stays focused on
three areas that he explains: moving from transactional to
experiential, from a patient-centered to a person-centered
approach, and from episodic care to always on 24/7 care.


Realizing the benefits of scale. Despite a lot of
M&A and market consolidation, Dr. Shrestha talks about how
there hasn’t been much success yet realizing the benefits of
scale. He shares his thoughts on strategies for driving those
benefits and creating value at Advocate Health, and the role
innovative startups can play in that journey.



To hear Keith and Dr. Shrestha talk about these topics and more,
listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for
Insiders.