AI x Human – Creating a Winning Formula

This transcript was AI-generated and human-corrected. It may contain minor errors.

Dr. Andy Smith: Let’s not forget that as Team Canada, that ecosystem playing together, we’re gonna grab the opportunities. I want us to lead the world.

Katie Bryski: Hello and welcome to Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada podcast. I’m Katie Bryski.

Shelagh Maloney: And I’m Shelagh Maloney.

Katie Bryski: And if it sounds different, it’s because it is. We are live at eHealth in the official Digital Health Canada podcast booth. And as technology rapidly changes and a health human resource crisis continues, it is critical for our health systems to adapt, innovate, and lead with compassion.

Today, our guests reflect on the balance between technological intelligence and human connection, and how clinicians and AI can amplify each other’s strengths so everyone can thrive And we’re thrilled to have in our live studio today two esteemed guests. We have Jimmy Yang, Managing Director, Canada Health Industry and Portfolio Lead at Accenture, and Dr. Andy Smith, President and CEO at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Welcome to you both. Thank you for being at eHealth, and thank you for being on the podcast.

Shelagh Maloney: So we start our podcasts the, the same way, all of our guests. We ask them to describe their career journeys, because we want to know what your leadership journey was.

So Andy, why don’t we start with you?

Dr. Andy Smith: My career journey, I came from a small town, wanted to go to medical school, went to medical school, had some great mentorship, became a surgeon. Had numerous transformative experiences for me personally that made me want to become the best cancer surgeon I could be and was fortunate to go and work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York for a couple of years.

Came back to Toronto in ’99 and began a journey as a cancer surgeon with an awesome team, awesome research team, doing great things as a group, and then I kinda lost control of my career- about, uh, 13 or 14 years ago, when I was tapped to say that, uh, I would be moving up to the executive layer. I’m now starting my 14th year on the main bridge, 10th as the chief executive at, uh, Sunnybrook, and it’s been the privilege and the pleasure of a lifetime to serve as a healthcare leader, both at Sunnybrook and in this great country.

Jimmy Yang: How do you follow that, Andy? Um, yeah, like, you know, the last 25 years I’d say just worked across healthcare life sciences. Um, I’ve worn a few hats, like I’ve worked in the commercial side and life sciences. Spent a couple years as an entrepreneur building companies and clinical trials, phase two, phase three research, rare disease, and respiratory, and digital health, and data analytics.

And, you know, my last seven years leading Accenture has been a huge privilege around being able to work with partners and clients across Canada. It’s a real privilege to, to hear and see, and, and try to make impact together. I joined Accenture because it’s a, you know, it’s a large global organization, but it brings a lot to the table.

You know, where might there be a place that gives me and a team a chance to make as big an impact in a sustainable way in healthcare? And that was why I made that choice at the time, and we got a great team, over 200 people in Canada doing great work, working with Andy and, and so many others. So, uh, yeah, a bit about me.

Katie Bryski: That’s a common theme, I think, leaders. People are searching for ways to make things better and searching for ways to make impact, and it sort of leads them maybe into places they didn’t expect.

Dr. Andy Smith: I will say healthcare, whatever part of the ecosystem you are- is the most purpose-driven, I call it purpose-driven and beneficent enterprise that humans can undertake.

I mean, we take care of people, their families, and our community. And I think one of the great opportunities we have right now and why it’s great to be having this conversation is the recognition that the ecosystem players are diverse and all critical for us to do what’s gonna be best for patients and for Canada.

So it’s a pleasure to work with Jimmy and so many other diverse partners that I think typically I didn’t always think, uh, that way in our healthcare system.

Katie Bryski: And great to be able to bring them to eHealth. And you were both just on the panel, Jimmy moderating, When Humans and AI Thrive Together. And this was our opening plenary, so I’m curious, can you tell us why, why this is such an important conversation to start the eHealth conference with?

Jimmy Yang: I’m a listener, so we kind of buzzed out of here and got a lot of good feedback. Like I, I think the session’s important because the title’s interesting, right?

Yeah. ‘Cause it’s AI and humanity, and I think the technology is moving very fast, and we’re acknowledging that it’s moving so fast we’re not really prepared to handle that yet. So I, I think the, the, the session this morning was interesting because we We had an opportunity to talk about real-life examples affecting patients, families, communities, providers with AI, and then we were able to be very real.

Andy, Karen, Tej were excellent just in plating the obstacles in our way that this room of 1,400 people know, see. And there’s– I, I’ve sensed a bit of an acknowledgement, lots of head nodding, which I think is actually quite critical. And then the third part is our panel saying, like, what is the path forward?

What conditions need to be true? We need coalition of the willing. We have to move away from ideology and, you know, healthcare as lab for creating jobs, right? Healthcare is actually how do we deliver the very best care to a human being in a very responsible, fiscally responsible way as well to the country.

And I think, Andy, you raised a great point, which got great applause at the end, which is like, guys, we got s-so much diversity in the room. That diversity is going to need to come together. The problems are so big, we can’t do this in small partnerships either. We have to have coalition of the willing and a bunch of convening tables.

Dr. Andy Smith: So a bit of bias, I thought it went, uh, quite well. I was super pleased by the feedback that we received. I thought, as Jimmy said, the title is spectacular, and I’ll echo to some degree Jimmy’s points, and maybe starting with that last one. I think that in healthcare it’s easy for people to embrace the deficit narratives right off the hop, and, uh, I never allow that.

I always point out that we, as Canadians, enjoy really, uh, very good, uh, quality of life, really quite, uh, exemplary equity. And if you look at some of the complex care, especially, whether it’s cancer, stroke, heart attack care, it has results that are truly second to none. So I say that while we need to recognize that there are challenges, significant challenges such as access to go after, let’s not forget that as Team Canada, that ecosystem playing together, we’re gonna grab the opportunities.

I don’t wanna just get out of little holes. I want us to lead the world When you think of it that way, it becomes first and foremost, of course, about taking care of people and their families. And by the way, empowering our people and teams, ’cause this is a very human enterprise. But it also allows us to say, “Hey, why shouldn’t we also be enriching our knowledge economy in this country, raising Canada up in ways that I think we almost seem a little bit shy to embrace?”

This is an opportunity, ’cause the world’s changing so fast. And maybe it’s building off the sort of Carney Davos or elbows up type theme. Like, let’s grab a little bit of that- Love it … and say let’s go. Because if not now, I don’t know what we’re waiting for. I … When I speak to Canadian leaders in this ecosystem, it’s, “Okay, let’s, let’s go Team Canada.”

And I think one, one quick thing. Like, Andy hits on a critical point, because there’s a lot of fear-mongering and anxiety. It’s easy just to sit in the problem. If you look at how we compare just to kind of the typical G7, G20, OECD Commonwealth type comparator data, like we deliver really high quality care.

And then on top of that, like Sunnybrook, Nova Scotia, there’s many examples. There’s many organizations and teams that are already doing exemplar work. And so this question around like Team Canada, part of that is also just let’s be effective in sharing so we can translate that for other parts of the country.

Like, there’s a lot that we can model off of. Yeah. There’s a lot we can draft on.

Katie Bryski: So. A bit of a leadership lesson I heard, which is that imposter syndrome doesn’t just harm you. It can also harm the people around you, because you both don’t realize the impact that you’ve already made. And it also stops you from making further positive impact.

And it’s almost like as a country we’ve been kind of grappling with this imposter syndrome, and are now realizing, ooh, if we don’t realize we actually can step up and do this, A, we’re short-changing ourselves, and B, we’re continuing to perpetuate these harms because we don’t think we can fix them.

Dr. Andy Smith: Katie, I think you nailed it.

I think that that, uh, this is a moment, uh, uh, where I would admonish us or exhort us all to say we will never allow someone to just sit in the problem Here’s the situation. Let’s acknowledge we’ve g- we’ve done some great stuff, and associated with that are great people and teams with ambition and, uh, the skills and s- you know, they’re carrying IP and ideas. And, uh, we can do that.

And if you adopt that attitude while not being a Pollyanna, obviously being, uh, aware of- Yeah … the gaps. Say, let’s do the homework and, uh, be prepared to go after the most glaring ones, including some very serious issues in access that are only partially related to health human resource shortage. Okay, we’ll go after those problems, but we’ll also play offense.

We won’t just play defense. We’re gonna play offense.

Shelagh Maloney: Two words I wanna pick up on that you said was ambition. And I think that’s such a great word for Canada- Yeah … ’cause we are almost accepting of mediocrity a little bit. Yeah. My family physician doesn’t even have an electronic health record, I, or an EMR, I’m, I’m embarrassed to say.

Yeah. And I keep\ saying, “I have to fire you because you, you’re not even, you don’t even have my paper.” \So, but, but to be ambitious as a country, and then the second word is diversity. Digital Health Canada and, and digital health in general, we are a very diverse group.

We’re administrators, we’re clinicians, we’re health service providers, and so we have very different and unique perspectives. And raising up a little Canada is one of the most unique, diverse populations in the world.

Jimmy Yang: It’s interesting, um, the way you framed it. I mean, what comes to mind is maybe what we’re trying to be better at and solve for is harnessing the diversity and the heterogeneity of this country.

We’re catalyzing a lot of real success stories already in the country, right? It- like, a lot of people say what’s happening in the Nordics, what’s happening in Singapore, those are good questions as comparators, but we have some really good apples to apples in Canada as well. And to Andy’s point previously, like, yes, we have to analyze the problem so we know what we’re trying to solve for, but everyone on the panel talked about being very outcomes focused The outcomes are, we know what they are.

They’re pretty singular, they’re easy to understand, they’re easy to define. So if we start there, and we’ve got a very clear North Star, then we can draft behind that with purpose. We know what’s in, what’s out, and, and just kinda get on with it. Like my folks are, they immigrated to Canada, and every time I told them like high school’s tough or whatever, they’d be like, “Get on with it.” What’s the most important shot in golf,” right? The next shot.

Dr. Andy Smith: So I don’t usually hang out with CIOs or come to digital conferences. This is my first. And one of the overwhelming feelings I’ve had is this is a digital conference, but it’s actually an integrated care, uh, conference. And I think that has been a really positive aspect.

And of course, by having the diverse players, if you will, around the table or in this very large room, that kind of convening has a lot of power. So I wanna take that one step further where I think at this moment we need to have a clear eye about doing more, and that is the coast to coast nature of our country to be able to both identify and solve problems.

So it was great to be on the stage there with Karen Oldfield, who’s such a strong and clear-eyed voice for Atlantic Canada, and talking to her from our perspective in Ontario. What one recognizes is that we probably at the leadership level would benefit both government and at our level, simplifying, clarifying, uh, sort of keep it simple with respect to the strategy, but then execute, execute, execute.

I, I think that’s gonna be an important thing now for Canadians.

Katie Bryski: And it strikes me that’s the kind, like a, a more kind of clear-eyed, simplified strategy that’s easier to execute locally, right? We can get everyone to agree on a common vision. Yes. Um, I guess my question though is with such diversity, right?

Different players in the sector, different challenges in different parts of the country, how do you kind of bring them together and, and drive them towards that common vision?

Jimmy Yang: One thing we kinda ended on on the panel was coalition and convening tables. I don’t think we answered it on the panel, but I think we do have to.

So if there’s a business outcome which is read something like we need to build guardrails and responsible AI protocols for people across urban and rural, well Every organization needs to set some of their rules, but it would be easier if we had a, a table and we all came together and agreed on a set of responsible AI protocols that just make sense as a starting point so that we’re not diluting ourselves from extra work, duplication, things that are contradicting one another.

And then I think setting, again, kind of very clear outcomes for what we’re trying to achieve is, will be, will be unifying.

Dr. Andy Smith: I’m gonna come back and really grab onto that convening notion. So here’s a plug for the organization HealthCareCAN. I’m just coming on as the board chair, so this is a shameless plug.

Yay. But, but importantly, amazing chief executive Michelle McLean, and we just had our conference last week in Toronto, and it was extraordinary to see the convening of the people from coast to coast to coast. And so taking that convening power, crystallizing it into key issues where you have input from across the country, and then in a very strategic and tactically sound way, getting it in a helpful way, a how can I help way, in front of, uh, uh, policy and decision makers at the, uh, provincial and especially federal level.

Let’s face it, this is a time where the federal government is focused on things like AI, data. These themes are extraordinarily connected to what we’re talking about at, at this conference here in Halifax.

Shelagh Maloney: And, and Digital Health Canada’s the same thing, right? Yeah. There’s again, a diversity and we just, um, are launching a strategic plan.

We did a very extensive consultation, and I think the secret sauce is the diversity of our membership and who we have. Mm-hmm. And what our members told us is that they need opportunities like to bring that diversity together and solve issues and problems. Yeah. So we have, you know, an education task force.

We’re updating our core competencies, you know- I love it … just, and, and a scientific research group to bring the academics more together. So that convening, I, I, I really like that notion. That’s really important.

Jimmy Yang: Maybe one piece of minutiae to build on what you both said too, like lots of engagement, depth, and an array of input being gathered so it’s representative Because AI is becoming just a topic everywhere and is seemingly ubiquitous, even though it’s not, we also should be thinking about how we’re using AI tooling to achieve listening, right?

There’s great sentiment analysis tools. I was part of a task force where we were just trying to listen to a stakeholder group, and so we, you know, did some aggregate sentiment analysis and scraping of what water cooler conversations are having across the country on like Reddit and a bunch of different boards, right?

And so there’s ways for us to kind of collect input and get a deeper sense of the pulse of what people by postal code, by region want, need, expect, desire from their healthcare experience. I would say, you know, rightly or wrongly, like how we have tried to design things historically, the question is, have we had that rich human-centered design input to, to make decisions and build solutions for?

I would say not. Right. Usually. Yeah.

Dr. Andy Smith: This was a great part of the panel that we just had. There was a focus appropriately on the disruptive feel that this has for the people in teams that actually do the healthcare, that provide the healthcare at the bedside, in the hospitals or, or in the community, and we do need to be attuned and continually asking how we can be best supportive of the people in teams.

Because I think if we lose sight of the fact that it is a disruptive time and that things like education, organizational development type of programs are central to our success, if we miss that, we really, uh, will miss the plot.

Shelagh Maloney: And I, I just– I really like the way you answered one of the questions that, that Jimmy put to you as like, how do you talk to your team and your hospital staff around AI and their impact on you?

Dr. Andy Smith: Yeah. So I, I think that, um, numerous things are important. Transparency’s important. I think when Jimmy and I had that exchange, the word honestly. He said, “How do you do it honestly?” And I think you have to answer that directly. Uh, in other words, there was a time, I think it’s passed, where people would say, “Oh, don’t worry. Nobody’s going to lose their job,” or maybe a different way of saying it, “No one’s gonna have their job changed.” Well, the reality is that models of care and the delivery of care are going to be, and are, in a period of rapid change. So our job is to support people, educate them, allow them to lean into, uh, evolving, because they are the centerpiece of how the, how the care gets delivered.

Not the machines, but the, but the humans. So they, they will change. The team of five years, so 10 years from now, will look significantly- Yes … different. There’ll be more care in the community, less sleeps, uh, overnight in the hospital, less visits to the hospital, and that’s a good thing for patients and providers.

So try to d- and be supportive, but for goodness sake, be honest.

Jimmy Yang: I loved how you answered that on the panel. This is not me, uh, patting you on the back and building your ego here. But it was, it was awesome.

Katie Bryski: It was a well-asked question.

Jimmy Yang: Well, now it was very- I’m just gonna- Well, thank you. Oh my gosh. Guys. Uh, no.

I just, you, you’re like, “Listen, like, we’re gonna be honest and direct and transparent with our teams,” I would just say because we have to. That’s right. So like, like I’m a parent of two teenagers, and not AI, but just social media apps. Like, I cannot keep up with Snap and Tok and this and that. It might be too late for me to catch up.

So let’s think about AI, right? Recently in Davos, there are a number of banking and, like FedEx and UPS were on a panel, and they kinda came to a revelation on stage live, which was how could my organization be as ready as possible for AI if they were large organizations, if like the 3 to 400 most senior people in my organization can barely spell AI.

Right? To be honest, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, we don’t, we don’t stand a chance. So I just wanted to raise that the importance, especially now, of getting communication comfort, Andy’s point on transparency, but pairing that with being organized about skills and literacy development I have a bias. I think that that can be our leapfrog moment.

If we actually say we’re going to have our Canadian health workforce and our patients and communities understand to the best extent possible what’s coming, what it means, questions to push back on, I think that gives us a huge advantage because we have this bolus of knowledge that puts us a bit further ahead than maybe some other countries.

Dr. Andy Smith: I, I like this a lot, and I think that one of the things when I’m speaking to our organization, whether it’s from the podium or in the written word, they know that I’m very enthusiastic about, uh, AI. But as I listen to Jimmy, I’m reflecting that something I, I think I do now, but I’m gonna do with more keenness as I go home from Halifax, and that is to never talk about artificial intelligence and enthusiastic focus on it without at the same time remembering this panel, which is AI times human.

Because you only get the one plus one equals three moment if you as- Yeah … leaders are investing in and shining the spotlight on both. To fail to do that I think is gonna be a prescription for falling off the rails pretty quick. I think so. That’s a great point.

Katie Bryski: And I think being honest about the entire AI conversation, right?

Yes, it comes with a lot of benefits, and we know it takes a lot of water, and there are significant environmental impacts. We’ve talked about some of the workforce implications. Uh, I’ve seen studies, right, on cognitive de-skilling for people who over-rely on AI. Yes, the future is unfolding rapidly, and it’s coming.

So I think being honest about that part of the conversation as well as a way to build trust and, and also to prepare for the future more fully.

Dr. Andy Smith: Cognitive de-skilling piece, I’m of two minds. When the calculator came along, people did say, “Well, you should still be doing it in long hand.” I

was thinking of that during the panel. Uh, but of course, uh but of course what happened in real life is that nobody does it long hand. But this of course is different. The level of overtaking of the need for you to process certain things is, uh, is a much higher level than, uh, the calculator. So should we worry about it?

I do think we should worry about it. What should we do about it? That’s where I think we need to get busy. So ask, for example, in the context of our medical schools, our nursing schools, professional schools, we need to be agile in adjusting for, uh, education, studying education approaches that recognize the world has changed, but there’s certain elements that you can’t just offload to the machine.

But it will require how we mentor, teach, onboard To, to be changed, to be thoughtful about that. I don’t think we know the answers. It’s in that- Yeah … significant list of things we don’t know what we don’t know. But if we get lazy and don’t do the homework and think about what are the questions that need to be solved for, I think that’s a problem.

Yeah.

Shelagh Maloney: I think that came up in the panel, right? Is that academia and public health care are two of the ones that it has been thus for 125 years- Oh, for sure. Yeah. And, and we need it to change.

Jimmy Yang: Just on your environmental sustainability lens, it goes back to understanding what’s coming to all of us around artificial intelligence.

There’s kind of two things that come to mind. O- one is Through skilling, literacy understanding comes probably responsible use protocols as it relates to environmental sustainability. So it probably takes like 10,000 tokens to scan a PDF, and that token consumption cost has planetary effect, but it has a huge cost impact on enterprises and organizations.

So one is like, people need to know that if I’m just doing a general query, let’s use a basic model. Let’s not use an advanced ChatGPT or Gemini model that’s, as you said, like creating, to some extent, some water scarcity. And then the second on like token consumption, it’s a new cost item. It’s almost like cloud.

And the assumption is that token costs are going to probably go down really quickly and become commoditized, but for a while they’re not going to be. So all these AI forward enterprises are saying, “Hey, like we got a ton of licenses. We’re scaling a little bit. Go forth and experiment.” There’s a massive cost associated with that if people don’t know what the rules of the road are and how to use it and why.

Dr. Andy Smith: And I wouldn’t mind picking up on the human side of the equation. Again, we’re talking today about artificial intelligence times human, and we want to make sure that we’re leaning into both. Jimmy’s highlighted the myriad of considerations, including global sustainability that come up on the AI side, maintain but actually enhance our humanity.

So we’re living in this moment with AI and so many other things that push us toward optimizing, you know, optimize your sleep, optimize this. Well, we’re not robots. Our humanity is part of the whole purpose of the whole life. And I listened to a speaker this last week who quoted Leonard Cohen and, uh, the line that says, “There’s a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.” And as, as sort of, uh, embracing that as a bit of a kickoff point for as we get so enthused about bringing our teams toward these new technologies that optimize, how do we at the same time, in fact, elevate to focus on things like patient experience? I think that’s happening.

I know, uh, in Ontario, and I speak specifically about our own organization, I’ve never seen a greater, uh, focus on patient experience, measuring it quantitatively, exalting leaders who exhibit advances for enhancing patient experience. And Jimmy, if you recall, at the end of our panel today, uh, was an excellent question from the audience when the, the gentleman who in his professional job, he’s the executive in digital, but as a patient, he’s a chronic disease that he went up, and it was clear, here’s the ultimate insider.

He’s saying, “Listen Remember, it’s my humanity with the, the cracks and the light getting in that I want you to put your… Ne- as leaders, don’t lose sight of putting your arms around that. Yeah, don’t forget it.

Katie Bryski: Yeah. As we wind down this conversation, you know, we’ve spent some time looking at the road ahead, we’ve talked about some of the considerations we’re exploring today.

If you were to look three to five years ahead, which I recognize is basically three to five centuries at this point, what would be one hope that you have for digital health?

Jimmy Yang: I’ll start, but I’m- don’t mean to steal Andy’s thunder here, because I’m just copy and pasting what he said, but it resonated with me, Andy.

It’s our, our country understands the opportunities that are in front of us. We level up on courage and ambition. We know that we have to convene and, uh, work closely together because the, both the problems and the opportunities are big, and, uh, technology’s moving quickly. But our ability to take this Team Canada approach, um, would be, um, a dream, frankly.

Dr. Andy Smith: I think that courage and ambition, uh, as Jimmy said, expecting to be second to none. Expecting this not as a moment of fear or getting out of a deficit, but in fact expecting that we’re gonna get, uh, further along the road, that we as Canadians can and should do that. And I think that’s not a pep talk. We have all the ingredients.

Yeah. And I, I won’t overdo the analogy, but everybody knows the story about how the US space program was pushed forward hugely by President Kennedy in 1960 when he said, “We choose to go to the moon.” There’s gotta be a Canadian example, I just can’t pull it out right now, but let’s make this that example, where especially for us in leadership positions, we push upward to, uh, leaders in government, not to, uh, do anything other than say, “How can we help and how can we support?”

But also, uh, the, the leaders and the frontline folks that say, “We’ll be, we’ll support you, but by the way, we expect this, we expect this to go well,” and what do the conditions have to be for this to go, for this to go well.

Shelagh Maloney: And I think one of the comments you made earlier is, “This is our time.” Like, it’s a perfect storm.

100%. There’s a sense of urgency, and, and if not now, when?

Dr. Andy Smith: 100%.

Katie Bryski: Well, maybe that courage, that ambition is the light that comes through the cracks of our humanity. Once again, thank you so much for being here. So glad to have you at the conference and on the podcast today, and we’ll check back in eHealth 2029 to see how we’re doing.

Jimmy Yang: Well, thanks for having us. Thank you so much. Thanks, Katie, Shelagh.

Dr. Andy Smith: It was really great to be here today. Thank you so much. Jimmy, always.

Shelagh Maloney: Well, that was a great conversation. Yeah. We could, we could just sat back and listen to them talk again, and it was, uh-

Katie Bryski: Yeah. And I think, again, important to be honest about the conversation as a whole because it’s, it’s real people that are being affected, and I-

Shelagh Maloney: And, and people know Yeah. Like, like-

Katie Bryski: It’s not a surprise at this point

Shelagh Maloney: We use AI in our, in our personal lives, so we know that it is game changing and it’s gonna change the way we live. So that’s, that’s, you know, let’s not be- I think- … uh, underhanded about it.

Katie Bryski: But yeah, no. So I mean, uh, day one of the conference.

Shelagh Maloney: Morning one of the conference.

Katie Bryski: I know.

Shelagh Maloney: I think, or, you know, we had our reception and we were sort at the full day of programming yesterday, too.

Katie Bryski: The real party’s not at FIFA, it’s at eHealth.

Shelagh Maloney: That’s right. Exactly.

Katie Bryski: So we are glad to be able to share a little bit of the conference buzz with you here on the podcast. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time on Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada podcast.

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