Health Catalyst Named 2019 Healthcare IT Corporate Innovator

Health Catalyst
Named 2019
Healthcare IT
Corporate
Innovator

© 2019 Health Catalyst
Proprietary. Feel free to share but we would appreciate a Health Catalyst citation.
Health Catalyst Named 2019
Healthcare IT Corporate Innovator
Utah HIMSS (UHIMSS) has named Health
Catalyst the most innovative company for 2019.
Dale Sanders, President of Technology,
accepted the Healthcare IT Corporate Innovator
award on behalf of Health Catalyst at the
UHIMSS 2019 spring conference on May 17.
What follows are some thoughts Dale shared
with the conference audience.

Thank you for this award.
It’s deeply appreciated and humbling.
The moment you start believing you’re
successful and innovative is the
beginning of the end that you’re not
[successful and innovative].
I have a hard time believing I or we are
innovative. Much of what we do seems
like common sense.

Let me talk about suitcases for a second.
For those of you old enough to remember,
suitcases didn’t always have wheels.
Think about that for a second.
Was it innovative to put wheels on
suitcases or just plain old common sense
that escaped the rest of us for 300 years?

In the R&D team at Health Catalyst, we
have a cultural attribute of chronic,
constructive, dissatisfaction.
In that sort of culture are dozens of micro-
nudges of innovation in healthcare that go
on every day and have a giant and usually
underappreciated impact on the final
destination.
Innovation, if it exists, almost never comes
in revolutionary, giant shoves. It comes in
hundreds of tiny nudges that you might not
even notice.

Know the Vital Signs of Innovation in Healthcare
Is your company innovative?
One of the social metrics that I consider a
vital sign is counting the number of times
you hear someone say to someone else,
“That was a good idea!” in meetings.
How many times do you hear that in your
company? Acknowledging good ideas creates
a fly-wheel effect of more good ideas.
But every idea is not a great idea,
so don’t wear it out.
Be judicious not gratuitous.

Also, consider these sources of innovation.
Mischief
Mischief is breaking the rules—going
against the status quo.
>

Humor
Another of my vital signs for innovative teams
and cultures is what I call the “laugh metric.”
How many times do people belly laugh
per day in your team and company?
I’m sure there’s a directly proportional
relationship between belly laughs and
company performance.
>

Depression
Some of the most creative minds in history
suffered from manic depression.
Don’t let it get out of control but learn how
to love the dark periods and moods of your
life and channel that depression into creative,
new ideas.
Fight through to the other side.
>

Pen and paper
Put down the keyboard and draw what you’re
thinking. It’s a limbic stimulant that activates the
best, most creative ideas from your brain.
>

Naivety
You know you are onto a great idea when
the experts openly laugh at how crazy it is.
Wear naivety like a badge of honor.
If that’s the worst of your sins, St. Peter
will still let you in.
>

Pattern recognition
Take a proven concept or idea from over here
in this context and apply it over there in a
different context that has a similar pattern.
For example, one of the things that makes
the Health Catalyst R&D team different is
we’ve been applying software engineering
concepts to data engineering for over
20 years—before Health Catalyst existed.
Object-oriented programming feels like common
sense, but it revolutionized software development.
>

Walking
The Greek philosopher Diogenes would
say, Solvitur ambulando, which is Latin for,
“it is solved by walking.”
Walk by yourself, not with anyone else,
and let your mind wander while you
wander with your feet.
>

In closing, the origins of healthcare computerization
are right here in Utah, with people like Homer
Warner, Al Pryor, and Reed Gardner.
Don’t surrender that flag to Silicon Valley.
Own it!
We have a national healthcare crisis on our hands.
We and our families are the patients.
Challenge the status quo, take risks, be bold, and
let’s make a difference.

For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

More about this topic
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Health Catalyst Named 2019 Healthcare IT Corporate Innovator
Three Must-Haves for Generating Innovation in Healthcare IT
Dan LeSueur, Senior VP of Professional Services
Preparing for Changes to Medicare Reimbursement—The Latest CMS Proposed Measures
Stephen Grossbart, PhD, Senior VP and Chief Quality Officer
A Guide to Applying Quality Improvement to Healthcare: Five Principles
Lloyd Provost
Introducing the Health Catalyst Monitor™ Patient Safety Suite: Surveillance Module
Stan Pestotnik, MS, RPh, Patient Safety Products, VP
Michael Barton, Patient Safety Operations, SVP
The Top Five 2019 Healthcare Trends
Health Catalyst Editors

Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Dale Sanders has been one of the most influential leaders in healthcare analytics and data warehousing
since his earliest days in the industry, starting at Intermountain Healthcare from 1997-2005, where he was
the chief architect for the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and regional director of medical informatics at
LDS Hospital. In 2001, he founded the Healthcare Data Warehousing Association. From 2005-2009, he
was the CIO for Northwestern University’s physicians’ group and the chief architect of the Northwestern
Medical EDW. From 2009-2012, he served as the CIO for the national health system of the Cayman
Islands where he helped lead the implementation of new care delivery processes that are now associated with
accountable care in the US. Prior to his healthcare experience, Dale had a diverse 14-year career that included
duties as a CIO on Looking Glass airborne command posts in the US Air Force; IT support for the Reagan/Gorbachev
summits; nuclear threat assessment for the National Security Agency and START Treaty; chief architect for the Intel
Corp’s Integrated Logistics Data Warehouse; and co-founder of Information Technology International. As a systems
engineer at TRW, Dale and his team developed the largest Oracle data warehouse in the world at that time (1995),
using an innovative design principle now known as a late binding architecture. He holds a BS degree in chemistry and
minor in biology from Ft. Lewis College, Durango Colorado, and is a graduate of the US Air Force Information Systems
Engineering program.
Dale Sanders

Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Health Catalyst is a mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement company
that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes improve clinical, financial, and operational outcomes
needed to improve population health and accountable care. Our proven enterprise data warehouse
(EDW) and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more
than 65 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking
physician practices.
Health Catalyst was recently named as the leader in the enterprise healthcare BI market in
improvement by KLAS, and has received numerous best-place-to work awards including Modern
Healthcare in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as well as other recognitions such as “Best Place to work for
Millenials, and a “Best Perks for Women.”

Health Catalyst Named 2019 Healthcare IT Corporate Innovator

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