Lyle Berkowitz

Happiness drives success. It’s a simple fact of life, but it’s often ignored in the world of healthcare IT – a world where doctors are increasingly frustrated and significantly slowed by difficult-to-use technology, specifically electronic medical record systems. It doesn’t have to be this way, says Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, who explores how we might design information technology systems that make life easier for physicians while also making life better for patients. The “Doctor Happiness Guru” describes how to think innovatively about using healthcare IT in ways which can simplify, automate and delegate care, resulting in time savings for doctors, and improved patient care quality for patients.

With the rise of the “FUAAA” companies (Facebook, Uber, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple), nearly every sector of our economy is being disrupted daily. It’s only a matter of time for health care. We are already starting to see rumblings: Facebook sends you news stories about your health concerns, Uber brings flu shots to your door, Amazon delivers pharmaceuticals, the Apple watch detects abnormal heart rhythms, and Alphabet launches primary care clinics across NYC neighborhoods.

If you are a health care system accustomed to everyone coming to you in the standard way, then watch out.  Real time analytics, artificial intelligence, the sharing economy and virtualization of everything are about to disrupt you – big time. If you don’t have a team and approach thinking about major changes in the next 5-10 years, then YOU might be the next Blockbuster, warns Dr. Lyle Berkowitz. Consider who has a better relationship with the majority of healthy people in your geography – Amazon Prime or your health care system? Ask yourself what you would do if an Amazon or Google bought your nearest competitor? Dr. Berkowitz will challenge you to think about these questions in depth and to come up with a disruption strategy that makes sense for both today and tomorrow.

There is a swell of despair and burnout in today’s health care world, especially as electronic medical records (EMRs) fail to live up to their promises, and changing reimbursement schemes and regulatory constraints tighten their grip. For all the doom and gloom, Dr. Lyle Berkowitz believes there are many outlets for optimism. Innovative ideas and technologies can save our health care system, while making doctors happier and patients healthier, he says. Dr. Berkowitz explores what this world might look like and then steps back to consider what we need to do today to move along that path of innovation. He points to different organizations across the nation that continue to successfully innovate in their use of health care information technologies – from creating major quality and efficiency gains using EMRs, to virtualizing health care via telemedicine, to fascinating uses of analytics, mobile technologies, and gaming techniques. Hear real world stories of how they started, how they succeeded, and the lessons they learned along the way. Learn about the process of innovation and how it takes you from idea generation through deployment and spread. Explore practical examples of HIT innovation that will help teach you how to successfully innovate in your own environment.

Every few months another study warns of a severe shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs), but Dr. Lyle Berkowitz believes the bigger concern – and challenge – is not in the number of physicians, but in our ability to help those already on the job work more efficiently. Fortunately, both clinical information technology and innovation will deeply change medicine over the next decade, resulting in a new paradigm with the potential to improve both efficiency and quality of care. Here, software will automate or delegate much of the routine care traditionally provided by physicians. And if automated systems and empowered staff members manage stable patients according to evidence-based protocols, physicians can focus on more complex patients who truly require their attention. Dr. Berkowitz envisions and navigates this future paradigm where individual physicians will actually see fewer patients, but oversee a team who will care for more patients. In other words, we don’t need more physicians; we need a better system to help most appropriately leverage physicians, staff and IT.

Every patient is different – e.g., different genetic makeups, living in different environments – and that means what works for one doesn’t work for all. It’s also why Dr. Lyle Berkowitz believes personalized medicine, or precision medicine, is key to improving and transforming health care. But it’s not just for treating existing conditions, he says; it’s the future of preventative care.

Dr. Berkowitz explains how precision medicine – which leverages technology and taps health data –  works to predict and prevent diseases before they manifest, offering new ways to keep people healthy. He also presents his “4C” framework (caring, convenience, coordination and curation) while discussing how precision medicine will help primary care physicians increase patient engagement and take better advantage of technologies that allow real-time access and analysis of information from multiple sources: patient databases, medical literature, mobile monitoring and patients’ real-life experiences to provide more informed, targeted approaches to health and wellness.

It’s an approach that is already proving valuable. Dr. Berkowitz draws from anecdotes from his own practice, as well as industry examples, to make the personal – and business – case for why physicians and health systems alike need to take a closer look at adopting a more personalized approach to health care.