Disrupting Technology, Security and Leadership in Health Care with Todd Bell
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Disruption Interruption podcast host and veteran communications disruptor KJ Helms interviews Todd Bell, Chief Information Security Officer & Executive Director of IT Compliance at Valleywise Health, who delves into the current cybersecurity issues facing health care. Hospitals that don’t innovate are at the mercy of hackers and ransomware.
More and more hospitals and health care systems are having to deal with cyberattacks. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has reported more than 125 electronic data breaches of health care organizations in the first four months of 2022 alone.(1) Additionally, the number of data breaches against health care organizations increased by 84% between 2018 to 2021, and the number of total victims jumped from 14 million in 2018 to 44.9 million in 2021.(2)
Karla Jo Helms, host of the Disruption/Interruption podcast, interviews Todd Bell who expounds on how health care needs to up its game in the tech arena. Bell is innovating the health care system with technology tools, leadership and a mindset to be agile, quick and responsive to navigate through challenges.
“I would recognize that the companies that have more technical people, produce higher results, better growth, better top-line improvements for their organizations compared to companies with lower tech and their performance was lagging,” Bell details. “So, this goes back to the mindset of how you hire, how you operate, how you interact with others and so on. It’s not just about the great technology, which we all think of. Technology is one piece of a holistic picture.”
Todd Bell discusses:
- The main ingredient of disruption for health care today is hackers who are driving innovation and systems that are at risk of being hacked. To counter this threat, it’s necessary to identify the vulnerabilities underpinning technological platforms and address them through leadership and technology.
- When an IT system fails, it forces an organization to return to pen and paper, which in turn affects the functioning of the firm. This causes peers to be inefficient at their jobs and impacts the revenue. Additionally, the more technically advanced a company’s employees, the greater things that can be accomplished and the higher results and better growth that can be achieved.
- Today’s status quo is a “Set it and forget it” mentality when it comes to technology. On average health care refreshes its system every 10 years as compared to other industries/companies that do it every three years.
As a disruptor, much of what Bell does is identify more efficient technology, while addressing vendor shortcomings. “There is a gap between the technologies used by some vendors — outdated systems — compared to prevailing industry standards,” he shares. While many look down on vendors, Bell and Valleywise Health consider them business partners that help to up their organization’s game and stay relevant with the latest technology. “The goal is to find less costly solutions, as well as more cloud transformation,” he concludes.
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Quote of the show:
8:33 “I would recognize that the companies that have more technical people, produced higher results, better growth, better top line improvements for the organisations compared to companies with lower tech and their performance was lagging. So, this goes back to the mindset of how you hire, how you operate, how you interact with others and so It’s not just about the great technology which we all think of. Technology is it’s one piece of a holistic picture”.
About Todd Bell:
Todd Bell is the chief information security officer and executive director IT compliance for
Valleywise Health. He brings a broad lens to the health care industry as it strives to solve technological and cybersecurity challenges. Throughout his career, he’s focused on business transformation, building cybersecurity programs from ground-zero and creating new enterprise capabilities. Bell is proud his Valleywise Health staff reflects the same degree of diverse experiences, and together they’re making great progress for their patients through the implementation of incremental changes to make a more resilient and secure infrastructure.
- Doyle, Peyton; “Healthcare breaches on the rise in 2022”; TechTarget; June 20, 2022; www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252521771/Healthcare-breaches-on-the-rise.
- “2021 H2 Healthcare Data Breach Report”; Critical Insight; Accessed June 21, 2022; cybersecurity.criticalinsight.com/2021_H2_HealthcareDataBreachReport.
And lastly, if you’re a disruptor…
I would like to chat with Karla Jo about maximizing my Disruptive Thought Leadership — contact KJ Helms.
I’d like to learn about the ROI of Anti-PR — download this ROI eBook.
I would like to apply to be a guest on Disruption Interruption.
