Healthy Data Podcast Barry Katzen (Baptist Health South Florida) & Jordan Cooper (InterSystems)
July 10, 2026, 1:12PM
21m 8s
Jordan Cooper 0:03
Health South Florida. He's a Chief Medical Innovation Officer. Barry, thank you so much for joining us today.
Barry Katzen 0:08
My pleasure, thank you.
Jordan Cooper 0:10
So just for background reference for our listeners, Baptist Health South Florida is headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, with 2,300 beds across 12 hospitals serviced by 6,000 providers. Now, Barry is the Chief Medical Information Officer, acronym is CMIO, but not the way you traditionally think of it. He's not the informatics officer. And the reason Baptist Health South Florida has a Chief Medical Innovation Officer is to answer the question of how do we generate new revenue streams for Baptist Health South Florida other than care delivery or estate real estate management as margins are being compressed. Every organization across the United States, every provider organization is facing similar pressures facing their margins. So today we're going to be discussing a variety of ways in which Barry has led BHSF's efforts to generate new revenue streams from developing AI applications, commercializing IP, and Barry's going to talk about a few other kind of processes as well. So Barry, welcome to the show. And please tell us a little bit about the genesis of your role and then let's go into how you're doing it, what you're doing with your role. I think a lot of listeners would like to hear that.
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Barry Katzen 1:22
Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here and share this with you. Well, for many years I was in clinical practice primarily. I founded and developed the Heart and Vascular Institute within our health system, which grew into a system-wide organization and basically lived my life in a world of innovation for most of my career. Kind of winding down the back end, It seemed to me that our health system had grown to the point where there was a huge amount of intellectual property residing within our organization, which represented an asset and a potential opportunity for commercialization if we could put things together. And so I worked with the board about a decade ago to change our vision statement and introduce the commitment to innovation into our vision statement and began to create an innovation program. I'll sort of skip through the details about version 1.0 to 2.0 and 3.0, but it's been an evolutionary process in general. I do want to say that I worked together with a collaborative partner who's
Jordan Cooper 2:13
Good.
Barry Katzen 2:24
comes from the business world and innovation, Mark Kotikia, and he's my corporate dyad, corporate vice president who works together with me. And so we began to look around, well, what assets do we have? We have the intellectual property of the physicians and the increasing quality of physicians' knowledge and know-how.
Jordan Cooper 2:31
Mm-hmm.
Barry Katzen 2:44
We have data which seems to be of increasing value, particularly in the world of development of artificial intelligence, where data is so important. And then we have a huge amount of assets in the people that represent those within Baptist Health. So we have several different options of ways we can approach this. One of the ways is just promoting ideation. One of the examples we have is our chief of a supply chain had an idea about how to make things more cost effective and more efficient within the supply chain. Through the innovation program, we provided the infrastructure and the abilities to patent that
Jordan Cooper 3:12
Mm-hmm.
Barry Katzen 3:28
develop it and ultimately commercialize it. And ultimately it came to a successful licensing arrangement with one of the Salesforce companies. And now it's been successfully licensed so far into two major healthcare systems around the United States. And it's generating a modest annual income. that's applying both the organization and also rewarding the creator or the inventor, the co-creator, because of a generous intellectual property policy that we have internally.
Jordan Cooper 3:59
Interesting. I'd like to dial in on that. We can proceed to the other use cases in a moment, but I think it'd be of greatest interest to our listeners to hear about this specific use case. So there's a few ways we can tackle this. One is you encourage innovation and ideas at the organization. You provide an intellectual property framework
Barry Katzen 4:00
Dial.
Jordan Cooper 4:20
that would generate revenue streams for the organization, but also reward the person who came up with the idea. And of course, there's a variety of technical challenges to make sure that there's the right data available at the right time and place in order to enable this solution to function. So would you please just start with describing what the solution is within the supply chain vertical just a brief high-level overview, and then go into what some of the challenges are with developing that particular solution.
Barry Katzen 4:51
So I'm not an expert in supply chain management, and I may not be able to articulate this correctly, but my understanding is that people in supply chain are constantly being confronted with either price changes or changing orders and things like that that basically lead to errors and other types of
Jordan Cooper 4:54
No. Mhm.
Barry Katzen 5:10
delays in terms of management of supply chain. And this software that was developed by our chief supply chain officer is able to manage that basically on the front end and in the background and was able to produce measurable reduction in these by about 20 to 30 percent, which resulted in direct
Jordan Cooper 5:13
Mm-hmm.
Barry Katzen 5:30
and indirect cost savings that was at first measurable to Pap to South, where we piloted it. And then ultimately, it's been proven to bring cost efficacy to other organizations that are licensing it. So the process was by, you know, how we did this was somebody had an idea. We encouraged that idea. We have an intellectual property
Jordan Cooper 5:46
Hmm.
Barry Katzen 5:50
policy. We don't have a huge amount of resources internally to develop algorithms and things like that. So the innovation program, our program itself, has a model of using outside experts and outside resources rather than building an entire infrastructure or maker space that might be required for both
Jordan Cooper 5:54
Mhm.
Barry Katzen 6:10
data creation as well as medical device creation. So our model and innovation is actually to outsource those and work with outside resources.
Jordan Cooper 6:20
And by the way, if our listeners are interested in learning more about how to access this particular software product, I imagine you're licensing it to other provider organizations in America, and if so, how would they access it?
Barry Katzen 6:33
Yeah, right now, right now, I think it's being marketed through Penrod, a company called Penrod. But otherwise, I would say if people want more information, they can send me an e-mail and I'll make sure they get to the right place.
Jordan Cooper 6:41
Mhm. Mm. Sounds good. So let's move on from supply chain. Let's talk about what other IP you've been generating, specifically around data. I know that data is especially important with the Gen. AI revolution. So what are you doing around data to commercialize your IP?
Barry Katzen 7:06
Well, obviously, the amount of incomings with artificial intelligence companies that are coming into health systems and wanting to be selling or be engaged here is increasing. So one of the things innovations does is we try and ferret out those which are commercial arrangements and those which may have co-creation opportunities. That's
Jordan Cooper 7:13
Mhm.
Barry Katzen 7:25
our principal interest in innovation. So one of the projects we're working on right now is actually in the orthopedic space. Obviously, orthopedics is a very highly focused area and target for cost reduction and also quality improvement. And we're working with an Israeli startup company called Project M. Two of our subject matter experts are leaders in orthopedics in our orthopedics institute. And they're working together to use our data to create a real-time AI tool that will allow physicians to have better decision-making in the course of treating their patients.
Jordan Cooper 8:03
Mhm.
Barry Katzen 8:04
is based on their own track records, our own results, as well as taking data from other potential health systems. So that co-creation project that's going on right now will ultimately, if it generates revenue and is successful, will generate revenue back to the organization and back to the co-creators, which in this case are two orthopedic leaders.
Jordan Cooper 8:25
So, Barry, I just want to focus in on the concept of co-creation. Now, you mentioned that you don't have an internal software development shop and you often rely on external experts and resources. You have no internal maker space, I believe is what you said. So is co-creation that you actually have employees of Baptist Health South Florida who are co-creating this Project M software product? Or is the co-creation you're allowing Project M to leverage your PHI and other clinical data or any kind of data at Baptist Health South Florida and that's your contribution to the product?
Barry Katzen 9:05
Okay, so in all fairness, we do have tremendous internal resources. Most of them are very busy dealing with EHR, generation of new internally driven AI that may or may not have any real commercializable value, but they're busy dealing with the clinical enterprise. What we're doing with outside organizations like Project M
Jordan Cooper 9:12
Mhm. Mmh. Yeah.
Barry Katzen 9:24
is they're providing the technology. And we, Baptist Health, are providing the know-how, the patients, and the data. The clinical know-how, the clinical expertise, and the data. And that's where it's coming from. So in this particular case, they're actually doing the product development with our data that's being licensed after being de-identified and quarantined.
Jordan Cooper 9:25
Mhm. Mhm. Got it. So the data is de-identified. And then I think some of our listeners will be interested in a commercialization application. So Project M brings you a real-time decision-making tool to support surgeons in the operating room. and you provide your know-how, your expertise, and your de-identified data, and then you start licensing that to other provider organizations around the country, where is the revenue gain there? Is there, what's the commercialization opportunity in this particular case?
Barry Katzen 10:23
So according to our intellectual property policy internally, whatever the licensing opportunity is or whatever the transactional aspects of it are, will generate a certain revenue, hopefully successful. We ensure success, obviously, by making sure there's unmet need, making sure our clinical experts
Jordan Cooper 10:37
Mhm, mhm.
Barry Katzen 10:43
think this is the value and would actually help them. That's the real killer app from a clinical point of view and what we bring to the table. So let's say whatever revenue gets generated within our own organization back to the organization, 50% goes to the creators and 50% goes back to the organization.
Jordan Cooper 10:44
Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.
Barry Katzen 11:04
after payment of expenses that may have been occurred. So it's after net, basically net revenue, after expense. That 50% goes to the creators of the 50% that goes to the organization. 50% will go back to the corporate area.
Jordan Cooper 11:12
Got it.
Barry Katzen 11:23
A certain amount goes back to the institute where the physicians may come from, and a small percentage goes to support innovation operations.
Jordan Cooper 11:25
Mhm. So is Project M rolled out enterprise-wide across Baptist Health South Florida?
Barry Katzen 11:37
Currently, it's in a pilot phase. So the way this generally operates, Baptist Health is a very large health system. Innovation generally works in pockets. So we identify areas that are particularly good for innovation and development of new ideas and disruption, and then do a successful pilot.
Jordan Cooper 11:39
Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.
Barry Katzen 11:57
Once we develop a pilot, then it's up to the health system to roll it out system-wide. So innovations for us is opportunistic rather than strategic. Hopefully, we'll create a product that will be useful for the entire system, but it's not, we'll commercialize it outside.
Jordan Cooper 12:06
Mmh. Got it. And then are you hosting this Project M software on-prem, or is there a cloud deployment strategy, especially this might be useful for selling it to other organizations?
Barry Katzen 12:23
Wow. Right, so it's all gonna be cloud-based.
Jordan Cooper 12:31
Okay, so it's software as a service essentially.
Barry Katzen 12:34
Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Cooper 12:36
Perfect. And then you mentioned that it's de-identified. Can you talk about the process of taking the PHI at Baptist Health South Florida and making it consumable for these startups?
Barry Katzen 12:48
I think that's the biggest barrier to success, and there's not a short answer to it. We've been dealing with this for the last two or three years. Actually getting the identification process in place that meets the safety requirements of our
Jordan Cooper 12:51
Mhm.
Barry Katzen 13:06
T&D people, our technology and digital people, has really been a challenge. It's been really one of the barriers to actually moving this entire process forward. We're making huge progress right now. Baptist Health is also in the process of changing our EMR, which obviously sucks tremendous bandwidth.
Jordan Cooper 13:11
Mhm. Yeah.
Barry Katzen 13:27
from our technology folks. So it's also added from delay. But there are companies who can do this. Outside companies, there are, we're having to be just beginning work with a company called John Snow, which sort of specializes in that. There are other companies who do that as third party for healthcare systems. But given the threats to health systems by outside bad actors and the need for our T&D people to protect our health systems data from bad actors, it's a very challenging thing to be able to get that data de-identified and out of the health system.
Jordan Cooper 13:57
Mhm. And the last question on this topic, since we are on a topic of generative artificial intelligence, some of our listeners may have read about Gen. AI reverse engineering de-identified patient data and taking different elements of discrete data elements in that data, matching it with data they find on the internet, and kind of reconstituting the identifiable personal health information. Any thoughts about that?
Barry Katzen 14:32
I think we're concerned about it, is what I would say. I think a number of our security and development people are working on those issues right now. We work in collaboration with the Florida International University College of Engineering and Computer Science as well. We kind of have a three-legged stool sometimes with industry.
Jordan Cooper 14:49
Mhm.
Barry Katzen 14:53
health system and our university partners, but computer safety and protecting that data is become a number one priority for us, for sure.
Jordan Cooper 15:01
So I'd like to kind of ask you, we can go one of two ways here. One, we can discuss another example of commercializing IP, and I know you have an interesting example of that. Or it might be interesting to discuss, it might be interesting to discuss, You know what, let's just dive in, or sorry, broader data challenges facing the commercialization of IP. So we just spoke about the difficulties of de-identifying personal health information. I'm wondering, Barry, if you have any other challenges or concerns when it comes to commercializing your IP that data presents, any data challenges, interoperability, kind of normalizing, aggregating, deduplicating data, getting data from one place to another, making sure that you have the right data sources, or we can just jump into another example of commercialization.
Barry Katzen 16:01
Well, I'm happy to talk about the challenges in getting the rich data that exists in health systems to be de-identified and actually commercializable. It sounds really simple. It probably sounds like the simplest thing. These health systems are sitting on these rich troves of information. Baptist Health in particular has a very unique demographic.
Jordan Cooper 16:12
Yeah. Uh-huh.
Barry Katzen 16:22
here, which is very widely wanted by many pharma companies, many medical device companies, and so on. There are different data sets that have very rich assets. But it turns out delivering that actual data is probably one of the hardest challenges we've ever faced. And here are some of the obstacles.
Jordan Cooper 16:27
Hmm.
Barry Katzen 16:42
One is internal resistance to moving that data around. There are people who have 0 tolerance or zero risk tolerance, you know, within the big healthcare organization, rightly so, not disagreeing with it, that we have to work with. So it's not just a question of innovation saying, hey, you know, we want that data, give it to us.
Jordan Cooper 16:56
Mhm.
Barry Katzen 17:03
No, it doesn't happen like that. It's like a two or three-year project. We've been working with a number of different organizations and our T&D people. That's number one. Number 2, getting the data into a useful format requires money, time, and effort. It's not just a bunch of random data sets. Number 3,
Jordan Cooper 17:03
Mhm.
Barry Katzen 17:22
Certain types of data sets are unique. So for instance, cancer management or cardiovascular management may need imaging data combined with EMR data. Okay, and it needs to be matched up in some way. And so the data wonks and people who are actually really involved in making this data available,
Jordan Cooper 17:35
Mm-hmm.
Barry Katzen 17:41
have to be able to get that so that it can be packaged, linked together in some way if it's not already linked. So I would say you need full-time people. Within innovations, we have an AVP and other people who really can talk to our technology people about that, you know, from the innovation side.
Jordan Cooper 18:00
Mm-hmm.
Barry Katzen 18:01
But it's a real challenge and you need dedicated resources to be able to be successful.
Jordan Cooper 18:05
It sounds like a difficult challenge. You know, pharma and medical device companies, you said, would be very interested in accessing the PHI, particularly because of the demographics of the patient population that you serve. I guess, what is it, why, it's so, what are the greatest, I mean, You want to be able, what is your advice to other organizations that are looking to monetize their data, right? Everybody has data that might be of some use to startups, to pharmaceutical companies, to medical device companies, and they want to monetize it. They want to increase their margins, but they have the same challenges that you've just been discussing. As we wrap up this podcast episode, I'd like to ask you to just reflect upon how you've been able to overcome these challenges and any advice to your colleagues across the country who may be interested in also kind of commercializing their data and they're just kind of stuck with it and frustrated. We have this demand over here, we have the supply over here, but we have so many challenges releasing that data to those who demand it and would pay for it.
Barry Katzen 19:14
Well, like most things in healthcare, successful innovation is a team sport. And I think as it relates to this specific issue, close collaboration between our director of technology and digital, which maybe didn't exist three or four years ago, has been developed now. And I think our biggest secret to success ultimately is going to be that close cooperation between the innovation program and the people that are responsible for use of that data internally in the health system, whatever that title might be. It varies from organization. In our case, it's the Chief Data Officer or the Chief, he's called the corporate head of technology and digital. But he's responsible for all data. And I think having a close relationship to the people that are interested in using that data and the people who are interested in protecting that data and aligning, like everything else in healthcare, aligning everybody's incentives is one of the secrets to success, I believe.
Jordan Cooper 20:03
Mhm. Well, Barry, I'd like to thank you so much for joining us today.
Barry Katzen 20:17
Thank you. I hope it was of some information for you and for everyone who's listening. Thank you.