EP253: How to Use Health IT to Help Patients and Providers Collaborate, With George Mathew, Chief Medical Officer at DXC Technology

In this episode, Stacey Richter talks with George Mathew, MD, MBA, FACP, chief medical officer, Americas, at DXC Technology, about how to use health IT to help patients and providers collaborate.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

✅ What the FDA pre-cert program is and why it matters for digital therapeutics

✅ How standards for evaluating digital therapeutics are being developed

✅ Why the technology has always been the easy part — the hard part is workflow change

✅ How cognitive load, not just clicks, shapes whether digital tools actually work in practice

✅ Why hospitals should think of themselves as data companies working on behalf of their patients

WHY THIS MATTERS

George Mathew applies Clayton Christensen's resources-processes-values framework from "The Innovator's Dilemma" to digital health tools: even a brilliant, proven tool fails if the surrounding organization's processes and values don't support it. He walks through the FDA pre-cert program, how digital therapeutics get evaluated, and why getting clinicians and patients to help construct a solution matters more than the underlying technology itself. His closing framing is simple but often skipped: what is the real problem you're trying to solve, and what's the right process to solve it?

=== LINKS ===

🔗 Show Notes with all mentioned links: Episode Page

🔗 Healthcare Industry Acronyms and Terms

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00:00 Introduction.

02:27 What the FDA pre-cert program is.

03:46 The cost of drug tests and clinical trials.

04:41 Coming up with standards for evaluating digital therapeutics.

06:45 "The Hives"—the database where all data collected are reviewed.

08:00 The data collected and how they are evaluated.

08:33 The barriers to developing digital therapeutics.

11:43 "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen.

13:37 "Getting people to help construct the solution."

15:25 Workflows and how digital therapeutics play into this.

17:22 "The technology has always been easy; the hard part is the workflow change."

20:49 How the information appears within these apps.

22:43 The opportunities within digital therapeutics.

23:33 Cognitive load vs clicks.

24:30 How information gets back to patients—or doesn't.

27:29 "Hospitals should become data companies, except … that they work on behalf of their patients."

27:53 DXC Technology and where people can learn more about the work that they do.

29:21 "What is the real problem you're trying to solve, and what's the right process to solve that problem?"