Kaiser Permanente
A Look Inside Kaiser Permanente’s Medical Tech Playground – A Conversation with Dr. Yan Chow
One of the pleasures of a large meeting like HIMSS is the chance to meet remarkable people who are creative and productive but with whom one would not otherwise cross paths. Dr. Yan Chow is a physician who’s career has spanned several spheres. He holds an advanced software engineering with three patents for network storage architecture and has launched a few Bay Area tech startups. Later, he decided to pursue an MBA and entered the Univ. California Berkeley School of Business as the “second oldest guy in the class” and, he says with a twinkle, graduated as valedictorian.
He continues to practice as a pediatrician at Northern California Kaiser but is also the director of the Kaiser Permanente Information Technology’s Innovation & Advanced Technology Group. This is a remarkable position that only a health care institution as large as Kaiser can create. In essence, his job is to survey the newest technologies and decide which ones could be implemented in the larger Kaiser health system. It is, undoubtedly, the dream job for any health care technology aficionado. But for the institution, it is a strategic asset that helps it to avoid costly purchasing mistakes. Kaiser also maintains the Sidney Garfield “Laboratory for Innovation,”a 35,000 Sq ft space with fully mocked up patient and operating rooms where real doctors and nurses trial new technologies. Dr. Chow told me a remarkable story of just how valuable these investments can be.
