Season 5: Episode #147
Podcast with Piyush Mathur, MD, Staff Anesthesiologist and Critical Care Physician of Cleveland Clinic
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In this episode, Piyush Mathur, MD, Staff Anesthesiologist and Critical Care Physician of Cleveland Clinic, shares his journey in medicine, passion for improving patient care, and transformative work in artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Mathur talks about BrainX, an AI healthcare company founded to elevate patient care by empowering clinicians with AI-driven tools.
Dr. Mathur highlights the exciting potential of AI to unite professionals across medicine and technology toward a shared purpose: better patient outcomes. He also emphasizes that as AI usage accelerates, applying these tools mindfully and validating them rigorously remains crucial to maximize its impact on patient care. Dr. Mathur also shares insights on building a collaborative, AI-enabled future in patient care. Take a listen.
Show Notes |
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01:14 | What interests you in the healthcare industry segment to become the CIO of a hospital system? | |||
02:47 | How long have you been in the leadership position at UMC, where is it located, and what kind of population does it serve? | |||
03:35 | You have done a lot of work from technology perspective to support the business needs of the hospital. You've done over 200 applications and transformed the EMR system. Would you like to share with the audience the thought process that drove those changes and what were some of those changes? | |||
07:47 | What do you think about your digital transformation efforts? If you could describe a few of them which have had impact on the patient population. | |||
08:30 | Please describe in your own, you know, way that what is digital transformation for provider systems such as yours? Where do you see it going? Some of the challenges that you might have faced and how did it actually end up impacting patients? | |||
11:24 | How did you manage to change the mindset of the people? How did they manage to change themselves? To adapt to this new world where technology, especially with AI and GenAI and other new technologies which are coming our way, how do you change mindsets and change behaviors and change culture over there? | |||
13:00 | Would you like to provide one example of how the technologies which you were implementing, and you continue to be implementing in your hospital system are accessible and usable by a variety of users, including within the hospital and outside the hospital. | |||
16:28 | How do you innovate? Do you involve external parties? Do you have some kind of a, you know, innovation focus department? Or is it part and parcel of everybody's, you know, kind of like daily life? | |||
19:24 | What are your thoughts on new technologies, especially Gen AI? Have you been experimenting with any predictive analytics or large language models? What would be your advice or thoughts to any other healthcare leaders on how to go about this journey of exploration? | |||
22:15 | Standing here now and looking back, if you were able to go back and change one or two things, what would you like to do differently or have done differently? | |||
Video Podcast and Extracts
About our guest
Piyush Mathur, M.D., is a Staff Anesthesiologist and Critical Care physician at Cleveland Clinic, Ohio with more than 20 years of clinician experience. He is the Innovation Lead for Department of Anesthesiology, Cleveland Clinic. He has also served in the role of the Quality Improvement Officer and chair, compliance committee, Anesthesiology Institute for more than a decade. He completed his medical school training in India from Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC,Pune) followed by residency in Anesthesiology and fellowship in Critical Care from Cleveland Clinic. He subsequently completed a one year, quality fellowship at Cleveland Clinic and training in computer programming, machine learning and deep learning. He is the past program director of the anesthesiology critical care fellowship program at Cleveland Clinic.
A recognized leader in critical care, quality, education and artificial intelligence applications in healthcare, he has led many of the local and national programs including serving as the chair of the post-graduate education committee, coding and documentation education committee of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM). He is currently a member of CPT editorial advisory committee, AMA(American Medical Association) and primary advisor,SCCM.
Trained in computer programming, machine learning and deep learning, he is the founder of BrainX, an AI in healthcare application research and development company.He also founded, one of the largest groups for machine learning in healthcare, BrainX Community. He has focused his research on applications of artificial intelligence(AI) in healthcare for the last many years.He is a leader in quality and patient safety who has innovated and successfully implemented many algorithms and tools in electronic health records such as difficult airway identification(EPIC), anesthesia awareness alert (DSS, Talis), antibiotic alert (ACG, Talis).Recipient of multiple innovation awards at Cleveland Clinic, he is leading innovation efforts in integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence in healthcare. Current, projects include AIDE(Artificial Intelligence Diagnosis Engine), SALUS (robotic artificial intelligence patient safety system),BRAINS(Biologically Relational Artificial Intelligence Networking System).He is a recipient of numerous local and international awards including Institute of Healthcare Improvement(IHI) Permanante award and the prestigious Presidential citation from Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM).He has made numerous local, national and international presentations and publications in the fields of anesthesiology, critical care, quality, education and artificial intelligence applications in healthcare.
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Welcome to the Big Unlock Podcast, Piyush. It is great to have you as our guest today. I’m Rohit Mahajan, Managing Partner and CEO at BigRio and Damo Consulting. I would request you to please introduce yourself.
Piyush: I’m Piyush Mathur. I’m a physician, an Anesthesiologist, and work in ICU too. Originally did my MBBS in India from Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, and then subsequently through my journey came to Cleveland Clinic where I have been for more than 21 years now. Did further training in quality and education and for the last many years have been very focused on how can we impact the quality of patient care using artificial intelligence, which is a data driven science.
Q. Great to know that you started your journey as a physician. So, what motivated you? What choices you had at that point in time when you started your journey and how did you come to US?
Piyush: The motivation was very simple. My dad, actually wanted to be in the armed forces and he always wanted me to be a doctor and always encouraged me to focus on that. I happen to be good in biology too, throughout my high school. So, it was a natural fit. I ended up at armed forces medical college for that reason, and then decided to further pursue learning and training in the US.
I didn’t know about Cleveland Clinic at all, being in India over two decades ago, and it was actually my last application for a residency program. When I matched here, I was really excited. Since then, I’ve pursued my career at Cleveland Clinic, training in anesthesiology and later in critical care. Working here with people from all over the world and learning from them has been an excellent journey.
Q. Piyush, I know that you’re pretty busy as a physician, but you still find time to do other business ventures. Could you tell us about those?
Piyush: Yeah, I always like to learn and grow. Being a clinician is important, but as we thought about applying AI in healthcare, we wanted to innovate and make it something sustainable—beyond a hobby or pure research. That’s when, along with Frank Pepe, chair of plastic surgery at Cleveland Clinic, we founded BrainX, an AI and healthcare company.
We were both very excited about this scientific opportunity for applying AI in healthcare. But there were a lot of challenges and there were a lot of misunderstandings somewhere around six, seven years ago and still continue to be. But that’s what we wanted to demystify, that how can we apply this exciting, rapidly growing science into healthcare to make our patient’s journey, a better journey, how do we empower our clinicians with this wonderful tools that the science represents so that they can be enabled to give better care to our patients.
How can we make the healthcare system more efficient using this data driven science so that the delivery becomes better? So those were all the questions that we were trying to trying to address. And we did believe together, collectively, that AI represented a great opportunity to solve that rather than just trying the tools that had been tried in the past.
And subsequently, we had other founding partners like Dr. Szymanski, Dr. Maeshwari, and Dr. Khanna join us. And we started working on exploring this, and over a time period, we had Raghav and Shreya join us as our technical leads and our research leads now. They are both PhDs in AI. And we have just subsequently grown leaps and bounds in this exploration.
Q. That’s great to know, Piyush. How many years has it been, and which are your focus areas? Tell us about work by giving perhaps one or two examples.
Piyush: We never anticipated that we’ll grow that rapidly. So, it’s just been six, seven years now since we started. Initially started with just our core team, the BrainX team. Eventually, there were so many other people who were asking the same questions what we were asking, and everybody was so excited. So, we ended up forming a community around us called the – BrainX community – so we can engage people from across the world. That’s a 6,000 plus member international community. Also, very active LinkedIn group with the same name called BrainX community. We have a website, a whole host of resources that are available over there. Free to join. All the content is free. As we grew, we also realized that, you know, we need to expand our research team.
We created one of the verticals that we have now within BrainX, our own lab called BrainX AI Research. Now we have people from across the world participating in our research work with all different backgrounds, all the way from undergraduates to PhDs. Everybody working together, trying to research different aspects of AI application in healthcare. All the way from basic data science, we are very focused on all those.
Q. We were very fortunate to have you as our keynote and spotlight speaker when we did our GenAI workshop near Cleveland Clinic. You spoke very deeply about the applications of AI in healthcare and GenAI in healthcare. Could you share with the audience some of the insights perhaps from either that talk or any others that you very frequently do otherwise as well?
Piyush: So, generative AI—or for those who may not know the term, AI like ChatGPT—is an application people are now familiar with. Tools like this have become widely available for public use, and there’s a lot of excitement around them. Our team was already focused on the predecessors of these tools, particularly in natural language processing during the pre-GPT era. So, as these fascinating tools became available, it was a natural transition for us.
It’s like being in a toy shop where developers are putting out all these different algorithms—we’re fascinated and excited to trial them. But it’s also a pivotal moment. Just like Steve Jobs made personal computers accessible to everyone, AI is now talking to people. People can interact with it directly, see how powerful it is, and integrate it into their daily lives.
This is generative AI’s “hello world” moment. But with all the excitement, we need to be careful, especially in healthcare. These tools need validation, testing, and possibly adaptation. One model might not fit all healthcare needs, so we and others worldwide are experimenting to understand the right approaches for applying these models.
What’s exciting is that these state-of-the-art tools allow people to interact in natural language, but we must ensure they are vetted and applied appropriately to help with patient care. That’s the exciting part.
Q. That’s great to know. And I am also super excited to learn that you have launched a new book, Piyush. I’m looking forward to reading it very soon. Would you like to give some insights to the audience about what is the contents of the book and what motivated you to write the book?
Piyush: Thank you, Rohit. We’re trying to put together our experience and expertise in that book. It’s called ‘Strategies for Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare.’ Y You can find it on Amazon. Frank Pepe, Jeff Mangus, and I co-authored this book. The idea was not to provide overly technical knowledge, as that already exists in other publications, but to focus on strategy.
Strategy is something I often find lacking across organizations or individuals—how to approach applying AI in healthcare. That’s why the sections of the book are laid out to address questions like why AI in healthcare, who, what, and so forth.
It’s an easy read and offers a framework for applying or learning about AI in healthcare, whether you’re a startup, hospital, or multinational company. We hope this book provides that key strategy element for mindful AI adoption in healthcare.
That’s great to know. So with that, I would like to finish our conversation for today. And I say this because we might have a follow-up podcast with you, as the landscape is changing so fast.
Q. What do you see in the crystal ball? What do you see in the next few months regarding healthcare adopting more AI and generative AI applications? If that’s what you’d like to talk about, or anything else you’re observing—whether it’s at the Cleveland Clinic or in your practice as a physician.
Piyush: The thing that excites me the most is the opportunity that AI brings. Look at this opportunity—right? You and I are talking about AI here, a physician and someone from the technological world. It’s brought all of us onto a common platform.
And what is it bringing us together for? It’s bringing us together for a common purpose, which is beautiful: to improve the delivery of patient care. That is what I’m most excited about, and that is what keeps me energized all day long about this opportunity.
I think we, on this platform, collectively working together, will clearly build great tools in the future, whether it’s with BigRio or through collaborations with many other companies we’re looking forward to working with.
The other part of this is the evolution of AI itself. If you see how fast-paced it is: we started with natural language processing a few years ago. It was slow for a while, and then suddenly, with the advent of generative AI, things accelerated.
Now, we are moving into multimodal AI. The excitement of a constantly evolving technology is exceptional. I haven’t seen such rapid growth in science or so many people engaged and involved in decades.
That’s what excites me and gives me hope. It keeps me optimistic that we are building a great future for our patients, our clinicians, and everyone involved.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast. Subscribe to our podcast series at www.thebigunlock.com and write to us at info@thebigunlock.com
Disclaimer: This Q&A has been derived from the podcast transcript and has been edited for readability and clarity.
About the host
Paddy is the co-author of Healthcare Digital Transformation – How Consumerism, Technology and Pandemic are Accelerating the Future (Taylor & Francis, Aug 2020), along with Edward W. Marx. Paddy is also the author of the best-selling book The Big Unlock – Harnessing Data and Growing Digital Health Businesses in a Value-based Care Era (Archway Publishing, 2017). He is the host of the highly subscribed The Big Unlock podcast on digital transformation in healthcare featuring C-level executives from the healthcare and technology sectors. He is widely published and has a by-lined column in CIO Magazine and other respected industry publications.
Ritu M. Uberoy has over twenty-five years of experience in the software and information technology industry in the United States and in India. She established Saviance Technologies in India and has been involved in the delivery of several successful software projects and products to clients in various industry segments.
Ritu completed AI for Health Care: Concepts and Applications from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Applied Generative AI for Digital Transformation from MIT Professional Education. She has successfully taught Gen AI concepts in a classroom setting in Houston and in workshop settings to C-Suite leaders in Boston and Cleveland. She attended HIMSS in March 2024 at Orlando and the Imagination in Action AI Summit at MIT in April 2024. She is also responsible for the GenAI Center of Excellence at BigRio and DigiMTM Digital Maturity Model and Assessment at Damo.
Ritu earned her Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Delhi Institute of Technology (now NSIT) and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Santa Clara University in California. She has participated in the Fellow’s program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Rohit Mahajan is an entrepreneur and a leader in the information technology and software industry. His focus lies in the field of artificial intelligence and digital transformation. He has also written a book on Quantum Care, A Deep Dive into AI for Health Delivery and Research that has been published and has been trending #1 in several categories on Amazon.
Rohit is skilled in business and IT strategy, M&A, Sales & Marketing and Global Delivery. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering, is a Wharton School Fellow and a graduate from the Harvard Business School.
Rohit is the CEO of Damo, Managing Partner and CEO of BigRio, the President at Citadel Discovery, Advisor at CarTwin, Managing Partner at C2R Tech, and Founder at BetterLungs. He has previously also worked with IBM and Wipro. He completed his executive education programs in AI in Business and Healthcare from MIT Sloan, MIT CSAIL and Harvard School of Public Health. He has completed the Global Healthcare Leaders Program from Harvard Medical School.
Paddy was the co-author of Healthcare Digital Transformation – How Consumerism, Technology and Pandemic are Accelerating the Future (Taylor & Francis, Aug 2020), along with Edward W. Marx. Paddy was also the author of the best-selling book The Big Unlock – Harnessing Data and Growing Digital Health Businesses in a Value-based Care Era (Archway Publishing, 2017). He was the host of the highly subscribed The Big Unlock podcast on digital transformation in healthcare featuring C-level executives from the healthcare and technology sectors. He was widely published and had a by-lined column in CIO Magazine and other respected industry publications.
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