DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - The Future of Connected Care (ft. Donny Patel)

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

On this episode of Digital Voices, Ed interviews Donny Patel, the President of Baxter's Connected Care Services. They discuss Donny's journey from robotics engineering to becoming a leader in healthcare technology, his insights on the future of connected care, and the importance of innovation in the healthcare industry. Donny shares his experiences at Baxter, the challenges he faced, and the lessons he learned along the way. The conversation also touches on the significance of work-life balance and personal interests, such as photography, in maintaining a fresh perspective in a demanding career.

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation challenges and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marks. Ed here, welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I know you can listen to a lot of different podcasts like I do, and you're listening to us. And I think one of the reasons that we are getting this kind of traction is that we don't do any commercials. There's no ads. There's no sponsors. You can trust our content that it's just purely good stuff, getting some really interesting people like Donnie Patel to be our guest. Donnie, welcome to Digital Voices. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about having

you because you and I met, I don't know the exact year, Donnie, but at least five years ago. And I was part of the Baxter advisory team. And I just loved it because I loved hearing about what you all were doing, but I got to know you on a personal level. I was always like, man, Donnie's a pretty cool guy. And then over the years, I've also watched you mature into a leader. And today, you're president at Baxter, Connected Care, Technical Services. Yeah, it's been a couple of years ago. I think it was 2023, if I may, and you were part of our advisory board. That's where we kicked things off. So, Ed, you've been part of our journey too. When we started Connected Care at Baxter, You were one of the first people we reached out to be on.

Yeah, no, you're awesome, and I like you as a human and as a leader, and that's why I wanted you on. So, Donnie, the most important question, though, that we ask is what are the songs on your playlist? So it's my, the songs I have on my playlist are pretty much just trans, electronic music. I don't listen to lyrics and any of that. That just keeps me going, and it's just the way I operate is like sometimes, I just don't want to listen to any lyrics, and I just want to listen to some music and go on. I listen to a lot of jazz music, but it's mostly electronic trans, Trent Mueller, a few others who I listen to. I love it.

Because I know some people like to listen to just musical tracks while they work. Do you listen to you while you work at all? No, I listen to it when I travel a lot for work. So I'm generally, I have my music on during the plane rides because, as you know, the Wi-Fi on the planes have not evolved. I'm on the road almost every week and I listen to music when I'm on the plane or simply at times that I want to go to sleep. Yeah. And that music puts me to sleep. Yeah.

That's good. Especially if you know the type of music you're talking about, if you can go to sleep to that music, that's a trained mind right there. What about life message or mantra? Are there words that you live by or quotes that inspire you? You may have heard this and our listeners would have heard this many times. Like, you know, live as if today is the last day and do all the things you can do in a manner by which you not only benefit yourself and your family, but others. So, you know, it's all about, and I, you know, you and I both have a history in health care.

It's about what do we do today to make others life much more simpler and better and how we can somehow make a difference to deliver the care that we tend to deliver through the work we do to the patients we ultimately serve. So for me, it's more about, you know, live the day. today as if it's the last day. But look forward to tomorrow as well because you never know what tomorrow brings up to you. Yeah, I like that. There's actually a Tim McGrath song, right, called Live As If You're Dying and that's pretty good. It's a great message. But let's talk about who you are. So who are you? What is your story, Donnie? Tell us about your life growing up.

Yeah, absolutely. So I was born in India. I spent a lot of years in India and I did a little bit of schooling there, a little bit of schooling in Australia, U.S., I've studied in many different countries, but I also worked in different countries as well. So I've done some time in Singapore. I worked in China. I worked in Australia. And through Baxter, I have had the pleasure of working in a global organization that allows me to operate in many regions, many countries. I didn't start my career in healthcare. I'm a mechanical engineer. I have a degree in robotics engineering and I have

MBA. It's funny I got picked up in healthcare because I couldn't find a manufacturing job. I closed relative of ours call me and said, hey, you know, you know something about computers? I'm like, yeah, I play with computers all the time. I do this,

that and the other. Well, there might be a job in our company. And so I got called into a job. I went to an interview where mostly the questions are, well, do you know IP addresses? I'm like, yeah, I know IP address. What do you want to know about it? So it ended up becoming a, you know, a data conversion role in a data conversion company, which quickly evolved into kind of building interfaces and, you know, writing scripts on extracting data from EMR and converting into a different format.

One thing led into another, and I ended up in hospitals, and one of the hospitals you were the CIO of. So, you know, I think we crossed past like you left or I left and you joined as the CIO, something like that. I ended up getting jobs at hospitals to do exactly that system, conversion, system migration, and primarily in IT and in informatics and CIS of various kinds. And then when Baxter brought me in, they wanted someone who had worked at hospitals. They wanted someone who has that exposure and that experience. And so one thing led into another, it was very, very organic on how I ended up here. Yeah.

That's very cool. And that probably explains your accent a little bit because you wouldn't know that you're from India based on your accent. You have a very, let's say, a global accent, right? And time in Australia. Confused accent. It's a confused accent. No, I like it. I love accents and trying to figure out where people are from.

But yours would definitely, if I didn't know you already in your last name, I might make it a little bit tricky. So, yeah, so we talk a little bit about your career already. You sort of began on the hospital side and you sort of described. your journey. And was it a hard decision? Because, you know, a lot of people are faced with the same decision. They might work at a hospital and a vendor to say, hey, we want someone with hospital parents. But what did you have to think about before you made that job? I think it was, it was a hard decision. And the reason why it was a hard decision is that I was well established in my career in Mount Sinai, New York. And I think I saw myself going to another health system.

So it was clear progression in my mind at that time going from one health system to the other health system, go from X size amount of beds and X amount of facilities to a bigger one, right? I mean, that's how the career progressed. So when I received that phone call from a company that manufactures products and, you know, pharma products, med devices and all that, and the first thing I had in my mind was like, what if I don't know? What if I can't figure it out? What if I'm not able to do that?

Because it's a commercial mindset. I'm going into a commercial organization where necessarily I'm pitching to a CIO, pitching to a CFO about my products. And I'm like, what if I'm not good at it? There is a doubt that settles in your mind that it may not be the right opportunity. But I think at that point, I call my wife, I said, hey, listen, there's this opportunity. It seems interesting. I may go into the industry side.

It's a new area. At that time, I was also interviewing for a CTO role in California at one of the children's hospital. And they both lined up at the same time, both of them. And so I was like, CTO at this hospital or here, like it was just that. And then what I ended up doing was I went with something that I didn't expect. So my wife says, look, that job, that role, that kinds of role will always remain. You can definitely go back and kind of pitch yourself as the CIO for the hospital or work in a hospital, et cetera.

And maybe take this additional experience and say, hey, I worked on the vendor side too. So maybe we'll take you more six months, but, you know, there might be a hospital to pick you up. But what if you succeed, it might be a different story you can tell. I'm like, yeah, you know what, let me take some risks. And I personally, you know, there were other things in the, in our family that was working financially at that time in my favor.

I don't have kids. Yeah. My wife has a very dynamic role in her own company where she travels a lot. So there was this understanding as that we both can be really aggressive towards our own respective careers. We lived in a condo. We didn't own anything. Right.

Subway is all I had. Like, you know, Metro is what I use. And so we didn't have debt. So it was all about can we be more fluid? So that's kind of how I evolved into it. No, I love that. You know, talking to your wife, smart move. can risk. I love all that. And she was right. Yeah, you can take a risk. But if you're,

if you're good at something already, you can always go back to where you came. So life is too short like we've been talking about. So you might as well try something and it really worked out. I do want to talk specifically about what you're doing in the marketplace. But before we get there, I'm familiar with Baxter because I worked on the clinical side for a long time, and new Baxter more from the clinical side. Can you just share generally for the audience that may not know too much about Baxter, the full Baxter in terms of the markets that you serve and things like that. Then I want to talk about a little bit about your career and then what you're doing at Baxter. Absolutely. So it's over 100 year old company. A lot of companies that you know today as a

company have origins to Baxter. So I'll name a few of those companies here in a second. But as it stands today, our portfolio comprises of pharma therapy-related products and technology-related products. So we have generics in pharma and generics, and we are a big manufacturer of solutions. The variety of solutions are manufactured by us. We used to have a dialysis business that just separated. We separated about a few weeks ago. So I think we were number one, number two in dialysis. That company is now called Mantiv, large clients there.

On the therapy side of the business, this is our business that we call like the old Batchettar to some degree. We have infusion pumps in that business. We have compounders. We make compounders. We have automation for pharmacy. So we have some automation robots as well that we plan. It's a partnership. So, you know, we partner with certain companies and in certain markets. But we have products in pharmacy. And then we make, you know, nutrition. A lot of, you know, patients won't be able to, let's say, they are on the bed and they can't eat. So we'll make nutrition, like clinolypids and lipids we make those as well so cocktails and nutrition cocktails for them and then on on the technology we call it health care systems and technology segments so we have

three segments we have pharma segment medical products and therapies and we have health systems healthcare systems and technology a lot of the capital that we have in this business and that business is mostly acquired from hell round that you know from a few years ago yeah so we have beds. We have lights, booms, furniture, you know, Veltchallon, which may be something you're familiar with. You go to a primary care office, you will see a Veltchallon product. That's actually Baxter. So a lot of products and Mortara, if you know, Mortara. Mortara is also a Baxter product or Baxter company. Well, we have a monitoring business in there as well. Tons of like over 200 different kinds of product categories that we plan. My group is responsible for the social.

software side of things. So we are the connecting tissue amongst all these products. So my group makes the platform that connects all these products. And then we have a communication portfolio as well that my group is also leading. We just had the pleasure of launching a voice product at him. So we launched that product variation. It's called VoltLink. We also have a text messaging platform, secure texting platform. So a variety of connected care products are in that portfolio. And then the services businesses, generally, you know, the capital services business, repairs, warranties, you know, rental leasing, that kind of business. So it's a big business. The services business is also a big business. So that's a little bit about our company and

somewhat. Yeah, no, it's giant. And with a story history, like you talked about, yeah, it was kind of fun. When I was on the Baxter sort of advisory board, also on the Hill ROM advisory board when the that happened. Yeah, merger happened. So that was a lot of fun to be part of boy. But tell us about the voice. Yeah. So let's go more into about what you're doing. And the launch that you had recently at Hymns 25 in Vegas. Yeah. Your voice product. Yeah. So we're going in a different category now that we think is the new level of integration that I think the hospitals will benefit from. So we created this product called Wolt Link, L-I-N-Q, and this is a product that allows nurse-to-nurse communication. Okay, well, Donnie, that has been there for ages. This is beyond that,

because what we have built is we have built LLMs in it. So, you know, we talked about my accent, silent accent. I can actually give voice commands to this device, and it will control some workflows in the room. So as I was mentioning, the amount of equipment we manufacture and the amount of capital we can place in a room. In theory, we can outfit a room about 70% with just our products. Now, provided, and that's a low number, but no hospital is going to buy everything from us. It's going to be a mix of products. But I could activate things like, hey, turn the bed safety on in room number 101 on this bed and it will automatically turn the safety on by itself. It will understand my accent.

It can also, you know, make calls while you need for help. Like, I need help. You're not going to say, excuse me, I need help. In duress, your voice levels are going to be busy. Your pitch and tone is going to be different. So this product, we are expecting this product to enable a lot of voice-related workflows across all our products. So as we release more products in the cloud, we are building actually co-pilots and agents for our nurses.

That's the area where we are playing. Throughout the year, you will hear about exciting releases. And we also will give a little bit of a playground where hospitals themselves will build their own agents and their own co-pilots that will sit with this voice test. Yeah. I agree with you. The future is now, you know, I know a lot of nurses who this will take a huge burden of them, improved quality of care. Yeah. to improve the experience for both patients and the nurse. And yeah, that's pretty exciting. Where else do you see the industry moving with connected care? I know you can't reveal it if it's about what's coming out next with Baxter. But, you know, where do you think we're headed with all this connected care?

So I know you and I were on parallel worlds going to some of the conferences that we go to at this time of the year, right? I think, you know, a few areas where, so first, it'll be remiss of me if I don't talk a little bit about my company and the products. I think what we see from our end is the level of integration that the hospitals are going to now demand from companies like us and software companies is going to be totally different than what was in 2013, 2014, meaningful use one, two, or whatnot. We're no longer talking HL7s. We're no longer talking about that. I believe even when we had those HL7 type integrations, It's still used sticky notes, paper, writing pads. iPads, they would write an app on the iPad so that they can scribble on the iPad.

And then they would go into the EMR and document what they need to document, right? So we think that voice-activated workflows is one area, one pillar. So it's like integration using voice. So can I have integration of devices with an EMR or the end system using voice? That's one area. The other area where I'm starting to see or tend to see. And I can't put my pulse on it yet is auto documentation in EMRs. So that's another place where I'm seeing is that you have tons and tons of information

that is sitting in the EMR about that patient. I have seen so many products in the market right now and I've seeing a growing trend where we're building these GPs where the doctors and the nurses can actually question the chart and get answers about that patient much more simply than reviewing pages and pages and pages. So we'll see some agentic technologies over there. And then the last is on the on the virtual sitting and virtual monitoring side, we are, I'm seeing a lot of trends in regards to, you know, because the nurse to patient ratio has always been the question in the hospital. I'm seeing a lot of trends globally, not just in US, but globally as, you know, there's a lot of

camera equipment out there, but there's a lot of integration around those pieces, a lot of monitoring, a lot of safety-related products available. So when we look at connected care, it's three areas. Voice, automation and documentation, virtual sitting, or some kind of monitoring. And this is just for hospitals. I'm not talking about hospital at home or variables, but in the hospital, this is where I'm seeing. Yeah, Donnie, you said the word, you were kind of given a global perspective as well. Do you see any parts of the world that are maybe more advanced than the U.S. or taking risks?

Yeah. I was in Netherlands about this time last year. I did a couple of visits in a bunch of hospitals. I was not expecting the level of integrations that I've seen in the rooms over there. I went to a couple of hospitals. I almost felt like I'm going into a retreat. I never, you never see a hospital become a retreat. You know the image. You've worked at hospital for your life, right?

It's a very tense environment. I looked at the hospital and I'm going, oh my God, it's different. The amount of integration they have built from being able to command the blinds to go up, the lights, the amount of equipment, automated equipment that's in there, it's phenomenal. Matter of fact, I'll give an example around Verona, Italy. I forget the name of the hospital that we went to, but they have a lot of our OR equipment, Helion, which is our OR camera equipment. They had like 16 surgery rooms set up with advanced camera systems.

And a lot of them would qualify as a medical device in the United States, but they don't qualify as a medical device in Italy. Like you could zoom in using gestures, you can take measurements, you can document all of that. For us, in the U.S., it will be a device that you had to put a claim against. So they are taking so much risks in that area. China, so when I was working in China and when I do business in China, I see a lot of the information about the patient is sitting in the VChat app. So there is an app store in an app store in which they can see vital signs. They can see everything that is happening around the bedside. And they can just copy it to their EMA.

So I'm seeing a lot of risk taking in other markets. I think the pages are turning. I think we will be learning a lot from those nations. Yeah. I can see the potential. I know I've given you this feedback before because I worked in the OR at the Cleveland Clinic. And as advanced as we were and they are, you know, world leaders and quality and safety. I saw so many opportunities for automation, you know, and the things that you're talking about right now.

So I gets me pretty excited about the future and different things. Let's talk about leadership. So you've grown a lot at Baxter. I sort of skipped that part, but you're now the president for, you know, when I introduced you, the president over connected care, technical services. You've grown a lot. So tell me about some of that growth. Was there a – if you had to go back and look and people are listening, right? Because they're like, maybe they're an analyst, a director of vice president.

president, where there's one or two key things that maybe you get to where you are? Number one is influence. So I went from a team of one person, my admin. When I joined the company, I have about 4,300 people in my organization right now. And people are asking, how did that happen? I'm like, listen, I'm not that smart. Number one. So let's get that straight.

But I think it's about influence and problem solving. And about influence is you build influence within the company or in your organization by problem solving from somebody else. Okay. So it's always about at Baxter, I have grown for the fact because I was able to solve a lot of problems for other business units all the time, extended myself tons. And what that did is, oftentimes they would say, well, can you permanently solve

this problem for us? Can you own this? Can you run with this? Can you temporarily see this for six months before we find a new leader? So that was an organic growth that I did not unlock. and I did not realize until lately. I was like, how did I get here? Because somebody asked that question to me.

I was like, I don't know. I was like, okay, it's the power of influence that I gradually built because I was solving problems for others. And oftentimes it's just that not doubting yourself. And it sounds cheesy, but it is true. It's because sometimes you often, you are our worst critique. Yes. Or maybe we are our best critique or we are our worst critique.

I think we are our worst critique because we always doubt ourselves as to, I don't think That's true. I think, you know, I don't know this. It's like we don't take that many risks. And I have seen that risk taking and that influence and, you know, helping somebody out, I think has allowed me to combine in those areas being able to take a better decision. So it's like better decision making has allowed me to grow. So I think if I was giving that advice to myself 10, 15 years ago, I think I would totally be at a different place in my career today. Because I didn't take that many risk.

I didn't. My manager tells me to do something. I just do that. And that's it. I wrap up at 5, 6, 7 p.m., call it day. Go on. I did not have the curiosity. So it would be the curiosity is something that you need to have.

What are some of the other folks doing, right? I work in IT, then what are some of the problems that the hospital is having? Let me inquire. Let me make friends over there and inquire and just build that curiosity. I think that's what has helped me a whole lot. Yeah. You just laid down like 10 different things there, Dahlia. That was really good.

Try to keep up, take a good notes. Okay, so so far, everything's been super positive. What about things that you had to learn the hard way? Is there one example of something you had to learn the hard way that taught you something of value that you then, you know, leveraged going forward? I learned a lot of coding and programming along the way. I picked it up as a hobby and I let it go. I went into all the administrative stuff.

And I think if you are an engineer, do not let go of your first instinct because it kind of helps you out in a long run. So as I started digging in deeper and deeper, and now I have a SWAT team or we call it the incubation team of five engineers that I work with very closely. Outside of all the folks, other folks I have, and we talk code. We talk about how to code quickly, how to code fast. A part of that is me getting back to coding, learning to code. I oftentimes find myself, I was like, man, I shouldn't have left coding. Man, I shouldn't have left programming. So I made that switch into management.

I learned the hard way. Along the way, I completely disregarded everything. So it's like someone talks about Python and I'm like, dear end headlights. I don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. And it's, you shouldn't let that go. The other thing I've talked about like, you know, I went from mechanical engineering into healthcare, I completely disregarded my mind.

mechanical engineering knowledge, right? But most of what I do now is electromechanical. It's all coming back. Yeah. That's good. Education doesn't go to waste. Yeah. That's super interesting. I wish we had time to dig more into that.

How do you recharge your batteries remain fresh? You're obviously a hard worker. You get a lot of things done. You travel a lot. You're married. So what do you do to sort of refresh? I do a lot of landscape photography. and I take time during the year. So I do one,

my wife allows me one trip, solo trip, where I can pick a destination. I can go there, five, 10 days, and I can, photography-wise,

I can do whatever I want. Those are the days when I go on like a 20-mile hike, 30-mile hike, a backpack. And yeah, and if you see me on one of those, you're like, I kind of know that guy.

It's like, oh, that's you. So it'll be like, it's a total different person. So, you know, photography, is for me. It's an outlet. It's a way of composing. You know, the mountain's already there. The sun is

already there. The water is already there. But how you compose it. So it's, it has taught me how to compose in real life, you know, maintaining the composure. Also planning, it also tells me, what's the best time for sunset? You know, is it going to rain? Is it going to be foggy? Like, all of those tactics eventually teach me certain lessons in my work life as well. It's like, you know, like I'm planning a sunset. I'll plan a go-life. I'll plan in the event. That's cool. That's why I love doing digital voices because you learn, you meet so many fascinating people

like yourself who I've had the benefit of already knowing, but you learn these very great things, whether it's the life mantra we talked about, we talked a lot about leadership and all the nuggets of gold that you dropped on us in terms of, you know, how did you go from an influencer of one to having a team of 4,300 and all the things to make that happen. And I love that whole concept of staying true to what got you started, the mechanical engineering, the coding, and how it can help you and never lose touch of that. I think that's a really important lesson for all of us. What did I miss? Or is there anything that you want to double down on, Donnie, I'll give you the last word.

First of all, thanks a lot, Ed. I truly enjoy digital voices. I hope that our subscribers here as well and enjoying this talk. I truly enjoy it. It's a podcast that I learn a lot. If I had to say the last thing is like, you know, in health care, what I find often ourselves is, and I was mentioning about, you know, the global markets and the markets out of U.S. where there is so much advancements. I think as us as leaders and some of our listeners are not from health care, but for the ones who are in healthcare, I think we can start a movement. There's a there's a there's a hesitation to innovation to some degree. And I think it's often, it's a battlefield. where everybody wants to do something, but nobody's going to take the first step to actually be doing it. I find myself as a person who's working on the industry side, hospitals are ones where, you know, a lot of incubation and ideation happens. And then they end up going to whatever supplier they are. I've seen a lot of hospitals who have good incubation shops, but they go nowhere.

And so I'm always looking for those partnerships. And there are so many advanced hospitals who are now actually looking for partnerships with companies like us. But as healthcare leaders in general, and I'm not speaking for Baxter, I'm as in general, I think if we had mutual cohorts where we can say, hey, why don't we as a group do X, Y, and Z, why don't we solve voice, why don't we solve camera, why don't we solve this interaction for our nurses? I think U.S. can still be the leader compared to the globe. I personally think that's a challenge we can all solve together. Ed, I lean on you because you are the great connector, maybe you'll figure a way out of bringing us all together. Well, I love your whole message and especially ending on that note because, yeah, we've come

to the point that many leaders in healthcare, especially on the provider side, think innovation is implementing the latest software upgrade of their electronic health record. Exactly. While that's important, that's not innovation. And I love companies like you, leaders like you, companies like you represent who are like willing to push. take some risk and find someone. And together, in a partnership, you can make things happen.

That's why I always tell people, like find a great partner like Baxter, and start taking some calculated risks and you'll change the world. So I love it. Thanks so much, Donnie, for being. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices Podcast with Ed Martin. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review.

And most importantly, thanks again for listening. Thank you.