Imagine being handed the keys to all information technology at a prominent health system in the United States, and all that entails: everything from optimizing electronic health record systems to overseeing the very latest artificial intelligence advances to helping craft organization-wide five-year strategic plans.
Add in the need to guide all the other IT professionals who work for you, the physicians and nurses who depend on you – and the other C-suite execs who make the decisions that impact your job.
We wanted to get an up-close look at the big responsibilities of Mount Sinai Health System’s newly-minted chief digital information officer, Lisa S. Stump, who also serves as dean for information technology at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine.
The major New York City-based health system first announced her hire this past September and she started the job just three months ago, in November 2024. Healthcare IT News sat down with her for an in-depth two-part exploration of her goals, and sought insights from her that other CDIOs – as well as CIOs, CMIOs, CNIOs and other IT leaders – can learn from and apply to their own positions.
Focus on digital innovation and transformation
“Mount Sinai has had a very successful and long history in the digital and even artificial intelligence space,” Stump said. “With my recruit, the health system really was looking for a leader to continue to set that trajectory going forward, to really focus on digital innovation and transformation, leveraging our technology and data assets to create a work environment, a care environment, and drive the clinical outcomes we think set Mount Sinai apart.
“Being data-driven was a really key part of that – like many organizations, we’re not short on data,” she continued. “We’re often short on using those data to drive meaningful insights and understand how we’re performing operationally, clinically, financially, and in support of the research and education missions.”
Making the organization more data-driven and leveraging those data assets is a key component of what Stump was brought in to do.
“Specific to Mount Sinai, we’re at a time where we are making significant changes in the overall operating model,” she explained. “Historically we’ve had a lot of distributed and decentralized services in areas like finance and human resources – including information technology. One of the other key goals in my recruitment is to bring greater shared services and efficiencies in the way we operate our IT services.
“And then clearly a focus on customer engagement and strategy – customer in the broadest sense of the word, from our patients to our employees to our researchers, students and faculty, really ensuring we’re delivering technology and data in a way that delivers an excellent experience for our stakeholders.”
A clinical background brings key insights
Stump has been tasked to serve as a key bridge between the clinical, educational and research missions of the health system and Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. This is a hugely comprehensive goal that she said she’s ready to take on.
“A little bit about my background,” she noted. “I’ve been a healthcare leader for more than 30 years. I started my career as a clinical pharmacist, learned a lot about what technology and data could and should do as a clinical leader, trying to operate my own clinical enterprise.
“And so that clinical awareness and focus that I bring on health outcomes, on the efficiency of the workforce, now coupled with a proven track record of executing on complex digital and technology initiatives, has allowed me to bring a lot of knowledge and experience to the table on that mission,” she added.
Her background will help her with everything around bridging the clinical, educational and research missions of the two organizations.
Training the clinical workforce of tomorrow
“My own clinical background combined with having worked for 28 years in a leading Ivy League academic institution has really given me that exposure and experience to the challenges and opportunities unique in academic medicine,” she explained. “We are training the clinical workforce of tomorrow. We are supporting the development and research around new treatments, new cures and new models of care you won’t often find in a non-academic health system.
“My first approach has been to listen and learn as much as I can about Mount Sinai, about our culture, about the successes that have gotten the organization to where it is today – but also about the challenges and struggles the organization has faced,” she continued. “And then where we’re aiming to go, what our goals and strategies are going forward.”
From there, Stump’s goal is to align the digital and data strategies, build upon successes, help mitigate today’s challenges and yesterday’s failures, and then help drive the organization forward in achieving its current goals.
“I’m only months into this new role, so still very much on a listening tour and really doing a lot of observation – not just talking with folks in their offices but starting to get out and walk and tour across the enterprise,” she noted.
Bolstering the organization’s digital strategy
So, all of that means a pretty full plate for Stump. But there’s more. Mount Sinai also wants her to bolster the health system’s digital strategy. What does this mean for the new CDIO and how will she tackle this challenge?
“When I think about the digital strategy, it always starts with what is the strategy of the organization?” she asked. “Here at Mount Sinai, it is very clearly aimed at enhancing the care and outcomes for our people, our patients, and our world. We do take that very global view around the work and the research we do.
“Regarding the digital strategy, people have this very high, often lofty aim around that value proposition, leveraging the data, the artificial intelligence, to create these amazing and exceptional outcomes,” she continued. “But we have to start with an understanding of everything that underpins that in the digital space – starting with basic IT infrastructure and the application layer.”
Applications need to be reliable and accessible to the people who need to operate them – and they need to be secure.
“I always knock on my desk when I say secure, because unfortunately, we live in a world now where bad actors are making a lot of effort to access patients’ private data,” Stump noted.
“That digital strategy starts with those basic building blocks,” she added. “We need to look at the infrastructure, we need to look at our applications, we then need to look at how all of our data are architected, and then how are we putting all of that together in the care environments that are a delight to work in for our clinicians and care teams – and where patients can get the healing environment and the care they need and deserve.”
The challenges that come with a mountain of data
Based on her months of conversations and observations, Stump is focused on helping surface business insights. Mount Sinai has a mountain of data. Putting it into the data visualizations and formats that inform the clinical and business leaders on how the organization is performing, where opportunities to do better are, and where the health system is seeing great successes is the challenge.
“Developing robust and functional enterprise data governance and stewardship is one of my very first and leading priorities,” Stump said. “The next is our application ecosystem. We are a little bit diverse here in the number of applications currently in use. We have a little bit of cleanup and organization to do on the enterprise platforms.
“Then we’re excited to bring forward new and emerging clinical technologies, things like ambient voice technology, wearables and sensors, to better derive data from our patients,” she continued. “And again, basic automation of key workflows in support of areas like the pharmacy enterprise.”
Pharmacy will always hold a special place in Stump’s heart, given her clinical background. But it’s also a major contributor to the health system’s overall performance – clinically and financially.
“Really looking at ways to leverage technology and automation to drive efficiency, reliability and accuracy of our business processes is key,” she stated. “And all of that is what leads to our ability to deliver the value we really seek to deliver.”
And that is the end of part one of our interview with Lisa S. Stump, the new chief digital information officer at Mount Sinai Health System and the dean for information technology at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. Part two, which will focus on her goals for improving collaboration between providers and researchers and her work integrating new technologies to enable value creation and drive growth, will appear tomorrow. To watch a video presentation of today’s interview, click on the video below.
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