Q&A: John Halamka on worldwide trends in AI, blockchain, cloud and more

Longtime Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Chief Information Officer Dr. John Halamka left that role six months ago after more than two decades – during which time he also became one of the most vocal health information technology champions and visible thought leaders during a pivotal time of IT uptake. Halamka has been traveling the world recently – more than 400,000 miles this year, he says – from Europe to Israel to Africa to China, back to his Sherborn, Massachusetts-based Unity Farm Sanctuary for a quick visit with Dudley, his shaggy Scottish Highland Bull, and then out again to explore the newest global trends in leading-edge digital health. Halamka will keynote the ConVerge2Xcelerate event in Boston on October 15, hosted by Blockchain in Healthcare Today – where he is editor-in-chief – and co-presented as part of the preconference activities of the Connected Health Conference. We caught up with him recently at another Boston event and asked him about what he's seeing on his travels. You were CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess for so long – twenty two years. How has your newish gig, as International Healthcare Innovation Professor, been going? A. That's my academic title, my Harvard Medical School title, and that was three years ago. But the official transition from CIO, a hospital based-title, was March 1, 2019. That's when the merger of Beth Israel and Lahey came together, and the CEO and I talked about: How do you create innovation? So what is next with healthcare innovation?