CVS Health’s CTO is trying to smooth out the complexity to fuel his company’s big bet on healthcare

Along the way, the company opened thousands of stores and expanded into new businesses, acquiring pharmacy benefits manager Caremark and insurer Aetna. More recently, it acquired home care company Signify Health and primary care provider Oak Street Health.

When Tilak Mandadi joined CVS in 2022 as EVP of ventures and Chief Digital, Data, Analytics and Technology Officer at CVS, there were separate teams running data, analytics, IT and other technology functions. One of his first projects was to combine all these functions into an integrated organization. He also appointed Chief Digital Technology Officers to oversee each of the company’s divisions.

“We saw the results almost immediately,” says Mandadi. “There is much faster execution and decision-making, and much more standardization of technologies and the customer experience.”

It turns out that the corporate silos created by mergers and acquisitions don’t matter much to customers. They just want a positive healthcare experience, Mandadi says, regardless of the organizational structure at CVS. Today, technology projects fall into two parts: for a specific business unit, such as Caremark or Aetna, or for the entire enterprise.

An ongoing project that reflects this thinking is a new CVS mobile app that aims to bring together the company’s various healthcare offerings in one place. The goal is to have 60 million unique digital customers schedule a doctor’s appointment, schedule a visit to a MinuteClinic or arrange a vaccine at a pharmacy. The new app is expected to be unveiled later this year, although CVS plans to keep standalone apps for customers connected to part of the business.

“If you’re a CVS Health customer, you don’t think in terms of Aetna or Caremark,” Mandadi says. “You think in terms of, ‘I need to find the best pediatrician for my child.'”

When it comes to artificial intelligence, Mandadi says his philosophy is that technology is best when it is used to “enhance the human touch” while “minimizing human error.” He sees a lot of potential for using AI for administrative tasks, such as transcribing conversations during a patient visit, but says AI won’t be used for clinical diagnoses. That work remains with a healthcare provider.

CVS is working with both Google and Microsoft in researching AI, but Mandadi also sees value in vertically trained models, which are designed to address a specific problem or industry, such as healthcare. “We build our own vertical models,” says Mandadi. “It’s a combination of the two.”

Another part of the business Mandadi oversees, quite unique for a CTO, is CVS Health Ventures. It was founded in 2021 to invest in early-stage companies and focuses primarily on consumer-facing startups, with investments in cancer care specialist Thyme Care and healthcare-focused wireless provider Thrive Health Tech, among others.

“Our philosophy on ventures is that we don’t want to be passive investors,” says Mandadi. “We become an anchor customer for them.”

We end the conversation on the topic of self-checkout in stores. Some retailers, including Target and Dollar General, have reconsidered their strategies regarding the technology. Theft is a problem and some consumers are not happy with the experience. As a result, some retailers are removing the lanes completely or restricting access to them.

Mandadi ultimately sees an important role for self-checkout, but retailers must ensure the technology can handle complex transactions and eliminate pain points, such as when a customer wants to use coupons or redeem rewards. CVS is currently testing computer vision technology in its labs to make self-checkout smarter.

“Standing in line at the checkout is horrible,” says Mandadi. “If we can’t somehow achieve self-checkout in retail, we will lose even more to online shopping.”

John Kel

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NEWS PACKAGES

Fraudsters are applying for cybersecurity jobs. A new problem is emerging for companies amid a shortage of roughly four million cyber professionals worldwide: some bad actors are posing as job applicants,He Wall Street Journal reports. One startup, CAT Labs, said it had to eliminate more than 50 candidates it determined were North Korean spies. Had they been hired, these potential customers could have attempted to steal company data or access sensitive company information. New AI tools have also made it harder to screen for impostors by generating more targeted cover letters for applicants and using AI-created deepfakes to impersonate real people during video and voice calls.

Hackers demand as much as $5 million from Snowflake customers. As many as 10 companies affected by a hacking program that targeted Snowflake’s customers are facing demands for payments of $500,000 to $5 million each, Bloomberg reports, citing a security firm assisting in the investigation. The hacking group used stolen credentials to access the Snowflake accounts, Google’s security firm Mandiant says, and illicit data brokers are charging prices above black market rates for the data stolen from Snowflake’s customers.

McDonald’s is ending its drive-thru AI initiative. The fast food giant has done just that a partnership ends with IBM using AI to process drive-thru orders. But McDonald’s added that it will continue to explore voice ordering technologies more broadly and plans to have a solution by the end of the year. A few restaurant chains have done so AI researched to help automate some tasks for cashiers, a job with high stress and often low retention. But even with all the advances in models aimed at simulating human interactions, the AI ​​made so many notable mistakes that the system ultimately going viral on TikTok for all the wrong reasonsThis is a sign that the technology needs more time to develop before it can be deployed on a large scale.

ADOPTION CURVE

CIOs strive for clarity about AI. As chief information officers continue to take their generative AI projects out of the testing and pilot phase and into broader adoption, they remain irritated about how to measure success and ensure their investments pay off. A report from CalypsoAI and research firm Everest Group found that nearly three-quarters of business leaders say a lack of clarity around success metrics is the biggest challenge CIOs face when adopting generative AI, followed by budget and cost concerns (68%) , a rapidly evolving technology landscape (64%), concerns about data security and privacy (55%) and finally a talent shortage (41%).

“We see a lot of vendors offering gen AI offerings that are very expensive,” says Neil Serebryany, CEO and founder of CalypsoAI. Fortune. “In a rapidly evolving technology landscape, companies aren’t really sure what the best model to use is and what the best vendor is for a specific problem or solution.”

VACANCIES RADAR

Hiring:

– State Bar of California, the administrative division of the California Supreme Court looking for a Chief Information Officer based in San Francisco. Posted salary range: $235.5K-$353K/year.

– SAIF Corporationa nonprofit workers’ compensation organization, is looking for a CTO based in Oregon. Posted salary range: $176K-$293.4K/year.

Rented:

– Hole called Sven Gerjets as CTO, reporting to CEO Richard Dickson of the clothing retailer. In a letter to employees, Dickson said Gerjets is joining Gap as it is “just beginning the data science journey” and will help the company adopt technologies for operational efficiency, product creation and customer engagement.

– Booz Allen Hamilton appointed William Vass as CTO, succeeds Susan Penfield, who is retiring after a 30-year career with the defense contractor. Vass will focus on driving the company’s AI, cyber and software and data-centric capabilities. He joins Booz Allen after most recently serving as VP of engineering at Amazon Web Services.

– Scripta insights announced David Kershaw has joined the venture capital-backed digital healthcare company as CTO to lead innovation and lead the engineering and IT teams.

– DigitalOcean has called Bratin Saha as Chief Product and Technology Officer, where he will lead product strategy, development, infrastructure and security. Saha joins from AWS, where he was VP and general manager of AI, machine learning and data infrastructure.

– Hempel has appointed Emilie Barriau as CTO, who joins the protective coatings supplier after 15 years at Henkel Adhesives Technologies. Barriau will drive the company’s efforts to unite research and development, sustainability and purchasing.

– AtlanticCare called Jordan Ruch as CIO, joins the New Jersey-based healthcare organization after previously serving as CTO at RWJBarnabas Health. Ruch will lead AtlantiCare’s IT efforts and advance the system’s digital strategy.

– S64 announced the appointment of Marcus Glover as CTO, who joins the London-based company with 25 years of experience at companies including Morgan Stanley, UBS and Deutsche Bank.