(US and Canada) Zoher Karu, VP, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Blue Shield of California, speaks with Jake Dreier, Director, Strategy and Growth at Hilabs, about his engagement with Blueshield, the coexistence of data analytics and leadership, the importance of change management, and incorporating technology to enrich stakeholder experience.

Karu states that Blue Shield wants to make a dent in transforming the world of health care, which fuelled his decision to become part of the team.

Highlighting the quantitative nature of data analytics and leadership in general, Karu says that having a technical perspective is necessary to be successful. A technical mindset will not help in succeeding in a cross-functional corporate environment, he adds. It all boils down to understanding what drives business and accelerates outcomes, rather than just creating algorithms. As a CDAO, he adds, he tells his team that the job consists of three parts. First, solving the problem with analytics; second, maintaining clarity in communication; and third, understanding change management.

Speaking of Blue Shield in the context of change management, Karu states that the company —   as a centralized team —  handles data and analytics, interfacing different stakeholders in the company. He terms them “verticals and horizontals,”  explaining that verticals are the people dedicated to different areas of business such as marketing or operations, and horizontals are capabilities such as predictive modeling or visualization of data, asset creation, compliance, and privacy that are applied to various business aspects. He says that the company is driving change by embedding these verticals and horizontals in various parts of the organization.

Describing patients as the biggest stakeholders in the health care industry, Karu maintains that understanding them as individuals at an individual level should be the prime principle. Next should come creation of a platform where everyone can have access to the same data, be it the payer, providers, or the members. The challenge remains with the disconnected data sets, he says.

Considering today’s digital world, consumers expect their companies to understand their problems with a click of a button. Therefore, data integration and the creation of a single view of information are critical to delivering a better stakeholder experience.

In conclusion, Karu asserts that having a single source of truth and having data updated at the expected speed of stakeholders are necessities, and cloud technology makes that possible.