(US and Canada) Christer Johnson, Chief Analytics Officer at Healthfirst, speaks with Jake Dreier, Director, Strategy & Growth, HiLabs, about the ideal way to build teams and his reasons for making a career transition toward health care technology.

Johnson says putting together a robust analytics and IT team requires a vast collection of skills. It’s impossible to find people who have all the skills. He suggests that leaders should start by hiring the right leaders that know how to engage with the people. Healthfirst has started recruiting data scientists from all over the country, with geography becoming insignificant.

He maintains, however, that the teams have to be convinced in two key areas. The first is the 100% focus on creating value because people want to feel that their work has an impact. And then, leaders need to lean into it and build a team that’s big enough and has that capacity so that the talented teammates have the opportunity and time to innovate and think.

Johnson says he chose to be in the health care space because it offered the most significant need and opportunity to make an impact with AI and ML. He mentions that health care costs have been rising, creating an issue with people’s access to care.