Empowering Customers to Manage their own Healthcare

What is the most valuable project, program or innovation your IT organization has delivered in the last 12 months?  

It has to be in the area of mobile channels and changing the way we touch our customers and provide them with access to services like wellness programs. We have a number of exciting projects in flight. For example, we rolled out a mobile app program in 2011 called IBX Healthy Steps that surprised us by how popular it became. It is a pedometer application for use on a smart phone that allows you to collect and store how far you have walked/run and at what pace. It’s an extremely popular download on our website right now. It’s a great little app.

But that’s just one example.  As we get better at giving our customers access to some of their biometric data, like cholesterol and glucose level, the better chance we have of getting them curious about maintaining their own health. What if we made you a mobile app that has your insurance information on it, so that when you are at the pharmacy, doctor’s office or emergency room, the information that you need is easily accessible?

We are also looking at a consumer-type guide you can use to learn more about doctors. What if you could look up a specialist, by expertise and location, and see what others have to say?  We are working on ways to give consumers information that they can use to manage their healthcare better.

Does your IT organization have a motto or mantra?

In my five months here, I have introduced the motto: Run IT Like a Business. This is not to say that we should be our own profit center, but that we need to behave in a professional, repeatable way. We need to demonstrate to our business partners that we can drive innovation and identify opportunities for competitive differentiation. We are a part of the business and we need to run like a business. 

What book has had a major impact on your leadership style?

I have two:  
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt. I first read this book in 1988 and have bought hundreds of copies for my teams. It’s a very quick read that reads as a story and offers a teaching opportunity about strategy, drive, direction and how to create followership. How many times do we get started on a project but not really know what success looks like?

The other is LL Bean: The Making of an American Icon, by Leon Gorman, Chairman of the company and grandson of the founder. I was given this book as a gift, because I love all things Maine, and when I read it, I decide to buy copies for my team. It is the story of a wonderfully strong brand that had lost its way and recovered to become even stronger.  It relates to IT because it is a perfect example of a value system that is all about customer service, and they mean it in everything that they do.

What technology innovation or business trend are you most excited about?

I’ll come back to mobility because I think that channel is the differentiator for the future. The big question is: What are the technologies that underpin development in mobility? How do I develop once and write to many? I don’t want to have to invest millions of dollars in every great app we develop in order write it for the Apple, Android, RIM, tablets, the web, and kiosks. Applications come and go; we need a ways to develop them more cost effectively.

There is some great middleware emerging that lets us write once and deploy to many. We just announced that we are partnering with Kony, who Gartner is saying is the market leader in that space. That technology is enabling us to be much more fleet of foot and to develop, test, and introduce new applications to our customers quickly.

If you were not a CIO, what other profession would you have pursued?

I would have gone into education, which actually bears many similarities to my role as CIO. In a sense, I am a teacher with a constantly changing curriculum.

The CIO Paradox is a set of contradictions (IT “and” the business, for example) that prevents CIOs from delivering maximum business value.  How do you know when you’ve broken the Paradox?

As CIO, you know you have broken the Paradox when you are asked to take on non-IT responsibilities: when I am sitting in meetings and participating in conversations about how to differentiate us in the marketplace, or when I am talking to other healthcare companies about partnering on business ventures. Part of my job is to manage IT, but I’ve broken the paradox when I am valued for the contribution I am making outside of that functional role.

About Sue Kozik

Susan S. Kozik is senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO) for Independence Blue Cross. Kozik has more than 25 years of IT experience in the insurance, financial services, and energy industries. She was most recently Vice President and CIO of Direct Energy in Pittsburgh, and prior to that, Kozik spent a year leading the Smart Grid IT Transformation program at OGE Energy Corporation in Oklahoma. Before joining OGE, she served as executive vice president and chief technology officer at TIAA-CREF and led all IT strategy and application portfolio management and operations. Kozik also held CIO positions at CIGNA, Penn Mutual, and Lucent.