Impact of COVID-19 on digital transformation of education and health

COVID-19 has accelerated digital information by multiple years in many industries and especially in education and health. UC Irvine Vice-Chancellor Tom Andriola was in the middle of it all. Within 6 months of accepting and defining the first ever Vice Chancellor & Chief Digital Officer of UC Irvine, Tom was thrust into shaping predictive analytics for identifying most likely patients for intensive care based on multiple sets of data and identifying patients who can be treated from home. Similarly, Tom’s team had to help educators who haven’t advanced much on remote learning to ensure that all the students are on par. Going forward, Tom is focusing on ensuring hybrid instruction is part of UCI’s DNA going forward. The episode discussed innovation and the strategic and tactical nature of innovation in great detail. Based on Phillips Health experience, Tom came to a conclusion that Data is a strategy and not just an asset and not just a facilitator and started using his experience at UCI. Given that data is interdisciplinary by nature, UCI team has started investing in Collaboratories where teams from multiple disciplines from UCI and the industry have come together to solve bigger problems.