Peter, Thanks for taking time to talk to us today. How about we start with you sharing with us a little bit about yourself, your career so far?

Peter Kress: Back in the 80s, a bunch of us got into technology. We got into it right around the time the PC was coming in, and so we all had non-standard backgrounds. In fact, I started at Divinity School and I learned to use a word processor as part of being a grad student and fell in love with the technology. So, I quit the Divinity School and started as a computer consultant there in the mid 80s.

But, Acts ended up being one of my biggest customers and the consulting gig I had, and I joined Acts retirement life communities incorporated, first as a consultant and later on full-time in 19…, it’s hard to go back to the nineteen hundred’s, 1996, and I’ve been leading the group there. We’ve gone through a lot of stages of technology through those many years, but right now we’re focused especially on resident engagement technologies, technologies that allows us, each one of our 6000 employees, be best-of-class concierge providers to each of our 9000 residents and exploring how resident engagement technologies can support our services, and create resident experiences. That’s probably the most exciting work that I’ve done.

What are the key technology trends that you see shaping the future of healthcare and are there any specific ones that Acts is focused on?

Peter Kress: Sure! You know Acts retirement life communities are a large non-profit provider of a full continuum of services for our residents. And, as our residents join us, perhaps in their 70s or even 80s and they expect to live the rest of their lives with us and to receive care in independent settings, but also have available to them assisted and skilled and home health and a variety of other settings as well.

So, that continuum provides a very interesting opportunity; in fact, while we call ourselves part of healthcare we’re just as happy calling ourselves part of the hospitality industry. Although, the difference between us say and a cruise ship experience, is, you can imagine, in cruise ship you’ve got to keep people happy with your food and amenities and services for seven to ten days, and we, our average stay is 11 years. So, it’s an interesting challenge, which gives me the opportunities to explore a wide range of technologies.

IoT technologies are fundamentally important in campus settings such as what we have and we think IoT is going to smarten up our apartment’s, our campuses, our transportation, and other sectors. It becomes a context within which we deliver services, of course we do deliver care, and our care record has to span that 10, 11, 12-year average stay. So, we’re avid users of electronic medical records technology.

I have spent many years partnering across the organization, across the industry to ensure that aging services standards are a component of electronic health record conversations.

But, I mentioned earlier I’m especially excited about technologies that allow us to create great resident experiences, whether they are care experiences, or wellness experiences, support experiences; we’re basically just great hospitality and amenity experiences and we’re very excited with that.

Hey, we’re business like everybody, so I have the normal set of business technologies, business intelligence (BI) technologies, and so forth.

So, I actually think that in our retirement community sector, we’re actually users of most of the trends – the BI trends, the machine learning trends, you know the decision support trends are important for us.

IoT generates a huge amount of data. We expect to leverage all of that, we of course are involved in interoperability, and technology for us is not just a tool; it actually becomes part of the lifestyle of our residents.

 You are up to implementing a lot of exciting technology and you spoke about IoT, analytics and so on. What do you see as the biggest challenge to adopting new things?

Peter Kress: Well, you know the pace of technology is fast enough that ensuring that your team is able to continue to learn and relearn is always one challenge. It’s making sure that the talent, not just of your technology teams, but your management teams, your frontline workforces, finding effective ways to help them to refresh their experiences, refresh their capabilities, and skills, I think is a huge challenge.

Our industry has to learn to invest more in this space and I think we are. Certainly at Acts, we continue to make new investments, recognizing that technology enables everything else that we’re doing.

So, actually being able to carry through the technology and get to great results are especially difficult, isn’t it, in a time in which there are new technology strategies evolving almost as fast or even faster than you can get deployed and in working and producing results from older technologies.

So, managing that shift, managing how you ride the waves, how do you make sure you’re delivering great results while preparing yourself for the next wave, that’s an interesting challenge all on its own.

CAST has been playing a big role in standardizing some of these technologies and so on. So, what do you see as the key value that CAST brings to Acts?

Peter Kress: You know CAST, I think brings value to many different stakeholders. CAST has its members, not only large scale providers such as ourselves, but many small providers and of course it’s also a place for vendors and researchers and policymakers and others participants.

I think a big part of the value to Acts as a large provider is the networking opportunities; it gives us a chance to sit at the table together with technology leaders, not just traditional vendor selling specifically into our space, but to technology companies who are trying to shape the future and make sure that we have a voice with them and as well as giving those companies an opportunity to understand our sort of unique take.

You know we’re not hospitals, we’re not the traditional healthcare space. We actually think our space is a pretty interesting space for large technology vendors to get a handle on. We’re great advocates for older Americans and not just as service providers. But we have a lot of experience that I think becomes relevant as technology companies engage.

And, so for me that networking aspect; it’s been a huge benefit. From time to time it can have a significant impact on an individual decision I’m making, but it also provides opportunity for our organization through CAST to contribute back to the knowledge of the industry and to ensure that many providers that CAST serves have the benefit of large, middle, small, a whole range of companies delivering services.

Peter, you have been very successful in your career and there is a lot of young health care executives that would love to have the similar kind of success that you have, so what is your advice to them?

Peter Kress: You know it has almost become a cliché for me, I mean I believe it. But I say it’s important not just to develop a narrow set of skills, you know everybody in the industry today, everybody in the business today, everybody in non-profits today, we have to be really good at getting things done.

Whether individually, disciplining ourselves or with teams, so sort of that traditional project management space is an excellent skill set. We have to stay on top of it, the technology is shifting and while you can’t become a master of all technologies you have to keep your finger on the pulse of a broad set of technologies, but then you have to build some specialization. You have to be willing to dive deep in a couple of technologies, so that technology skill set is very important.

But I’m going to be honest with you, for me the real key is to also make sure you’re building your domain. Don’t think you’re a generalist technologist or a generalist, get things done person, you know a project manager, you have to develop a strong knowledge of the business you’re in, and for me that meant that going back and doing Advanced Studies and aging services and gerontology and so forth, but it could be many different shapes.

So, for me, I tell people to make sure you’re building all three focus:

• 1. You’re building that “how do I get things done,”
• 2. You’re building a real domain experience in the area that you have passion for, and
• 3. You’re of course staying on top of this fast-changing technology curve.

Peter, you shared some very interesting nuggets with us, so thank you so much. I really appreciate the time that you took to share your thoughts with us.