David Collins, director of digital home and senior services at VCU Health
Photo courtesy of David Collins
David Collins, director of digital home and senior services at VCU Health, tells MobiHealthNews about his upcoming talk at the 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas in March, where he will discuss how the Academic Medical Center leveraged lessons learned from its innovative programs to create its approach for digital transformation.
MobiHealthNews: Can you tell our readers about your talk?
David Collins: Why digital health at home? And why now? As an administrator of Virginia's first hospital-at-home (HaH) program, I'll address the value proposition of digital health at home through our "adult" HaH and remote patient monitoring programs, and take the audience on a journey of applying those lessons learned to launching an inaugural RPM program for the world of the NICU.
I'll share an overall snapshot, highlighting peak areas of support, gaps during the "messy middle," successes to date and what can be done better during the next implementation.
MHN: How does past experience with technology implementation influence future adoption and long-term sustainability?
Collins: You can't have experience if you haven't made any mistakes. The good news about having past experience with technology adoption is the ability to share a framework to guide future end users for the "gotchas" (e.g., integrate with the EHR from the start or take a phased approach; how to proactively mitigate connectivity challenges; the critical nature of vendor partnership). These lessons will help provide a glidepath for long-term sustainability.
MHN: What do you hope attendees take away from your discussion?
Collins: Innovation is a marathon, not a sprint. Enabling digital health at home is never "plug and play." Beyond the fundamental building blocks – business case justification and IT resources – it takes people resources (i.e., champions to "blaze the trail," clinical and operational resources to support the champions, and ongoing dedication to fine-tune workflows for optimization). All of these components carry equal weight to the standardization of a digital at home governance approach.
David Collins' HIMSS26 session, "The Messy Middle: Taking Digital Transformation from Concept to Action," is scheduled for Tuesday, March 11, from 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. in Palazzo K I Level 5 at the Venetian in Las Vegas.
