Three questions with Garri Garrison: New health care, old friends and a bright future

Aug. 10, 2022 / By Garri Garrison, Kelli Christman

I sat down with the 3M Health Information Systems Division President Garri Garrison to talk about the 3M health care business spinoff and highlights from this year’s 3M Client Experience Summit (CES).

Let’s get right into it. 3M made a pretty big announcement recently about our health care business. Can you give us an overview?

3M announced it is going to create a new, separate health care business. I’m really excited about the direction this path gives us as it will allow us to drive even more innovation, focus investments and deliver growth. I know that there are a ton of questions, most of which we’ll address in future communications, but for now, I want to reassure our clients that they will not see any changes in our technology (other than our continued improvements!), support or service from our 3M HIS team.

Our planned spinoff will result in a leading global, diversified health care technology company that will create more opportunity for both 3M and the new standalone health care business. Our many core strengths will power the new health care business and ultimately benefit our customers who count on us to help deliver better outcomes at a lower cost. This new path will enable us to create more robust technologies and we will be well positioned to support our customer needs.

The spinoff is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, so we have lots of work to do between now and then. But I’m excited to be part of this process!

Continuing with exciting news, 3M CES just happened, in person for the first time in two years. We’ve heard lots of great feedback from the week, can you give us some highlights?

It was such an energizing week for both 3Mers and our clients. Being able to spend face to face time with each other, talking about challenges, how we all weathered the COVID-19 pandemic, what new technologies they’ve implemented over the last two years and sharing best practices with each other … it was an awesome week!

With travel restrictions, budget constraints and life in general, I know it was a challenge for some clients to attend, but the group that we did have was highly engaged in our sessions and brought so many insightful questions and knowledge to the conversation. And because of those challenges, I am thrilled to announce that, for this year only, we’ve decided to make 3M CES content available to all of our clients, whether or not you were able to attend in person. You’ll just need to register on our 3M CES website and you can not only access the session recordings at no cost, but you are also eligible for CEU credits.

Some highlights from the week were our partnership with Make-A-Wish® Utah where our clients and 3Mers raised more than $11,000 for Julia, a brilliant and kind-hearted 19-year-old girl who was diagnosed with a nervous system disorder. You can read about Julia’s story here. Our keynote speaker Scott Burrows shared his unforgettable, life changing story that proves you can exceed any limit, break any barrier and that no circumstance can destroy the power of the human spirit. In light of the last few years, it was such a powerful week together.

There was a lot of excitement following your keynote with our division leaders and the education sessions with clients and 3M experts. Can you give us a quick snapshot?

We used the 3M CES theme of reflect, reconnect and reinvigorate to talk about how the world, and specifically health care, has changed over the last few years, and how we’re adapting. Jason Burke set the stage to talk about what’s new with 3M™ 360 Encompass™ System and autonomous coding. Mike Bee talked about what’s new with our speech technology and where we’re going with ambient intelligence, Mike Gooch gave us an overview of pushing 3M 360 Encompass to the cloud, and Diana Ortiz talked about the content that drives all of these solutions.

I think our clients walked away with a clear understanding of our vision for the future, where we’re making updates to our solutions and where we’re focused for both the short and long term. We’re continuing to automate, shifting to the cloud and improving physician and clinician workflows. Our vision is to be the end-to-end solution that provides technology, workflows and efficiencies to improve our customer’s day to day workload. We want to put them into seamless workflows that will allow them to be the best they can be, to do their job in the most efficient manner, and do it right the first time.

Garri Garrison is division president for 3M Health Information Systems.

Kelli Christman is senior marketing communications and strategic communications specialist at 3M Health Information Systems.