HIT Like a Girl Pod: Empowering Women in Health IT

In this episode Joy speaks with Liz Bickley, the Chief Operating Officer for Korn Ferry's Healthcare Practice. Bickley has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare space, and her work primarily focuses on people and talent. The two discuss the challenges of finding and retaining talent in the healthcare industry, especially given the aging population and the increasing demand for healthcare services. Bickley emphasizes the need to embrace technology and AI to meet these needs and change the way we work. They also discuss Korn Ferry's partnership with the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) to support women in leadership in the healthcare industry. The partnership aims to provide action and insight to support women in the industry, from medical students to practicing faculty and beyond.

Joy sits down with Katy Allen from Bounteous, a digital experience organization that works with healthcare payers, providers, and pharmaceutical companies to bring the patient and member to the center of their work. Katy discusses how her company acts as a connector between healthcare organizations and communities and enables technology and interoperability to support those connections. She also talks about their approach to solving specific problems like provider data management and how it leads to broader conversations about engaging patients and members in a meaningful way. The podcast aims to shed light on the complexity of healthcare and to see the bigger picture with more clarity.

Welcome to this special podcast cross collaboration with HIT Like a Girl, Parents as Rare, One Upon a Gene Podcast, Simply Unbreakable podcasts on Rare Disease Day - February 28th! 

HIT Like a Girl’s guest host Grace Vinton moderated a panel with Effie Parks, Adam Johnson, and Kristy Dickinson on the topic of “Parents, Patients, & Podcasts - Incorporating the Rare Disease Community in HITMC“ at the annual HITMC (healthcare marketing and communications) conference this year. The conversation was so powerful, we all knew we had to follow it up with a proper podcast collaboration, to amplify the message. 

While each gene is unique, Effie, Adam, and Kristy all share the experience of what it looks to have your life turned upside down because you are missing one single protein in your cells. Science exists to diagnose and treat these rare diseases earlier and faster than ever, but it takes education, passion, focus, funding, innovation, community and more to make a meaningful impact. One rare disease at a time. 

The question we posed the audience at HITMC and pose the listeners to this podcast is, “How can you impact rare disease in your area of influence today?” We give some ideas, but would love to hear yours too!

Join us in welcoming Charlene Son Rigby, CEO of RARE-X to the pod!

Charlene is a seasoned informaticist, accomplished business woman, and passionate mother to two, including one with a rare disease. In the fight to find her daughter’s diagnosis, she brought her tech savvy to the table and soon after the diagnosis was chosen to head up the company RARE-X which provides a collaborative platform for global data sharing and analysis to accelerate treatments for rare disease. 

Spearheaded by Charlene, the company believes that rare patient communities, equipped to securely gather and share their data with researchers and companies around the globe, will transform rare disease research - significantly expand diversity, equity, and inclusion in research and dramatically accelerate progress across rare diseases.

RARE-X recently merged with Global Genes, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating the burdens and challenges of rare diseases for patients and families globally through connecting, empowering, and inspiring the rare disease community. Charlene shares with us how this fresh partnership brings quality data and patient advocacy in the global rare disease community closer together to enable the combined organization to provide the next generation of rare disease advocates the tools and resources they need to accelerate their drive for treatments.

In this episode Joy welcomes Kristen Jacobsen, VP of Marketing and Omnichannel Engagement at RevSpring, to discuss patient engagement in healthcare. Kristen explains that engagement involves inspiring patients to take action that leads to better outcomes, whether clinical or financial. To reach patients, predictive analytics is used to make assumptions about the patient's communication preferences and behaviors. This information is used to develop a personalized communication strategy that utilizes multiple channels to encourage patient action. The approach has been successfully applied to financial engagement and is being extended to other areas of patient engagement, such as appointment reminders and post-care follow-up.

On this episode of HIT Like a Girl, Grace Vinton talks with Mary Jo Barthmaier, President of Insightin Health, about how the time has come for Medicare Advantage plans to take a page out of retailers’ playbooks and deliver highly personalized experiences for their members. She touches on the series of drivers currently converging that will make member engagement a crucial factor in determining the long-term success of health plans – the most important one being the transformative impact that connecting disparate data can have in generating actionable insights that drive member behavior.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Dr. Jenny Carillo, a clinical psychologist and Chief Commercial Officer/General Manager at Ovia Health, to discuss the importance of addressing the mental toll of women's healthcare, especially for those in the family planning and menopause years.

With the increasing number of female millennials in the workforce and many women quitting their jobs due to menopause symptoms, it is important that we take a look at where investments are needed in women's healthcare and how to provide adequate support to these individuals.

How can we be more intentional about making sure health technology is equitable in terms of its design, development, and deployment? And can we ensure that health technology benefits everyone?

On this episode, we discuss Tequity with Alexis Anderson, a principal with Ipsos Healthcare Advisory who specializes in patient engagement, digital health, and Tequity; Ricky Choi, a pediatrician who is interested in the health of children, especially under-served communities; and Janna Guinen, the executive director of the HLTH Foundation, who focuses on health equity for patients and innovators, particularly founders and the healthcare workforce. 

In this episode, Joy welcomes Isha Vij, the VP of Employer Growth at Maven Clinic, the world's largest virtual care platform.

Isha explains how her background in luxury e-commerce led her to healthcare. After having her first child, she saw the difficulty people had navigating careers and starting families. Despite being an unlikely fit, she realized that her experience launching and leading go-to-market and commercial teams at high-growth startups has been invaluable at Maven.

Joy and Isha also delve into how Maven's recent $90 million round of funding will be used to continue to evolve their global offering to work with employers across the globe. The goal is to make it easier for women to not have to choose between a career and starting a family.

Tune in to hear more about Isha's journey and Maven's mission to revolutionize healthcare

In this episode, Joy sits down with Snezana Mahon, Chief Operating Officer at Transcarent, a company working to redefine the healthcare experience for consumers. Mahon, a pharmacist by training, also discusses how she has seen healthcare from different perspectives throughout her career and how she has come to understand the importance of lifting women up within the industry.

Transcarent was a sponsor of Women in HLTH and their executive leadership team is made up of more than 50 percent women. The organization is focusing on how to empower women to have more thought input, opportunities to speak up, and different ways to contribute to its creativity and innovation.