HIT Like a Girl Pod: Empowering Women in Health IT

In this bonus episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Dr. Monica Bolbjerg, CEO and Founder of Qure4U. Her work focuses on how to use technology to improve patient and provider interaction when they're not together. She has bragging rights to the world's first patient portal that was put in place in Denmark and boasts 30 percent of the country's population was using the platform back in 2001.

Her work helps strategize how to providers can improve communication and engagement along a patient's complete journey - whether that is through text messaging, an app, or however the patient prefers to be reached.

Dr. Shika Pappoe, Chief Medical Officer at Strive Health, is a nephrologist with a blended background in medicine, public health, and business administration. In this episode, she and Joy Rios talk in-depth about kidney disease and Dr. Pappoe's work at one of the country's largest safety-net hospitals, where she's able to focus her energies on providing care to underserved communities.

One in three adults in the U.S. is at risk for chronic kidney disease, many of whom do not understand the full spectrum of the disease and how it impacts themselves or their loved ones. Dr. Pappoe works to get resources and education into the hands of both providers and the general public to increase awareness of chronic kidney disease.

In this episode, we learn from Amy Divaraniya, CEO and Founder of Oova.

With Oova's at-home hormone testing kit, women with irregular cycles who are trying to conceive can find out where they are in their cycle, whether or not they have released an egg yet, how many days post ovulation they are, as well as the concentration levels for both luteinizing hormone and progesterone. That means it’s the first to pinpoint the fertile window and confirm ovulation in one test.

Oova users get a customized daily action plan and are empowered with information to share with their healthcare providers to really take control of their conception journey. Amy tells us all about it!

In this episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Lauren Stahl, VP, and Head of Sales at Komodo Health. They talk about Komodo Health uses technology to map out disease burdens at scale for more than 325 million unique patient lives in the U.S. and how the company's software applications, solutions, and analytic platforms service a variety of healthcare stakeholders.

They basically aggregate and harmonize data from the entire U.S. population to extract insights to empower healthcare companies to be the best version of themselves.

In this episode, Dr. Alicia Jackson, Founder of Evernow, sits down with Joy to discuss menopause. More than 55 million women in the U.S. are experiencing menopause symptoms, but 75% of those who seek care don't get it.

Evernow is a modern startup using its group of women scientists and doctors to help normalize the way we view a woman's changing hormones as we age, and what that means for our overall health.

In this episode, Grace Vinton sits down with Amanda Edwards, Program Manager, Digital Transformation and Innovation, at Availity, the nation’s largest real-time health information network that works to solve communication challenges in healthcare by creating a richer, more transparent exchange of information among health plans, providers, and technology partners.

Amanda discusses the path that led her to where she is today, what it means to be a female leader and the challenges that have come along the way. She expresses her passion for creating patient-centered workflows that are being used to address administrative burnout. She also dives into the world of digital transformation and the acceptance of technology that was sparked by the pandemic, where we learned more about how practices should go about identifying and introducing new opportunities that reduce the stress of the office staff while improving processes.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Ellen James, Director of Research and Development at Small Pharma, a neuro-pharmaceutical company that is currently developing a psychedelic-assisted therapy for the treatment of mental health conditions.

Small Pharma is one of the few psychedelic companies working with DMT, a naturally occurring psychedelic tryptamine found in plants and the brain of mammals. Scientific evidence suggests DMT offers the potential for rapid-acting and long-lasting antidepressant effects. Small Pharma is leading the world's first DMT clinical trial and Ellen tells us all about it!

In this episode, recorded at HIMSS22, Joy sits down with Rodina Bizri-Baryak, Director of Patient Access and Technology at Tegria. They discuss how growing up in Lebanon during a civil war influenced Rodina's perspective on the world and her place in it.

When she discovered how improving processes within healthcare settings can support patients, her career journey became more solidified. At Tegria, she works to eliminate technological barriers - from scheduling appointments to coordinating care across multidisciplinary care teams - so patients can more easily access the care they need.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Anna Lindow, CEO and CoFounder of Brave Health, a virtual behavioral health provider and engagement platform. Her piece of the health IT puzzle solves for behavioral health outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries.

Brave Health provides telehealth-enabled counseling, therapy, psychiatry, and medication management, including medication-assisted treatment to treat a range of conditions across the spectrum of mental health and substance use disorder.

As the CEO, Anna helps some of the most vulnerable communities -- such as foster children -- experience the benefits that come from maintaining continuity of care and consistent relationship with their healthcare providers.

We were thrilled to have Rachel Marano, CEO of Pivot Point Consulting, speak with us about the lessons she has learned as a founder and leader. Rachel’s team helps healthcare organizations realize the most value from their technology and resources through EHR, ERP, Strategy, Virtual Care, Data Analytics, Cybersecurity, Service Desk, Application Support, and Revenue Cycle Management services. She shares with us tips and tricks of the trade for delivering HIT consulting, managed services, and talent solutions to providers, payers, life sciences, and technology organizations.