HIT Like a Girl Pod: Empowering Women in Health IT

In this episode, Joy talks with Maya Said, CEO and Founder of Outcomes4Me, a free mobile app that helps breast cancer patients navigate their cancer diagnosis and treatment more comprehensively through an AI-powered platform.

Maya is laser-focused on empowering patients through one of the most vulnerable times of their lives to help them understand their options and be better advocates for themselves as they navigate the healthcare system.

In this episode, Holly Varnell, Founder, and Chair, of DREAM BIG shares her professional journey and how she is driving change in the state of maternal care in the U.S.

There is a quote by Desmond Tutu that states: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

Holly is using this analogy to get to the root causes of the dismal maternal mortality rates for black and brown women in the U.S. and working toward a solution.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Carrie Kozlowski, Co-Founder, and COO of UpFront Healthcare. Her organization helps to activate patients by providing them with proactive and personalized information that reaches them where they are.

Their platform informs patients not only with what they need to do, but also with how they need to do it, and where. All of that is wrapped in health communication science that helps to motivate, persuade, and influence them to take that action.

In this episode, we sit down with Jody Neuhauser, Co-founder of Overerrra, an intelligent fertility platform for men and women that matches them to the products and services they need as part of their trying-to-conceive journey.

Jodi is also the founder at Reneu Fertility Travel, where she takes female founders to Capetown, South Africa to freeze their eggs at a third of the cost of clinics in the US.

She's super ambitious and making an impact on women's health around the world.

In this episode, Joy sits down with Eden Brownell, an Engagement Specialist at mPulse and an expert in behavioral science, user design and public health. Eden's work helps healthcare organizations adjust their efforts to meet the health needs, confidence levels, and cultural sensitivities in meaningful ways for their patients--essentially reimagining health engagement for the modern age.

In this episode, we talk with Maureen Ladouceur, Executive Vice President and Global Chief Commercial Officer at MMIT. Maureen is passionate about making life-changing drugs and innovative therapies more easily accessible to all patients as a registered nurse. She saw firsthand what happens to patients and families when access to drugs is delayed or not possible.

In this episode, we hear from Somer Baburek, President, CEO of HERA Biotech. Somer's work is dedicated to addressing unmet needs in the field of women's health. And specifically in reproductive medicine. In this conversation, Joy and Somer talk in-depth about endometriosis, the current solution to diagnose it, which is through pretty invasive surgery, and how her efforts are working to change that.

Somer was a contestant in the HITLAB Women's Health Tech Challenge.

In this episode, we sit down with Shelly Bond, Vice President & Sales Development for Ascom Canada.

Shelley talks with Joy about how technology can improve areas within the clinical process. For example, using a sensor within a hospital bed to let nurses know when a patient has gotten up and may need help from the care team.

Shelly shared some super interesting insights on a recent project she completed with Humber River Hospital, North America’s first fully digital acute-care hospital.

In this episode, we hear from Vidya Murthy, COO at MedCrypt. She talks with Joy about cybersecurity within medical devices. And although a medical device may look like any other internet of things type of technology, it's constrained by regulation and must keep clinical functionality, patient safety, and care delivery as top priorities.

Vidya breaks down the importance of compliance and risk reduction for any devices deployed in a healthcare setting.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Natasha Sheybani, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia and a senior scientist with the Focused Ultrasound Foundation.

Dr. Sheybani is recognized as one of the "next generation's scientific superstars," trailblazing the way for a disruptive technology called focused ultrasound (FUS).

Her research centers around how FUS can treat cancer; how it can be incorporated into drug delivery such as chemo, utilizing FUS's incredible ability to pinpoint the exact location for a therapeutic to be delivered; and how it can complement current therapies such as immunotherapy and gene therapy.