HIT Like a Girl Pod: Empowering Women in Health IT

Tiffany Crenshaw is President/CEO of Intellect Resources, a recruiting firm specializing in full time and contract placements of healthcare IT professionals. Intellect Resources provides both hands-on recruiting services and advisory services to help clients create, revise and refine their own recruiting processes.

In this episode, Tiffany shares some highlights of the job skills that the healthcare industry is hungry for.

Jennifer Gardy is the Deputy Director of Surveillance, Data, & Epidemiology for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She’s also a science communicator and children’s book author. In this episode, Jennifer shares about her role in working to accelerate progress to eradicate malaria, a bit about her crazy global travel schedule, and shares a special moment with Robin about how Jennifer’s children’s book, It’s Catching, made a big difference in her life.

Estrella Jaramillo talks with us about femtech innovation as the vehicle for gender equity. In 2015, she and a group of friends launched the B-wom app. B-wom is a digital coach that offers personalized programs for women’s intimate and sexual health. Users of the app take a test and receive an evaluation and a personalized care program with habits, guided pelvic floor exercises, tips, actionable recommendations, educational contents addressing their needs, and a tracking tool to see the evolution.

In this episode, Estrella shares how approaching gender equality from the perspective of helping women feel healthy and comfortable in their bodies, regardless of their stage in life, fuels her passion every day.

Janine works with a real-time, evidence-supported technology platform that helps oncologists, practices, molecular labs, and payors make the most appropriate decisions for cancer patients

Named as one of the top women, “leaving their mark on the MedTech field in health IT,” by Becker’s Hospital Review, Chrissa McFarlane is the Founder and CEO of Patientory, Inc., headquartered in Atlanta. Chrissa founded Patientory in December 2015 after seeing the need in the market for more personalized and secure consumer-driven health information management solutions.

With over two decades in the healthcare industry, Jennifer Ternay uses her healthcare and consulting experience to understand company processes and dynamics, identify opportunities for business improvement and shift strategic direction. With a strong blend of financial and operational knowledge, she works with clients to improve financial results, engage staff and patients in healthcare and strategically plan for the future.

We are thrilled to have two smart women in medicine and telehealth join us today. We are with Dr. Aditi Joshi and Dr. Shruti Chandra who are both with Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. They are walking us through how telehealth is helping their facility, especially emergency medicine. These women will share with us the challenges and successes of telehealth and where things are headed for physicians with a great “web-side manner” in telehealth.

Dr. Chandra became involved in Telehealth as a Telehealth practitioner and developer of the Telehealth Facilitator Certificate Program for which she is currently the program director.

Sara Ratner, Co-Founder of Proximal Health, is a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Star-Rating expert who has a breadth of experience in healthcare setting around the country. From growing Minute Clinics around the nation to serving as the Chief Compliance Office for one of the largest Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) organizations in the country, to solving the health access problem on tribal land, Sara’s resume is super impressive.

Sara is driven by the idea that we need to drive better care in a system where there’s a finite amount of dollars. She shares how Medicare is a program where there’s more a level playing field, where doctors have to compete in different ways to drive better patient experiences. Ultimately, she’d like to see seniors have a better quality of life, stay in their current living conditions, and increase their overall happiness.

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re not in the right room.” According to today’s guest, these are words to live by. Raychelle Fernendez, Vice President of Dynamic Health IT, believes that we all can learn from each other – even if you’re an expert in something, you could benefit from learning through someone else’s perspective.

Don’t you hate when tech gets too technical? We do. So we are thrilled that Raychelle is talking us through the mechanisms for sharing information in healthcare, both past, and present. Interoperability is all the rage this year and Raychelle takes the time to simplify and explain some of the jargon and goes on to tell us how she’s working toward creating an environment that can be better trusted when health information is shared.

Today’s guest is Kistein Munkhouse, Founder of Patient Orator – the home for all patient voices and stories. After hearing commentary from patients at the bedside saying they felt that their voice didn’t matter, Kistien made the decision to try to transform healthcare through sharing real patient experiences in the form of video blogging.

Kistein believes that if we can have a more collaborative conversation around health and healthcare, perhaps we can empathize more with each other’s struggles and barriers, and transform healthcare for the better. Her ultimate wish is that each and every human being, regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic factors, or even gender identity, is treated with respect and as though their life truly matters.

Let’s listen to her discuss her mission and personal experiences about this exciting project.