Passionate Pioneers with Mike Biselli Mike Biselli

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This episode’s Community Champion Sponsor is Ossur. To learn more about their ‘Responsible for Tomorrow’ Sustainability Campaign, and how you can get involved: CLICK HERE
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How can innovative architectural design improve patient care and clinician wellbeing? Our next guest, Sharon Woodworth, Healthcare Sector Leader at HED, is leading the charge to create healthcare facilities that optimize efficiency and sustainability. 
With extensive experience and over 11 million square feet of healthcare facility design, Sharon brings a unique perspective from her background as a former clinician. Deeply concerned about post-COVID staff shortages, she's driven to design environments that alleviate burnout and attract top talent. 
While together, Sharon shares HED's pioneering vision to augment caregivers through responsive, human-centered design solutions. 
Join us as we explore how HED is reshaping the future of care delivery, from outpatient clinics to smart hospitals. Let’s go!
Episode Highlights:
Sharon stresses the importance of clinicians putting on their "oxygen mask" first before caring for others to avoid burnoutHED specializes in taking existing healthcare facilities and redesigning them for future flexibility to adapt to changes like pandemicsOutpatient facilities are being redesigned without traditional waiting rooms, using concierge greeters to improve the patient experienceData from IoT sensors will increasingly drive architectural design decisions based on actual usage patternsPost-occupancy evaluations are critical to get feedback from clinicians and patients on what's working well or needs improvement in a new facility
About our Guest: 
Sharon is the Healthcare Sector Leader of HED, a national integrated architecture and engineering firm with 400+ employees and elite clients such as USC, the VA Medical Center, and the U.S. State Department. Her sector specializes in designing innovative healthcare centers for efficient patient care. 
Sharon is a licensed architect with 11M+ square feet of healthcare facility planning and design. She is known for driving change in operations and care through architectural design — much needed now, with operating costs rising by 10% in healthcare due to inflation and labor.
She saw healthcare systems firsthand as a former clinician, with her experience spanning a global range of operational and continuum-of-care issues from neonatology to senior living. She is concerned about the post-COVID staff shortages causing delayed care and closed centers.
In 2017, the AIA elevated Sharon to the College of Fellows for outstanding influence in the field of design. In addition to practicing architecture full-time, she is an Assistant Professor at UCSF, teaching “Leadership in Healthcare Environments” to future healthcare CEOs.

Links Supporting This Episode:
HED Website: CLICK HERESharon Woodworth LinkedIn page: CLICK HEREHED LinkedIn page: CLICK HERE Mike Biselli LinkedIn page: a...

This episode’s Community Champion Sponsor is Ossur. To learn more about their ‘Responsible for Tomorrow’ Sustainability Campaign, and how you can get involved: CLICK HERE
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Episode Overview: 
How can technology empower clinicians to focus on what matters most- connecting with patients? Our next guest, Dr. Stephanie Lahr is tackling this challenge as President of Artisight. 
With nearly two decades of informatics and healthcare leadership experience, Stephanie possesses a unique perspective bridging medicine and technology. Previously serving as a health system CIO, she experienced firsthand the transformative impact of Artisight's smart hospital platform.
Driven by a passion to reduce friction and reignite joy in medicine, Stephanie shares Artisight's pioneering vision to augment clinicians through ambient AI. 
Join us to discover how Artisight’s cutting-edge solutions are automating tasks, optimizing workflows, elevating patient care, and supercharging the smart hospital experience. Let’s go! 
Episode Highlights:
Stephanie's unique journey from physician to healthcare IT leader and now President of Artisight, bridging medicine and technology.How Artisight's smart hospital platform leverages ambient AI like computer vision and natural language processing to automate tasks and optimize clinical workflows.The value Artisight delivers today through virtual nursing models that give time back to nurses at the bedside.The exciting future vision of ambient sensor technology acting as "process improvement engineers" in every hospital room to capture rich data and drive process optimization.Stephanie's passion for reducing friction in healthcare and "bringing the joy back to medicine" through the empowering use of technology.
About our Guest: 
Dr. Lahr brings leadership, vision, and a distinct perspective to her role as President of Artisight. A former customer, she experienced firsthand the transformative power and impact of Artisight’s technology.
A physician with nearly two decades of informatics and healthcare administration expertise, Dr. Lahr possesses a unique skill set that bridges the worlds of medicine and technology. She intimately understands clients’ challenges in delivering quality patient care in a complex healthcare landscape. 
Previously, Dr. Lahr served as a combined CIO and CMIO for over six years at Monument Health. Board-certified in clinical informatics, she recognizes the vital role of clinical engagement in developing and implementing technology solutions.
She is an active member of the health IT community, having served on several organizational and vendor boards of advisors, including the CHIME Board. Recognized by HIMSS as an inaugural Changemaker Award recipient in 2021, Stephanie has been featured on thought-leading podcasts and interviews and is an advocate and mentor for women in Health IT.
Dr. Lahr is driven by her passion and commitment to reduce friction and bring joy back to medicine.

Links Supporting This Episode:
Artisight Website: CLICK HEREDr. Stephanie Lahr LinkedIn page: CLICK HEREArtisight LinkedIn page: CLICK HERE Mike Biselli LinkedIn page: CLICK HEREMike Biselli Twitter page:...

This episode’s Community Champion Sponsor is Ossur. To learn more about their ‘Responsible for Tomorrow’ Sustainability Campaign, and how you can get involved: CLICK HERE
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Episode Overview: 
Clinicians are drowning in a deluge of unstructured medical data, struggling to efficiently extract critical insights that could improve patient care and outcomes. Our next guest, Dr. Tim O'Connell, is taking on this monumental challenge as the co-founder and CEO of emtelligent.
With a unique background spanning IT, radiology, and medical informatics, Tim experienced firsthand the limitations of existing natural language processing tools in healthcare settings. Driven to develop a powerful solution, he founded emtelligent to harness cutting-edge AI and language models.
While together, Tim shares his pioneering journey building emtelligent's innovative technology that structures overwhelming volumes of unstructured patient data and how he and his colleagues are empowering healthcare organizations to operate more efficiently, reduce physician burnout, and unlock data-driven insights to transform care quality.
Join us to learn from Tim and how the emtelligent team is unlocking healthcare's unstructured data troves. Let’s go! 
Episode Highlights:
Tim's advice: Get out and make a change, find a business partner with complementary skills ("your Anoop", his co-founder)Origin story: Seeing limitations of existing NLP tools, partnering with NLP expert Dr. Anoop SarkarCutting-edge technology: Structuring massive volumes of unstructured medical data with advanced language AIPowerful use cases: Transforming needle-in-a-haystack data challenges, drastically reducing manual chart review workloadsFuture vision: AI-augmented healthcare teams over next 2-5 years, reducing burnout by automating drudgery tasks
About our Guest: 
Dr. Tim O’Connell is a practicing radiologist in Vancouver and cofounded emtelligent in 2016. He has served as vice chair of medical informatics in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Radiology since 2017. Prior to his clinical and entrepreneurial careers, Dr. O’Connell worked as an IT professional for Nortel Networks and Bell, where he was director of engineering for the Bank of Montreal account.
Early in his career, Dr. O’Connell realized that radiologists were often tasked with a volume of work that didn’t afford them the time needed to carefully review and understand each patient's clinical history. In 2015, he met Dr. Anoop Sarkar, a widely published Ph.D. and full professor of natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence. Dr. Sarkar shared Tim’s interest in medical language processing and desire to develop meaningful solutions that would have a positive impact on the lives of patients and care providers. It quickly became obvious to both that they were perfectly matched to solve the problem Tim had identified, together bringing a powerful combination of deep clinical and data science expertise. 
emtelligent was officially formed when Drs. O’Connell and Sarkar joined forces with Jeff O'Connell, an experienced technology operations management leader; and Dan Carriere, a seasoned expert in building and scaling biomedical startup ventures, adding experienced entrepreneurship and business leadership to the team. Collectively, the team successfully built and launched emtelliPro®, one of the industry's first deep-learning-based Medical Language Understanding engines.

Links Supporting This Episode:
emtelligent Website: CLICK HEREDr. Tim O’Connell...

This episode’s Community Champion Sponsor is Ossur. To learn more about their ‘Responsible for Tomorrow’ Sustainability Campaign, and how you can get involved: CLICK HERE
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Episode Overview: 
What if a pioneering venture capital model could catalyze healthcare innovation by delivering continuous funding, growth, and resources throughout a startup’s journey? Our next guest, Dr. Rebecca Mitchell, is doing exactly this as Executive Vice President at Vive Collective.
With a diverse background spanning academic research, public health, product leadership at several leading digital health companies, and now venture capital, Rebecca is at the forefront of funding and scaling the next generation of disruptive health tech companies.
While together, Rebecca shares her vision and mission of bringing together seasoned industry experts with fresh perspectives to mentor and propel bold founders who are passionate and determined to reimage our healthcare industry. 
Join us to learn how Rebecca and the Vive Collective team have created a new model to build, fund and scale the best digital health companies that are destined to make a sizable impact in the healthcare industry. Let’s go! 
Episode Highlights:
Rebecca's powerful advice: "Find the insiders who still think like outsiders, and the humble outsiders who can expand your sense of what's possible."How Vive Collective is a new VC model purposely built with an interdisciplinary team of clinicians, builders, and investors to mentor startups.Vive’s innovative "collective" that provides startups with an unmatched network of industry experts and resources to accelerate their growth.Rebecca's bullish outlook on the future- profitable digital health giants emerging, virtual care brands becoming national, and seamless integration with traditional systems.Her rallying cry for more diverse voices to courageously join the "collective" and help invent the future of healthcare.
  
About our Guest: 
Rebecca’s 20 year career has focused on building more effective, person centered technology enabled care models. She uses her unique background in product development, medicine, and public policy as both an Investor at Vive Collective and to go deep with companies on product, go to market, and scaling up the organization from early stage through growth.
Rebecca began her career in global health as an academic researcher and Fulbright Fellow in maternal health, and as Co-Founder of a not for profit that supports local social entrepreneurs across Sub Saharan Africa. She received her Medical Degree from the University of CA San Francisco, where she focused on primary care innovation and the burgeoning role of technology in medicine. Rebecca then served as the Medical Officer for Innovation at Health and Human Services, working on early policy and standards development to improve patient access to health data and interoperability. She then returned to Silicon Valley and spent the last decade in product leadership at startup, growth stage, and public companies including leading one of the earliest remote monitoring products for chronic conditions at Validic, and as an early product leader at Livongo and then Teladoc post acquisition. She most recently helped the Homeward Health team launch a new care model for older adults living in rural America before joining the Vive Collective. Out of recognition that health requires far more than a better healthcare system, she also personally invests in increasing quality, affordable housing for community members living with medical disabilities.
In her personal life, Rebecca is matriarch to a blended family of 5 kids, 4 chickens,...

This episode’s Community Champion Sponsor is Ossur. To learn more about their ‘Responsible for Tomorrow’ Sustainability Campaign, and how you can get involved: CLICK HERE
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Episode Overview: 
What if we could transform healthcare for underserved communities by empowering independent practices to deliver value-based care? Our next guest, Dr. Michael Poku, is doing just that as Chief Clinical Officer at Equality Health.
With extensive experience in clinical leadership, medical informatics, and value-based care models, Dr. Poku is spearheading a transformative approach that equips independent practices with technology, care coordination, and hands-on support to optimize whole-person care for diverse populations, especially those on Medicaid.
Join us as Dr. Poku shares his journey and Equality Health's mission to eradicate healthcare disparities via their pioneering model that is driving better outcomes, reducing costs, and delivering value-based care for diverse communities. Let’s go!
Episode Highlights:
Equality Health's mission to eradicate healthcare disparities by empowering independent practices to deliver value-based care for underserved, diverse communities, especially those on Medicaid.Dr. Poku's background spanning clinical leadership, medical informatics, and expertise in value-based care models positions him uniquely to drive Equality Health's innovative approach.Equality Health provides independent practices with technology, care coordination tools, and hands-on support to optimize performance and outcomes in value-based care.The transformative model meets practices where they are, helping under-resourced clinics adopt value-based care to improve patient health while increasing financial sustainability.Dr. Poku's vision for leveraging AI, predictive analytics and a "do good, do well" mentality to bring greater health equity through data-driven, whole-person care.
About our Guest: 
Dr. Michael Poku is an accomplished healthcare executive with extensive experience in clinical leadership, medical informatics, and value-based care. Prior to serving as the Chief Clinical Officer for Equality Health, he was Senior Medical Director at Oak Street Health, overseeing multiple clinical teams and driving innovative models of value-based care delivery, resulting in improved patient outcomes and increased operational efficiency. His expertise lies in enterprise-wide strategy, clinical delivery innovation, medical cost management, and the development of technology-enabled and data-informed clinical tools and processes.
Dr. Poku was also previously Chief Medical Officer at NextHealth Technologies through the company’s acquisition by Softheon Technologies, where he formulated and executed clinical and product strategies for an AI-powered healthcare analytics platform. During his tenure, he successfully led client success, sales, and ongoing product development, optimizing informatics processes to enable health plan customers to achieve maximum ROI from their analytics investments. Dr. Poku also served as Senior Medical Director at Signify Health, where he developed and led clinical strategies and execution for complex care management and at-home wellness programs.
Dr. Poku continues to practice, holding academic faculty positions at various health systems. Throughout his career, Dr. Poku has authored numerous publications on topics such as care coordination, healthcare analytics, patient relationship management, and several topics at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
Dr. Poku received his MD from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He trained at Johns...

This episode’s Community Champion Sponsor is Ossur. To learn more about their ‘Responsible for Tomorrow’ Sustainability Campaign, and how you can get involved: CLICK HERE
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Episode Overview: 
What if philanthropy and investment could work hand-in-hand to revolutionize cancer care? Our next guest, Alice Pomponio, is pioneering a groundbreaking model to do just that.
As the Managing Director of BrightEdge - the American Cancer Society's impact investment arm - Alice is harnessing the power of venture capital to fuel mission-driven healthcare startups. 
By investing in innovative technologies across the cancer care continuum, BrightEdge aims to not only generate financial returns, but also drive tangible improvements in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship.
Join us as Alice shares her personal journey that led her to this role, and explains how BrightEdge is reshaping the landscape of cancer philanthropy. Discover how this unique model is unlocking capital, amplifying impact, and bringing more equitable solutions to patients in need. Let’s go! 
Episode Highlights:
Alice shares her personal story of how tragedy transformed into a strategy to drive impact in the cancer spaceShe explains how BrightEdge, the American Cancer Society's impact investment arm, is pioneering a unique model to generate financial returns and drive mission-driven innovationAlice discusses how BrightEdge invests across the entire cancer care continuum - from prevention to diagnosis to treatment to survivorshipShe highlights how BrightEdge leverages the American Cancer Society's deep expertise and vast network to support and accelerate its portfolio companiesAlice outlines the future vision for BrightEdge, including plans to further infuse impact considerations into investment decisions and unlock new sources of capital
About our Guest: 
Alice brings an extensive experience in life sciences and business, coupled with her passion for the American Cancer Society’s lifesaving mission.
She is an expert in rare disease and precision oncology, and focuses on disruptive technology adoption and companion diagnostic/therapeutic co-development strategies with an eye toward value-based care. Most recently, she was an advisor at Red Sky Partners LLC and the founder and managing director of Accendo. At Red Sky Partners, Alice advised high-growth life sciences and health tech companies on go-to-market and product value strategies. In 2018, she founded Accendo to accelerate entrepreneurial consumer-facing approaches to patient access and affordability of quality care.
She held prior strategy and operational leadership roles at Radius Health, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi Genzyme, where she launched multiple US and global specialty products and championed orphan drug and health equity initiatives across the globe. Her public sector experience spans innovation, trade, and healthcare policy through roles in the UK Government and US Office of Management and Budget.
Alice holds a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from MIT. She serves on the Boards of Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, MassEcon, and PhagePro Inc. Additionally, she is a faculty member at Harvard-MIT HST Sloan Healthcare Ventures, a role she will retain during her tenure with the American Cancer Society.
In addition to her industry experience, Alice is a longtime American Cancer Society and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network volunteer leader.

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