Women working in health IT are coming into their own in this sector, taking charge as CIOs, Disrupter-in-Chief and other executive posts. Some are working to achieve pay parity in a work sector where the gender gap persists – even today.
This gallery highlights just a few of the women movers and shakers in health IT. Check back often as we will be updating the collection regularly.
Janet Hohmann, senior director of communications at Edifecs, takes the lead on many initiatives to help close the growing gender gap between men and women in healthcare IT.
Rometty is a champion for women inside and outside IBM. Speaking recently at the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, she noted IBM hired its first woman engineer in 1935, and it’s first woman executive in 1943. Rometty is continuing to advance women in computing.
Singh stands out as an articulate champion for solving problems by shaking up the status quo. She leads the company's More Disruption, Please! initiative, and says athenahealth's company culture encourages experimenting without fear of failing.
Imagine as a women finding out accidently that a male colleague in a lesser position than you, and with fewer and lesser responsibilities, was earning $20,000 more than you. What would you do? Willa Fields took action.
"As I jumped into the world of healthcare – which is still evolving, and I’m still learning – I realized how much health IT is going to change the world," Ruttle says.
Philanthropist Melinda Gates, who pursued a career in computer science with a degree from Duke University, has launched a new initiative aimed at bringing more women around the world into technology careers.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, led by Priscilla Chan, MD, and her husband, will invest $3 billion over the next 10 years in an effort to prevent, manage or cure all diseases, Chan announced September 21 at an event in San Francisco. "We should be able to detect and treat or at least manage it as an ongoing condition," she added. "Mark and I believe this is possible within our children’s lifetime."
O’Dowd, New Jersey's former health commissioner, joined her alma mater, Rtugers University, as director of health systems and population health management. A biology major at Rutgers University’s Douglass College, O'Dowd earned her master’s degree in public health at Columbia University.
“There are a lot of role models here [at MIT], and sometimes, in Chile or in Mexico or in Costa Rica, [girls] don't know that there's a graduate student or an undergrad doing these cool things at MIT,” says grad student Alicia Chong Rodriguez. “I think it's a matter of just connecting the dots.” [Photo: Casey Atkins]
Bianchi oversees research on pediatric health and development, maternal health, reproductive health, and intellectual and developmental disabilities at the National Institute for Child Health, where she manages a $1.3 billion budget.
Smith is rallying a cadre of can-do women in healthcare information technology to help break the glass ceiling. This after a HIMSS survey revealed the glass ceiling is indeed getting higher, and the gender pay gap in health IT is getting wider.
Alexander, former board chair at HIMSS, is VP and Practice Leader Clinical Advisory Services, at healthcare IT consulting firm Divurgent. She subscribes to the SHINE Theory, which she explains is simply the idea that when powerful women help and support women everyone wins. "You want the strongest, happiest, smartest people in your corner," says Alexander
DeSalvo left the helm at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on August 11 to concentrate on her other position, Acting Assistant Secretary of Health. HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell recruited her into this role in October 2014 to help with the Ebola outbreak. DeSalvo is the first woman – and the only so far – to serve as National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology.
The EHR market has become a media battleground, she said, rather than vendors competing on quality of products and services. So she, and the PR machine Epic is assembling, are girding for the fight.
Caroline Young, executive director of NashvilleHealth, talks with Miriam Paramore about her healthcare work in Nashville and the role Healthcare IT plays in It. Young started her career in healthcare in life sciences at the Tennessee Biotechnology Association, which is now called Life Science Tennessee, promoting life science development across the state. Young says she learned a long time ago 'I can't do everything, and why would I want to? '
Wolfe's best tip for a successful career - or for that matter for almost every venue or situation, is to stay intellectually curious.
McNeil has been a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty since 1983 and founding chair of the medical school's department of healthcare policy since 1988.
The privacy and security expert's perspective will help inform IHIE’s strategic direction with a focus on novel ways to support interoperability.
Brennan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a former practicing nurse with a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, heads the world's largest biomedical library and the producer of digital information services used by scientists, health professionals and members of the public worldwide.
For Miliken, the quest has always been for health equity.
“Women were vulnerable to harm from undertreatment, overtreatment and mistreatment due to the lack of rigorous research on women's unique experience of health and disease,” Milliken said in the May 8, 2016, UCSF article, makring the 20 years at the National Center for Excellence. Before launching the center, Milliken was a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF.
As chief information security officer and chief privacy officer at the six-hospital Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Phillips, together with her 42-member team, revamped the organization's cybersecurity program.
At PCHA, which is owned by HIMSS, Mechael works to advance trends toward self-care technology as a way to address challenges such as chronic illness management and mental health.
