10 Influential Women in Digital Health
Women spearheading innovation in digital health
This Women’s History Month, we want to acknowledge some of the most influential women in digital health. Their contributions are bettering the future of healthcare by leading transformative breakthroughs in technology that enhance the quality of patient care and improve operational efficiencies.
While women make up over 75% of total employment in the healthcare and social assistance industry, it’s still uncommon to see them in healthcare IT roles. Therefore, it’s crucial to bring awareness to those breaking barriers and paving the way for future generations.
We’ve assembled a list of some of these leading-edge women and their contributions to the digital health space.
Sonja O'Malley, MBA, PMP | Senior Director, Cleveland Clinic
As the Senior Director and Digital Health Domain Lead at Cleveland Clinic, Ms. O’Malley is tasked with creating partnerships that make digital health innovations accessible. Her collaborations with Cleveland Clinic leadership and other innovators have led to developing patient-benefiting medical products for the commercial market.
Ms. O’Malley’s over twenty years of experience in healthcare and technology guide her in managing portfolios involving patient monitoring, hospital operations technologies, clinical decision support, and more. She also seeks new ways to help patients through AI, revenue cycle coding, and clinical documentation pathways.
She received her Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology from Miami University and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Healthcare and Information Technology.
Denise Basow, MD. | Chief Digital Officer, Ochsner Health
Dr. Denise Basow is Chief Digital Officer at Ochsner Health, a non-profit healthcare system based in the New Orleans metropolitan area. She’s the company’s first digital officer, and is responsible for expanding the company’s suite of digital programs. Some of the initiatives she’s working on involve growing remote patient monitoring, virtual care, and enhancing access to healthcare services.
Before joining Ochsner Health, she was president and CEO of the global software organization Wolter Kluwer for six years. For nearly twenty years, she also worked in various capacities at UptoDate, a subscription-based online clinical decision support resource.
Denise Basow, MD earned a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry at Duke University and later received her medical degree at Baylor College. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at The Johns Hopkins University.
Cynthia Church | Chief Strategy Officer, Xealth
Ms. Church is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at Xealth, a digital health platform that integrates into clinician workflows and boosts patient engagement. As a founding leader, she helped transform the company from a seed-stage start-up to a dominant digital health leader in only five years.
Cynthia is responsible for seeking growth and revenue opportunities. She has leveraged her network to build strong partnerships, including collaborations with employers, pharmaceutical companies and health insurers.
As a leader she has over two decades of experience in leadership roles spanning different markets, including North America, Asia/Pacific, and Europe. Her expertise includes mergers and acquisitions, human resources, marketing and more.
Terri Couts, RN-BC MHA | Chief Digital Officer, The Guthrie Clinic
Terri Couts is the senior vice president and chief digital officer at The Guthrie Clinic, a healthcare organization serving individuals in New York and Pennsylvania. There, she searches for new digital expansion paths and aims to reshape healthcare delivery through remote care teams, patient monitoring tools, imaging results dissemination and more.
Terri has been with The Guthrie Clinic for over five years. Before becoming the Chief Digital Officer, she was the Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Clinical Operations. Her expertise includes systems design and implementation, continuous process improvements, and EMR implementation.
Prior to joining The Guthrie Clinic, she was a legal nurse consultant at Miller Legal Consulting, where she reviewed documentation for medical malpractice cases. Terri also spent 4 years at Optimum Healthcare IT as a practice director of clinical services, aiding with EPIC software and systems for major hospitals.
Jean Balgrosky, PhD | Chief Information Officer, MD Revolution
As board member and chief information officer at MD Revolution, Dr. Balgrosky is responsible for developing, maintaining and continuously improving the company’s health IT systems. Her initial task was establishing the care platform, RevUp, which integrates with EHRs and virtually connects patients with providers.
Dr. Balgrosky is also a co-founder of aiHealth, an automated medical coding company, and teaches graduate-level healthcare IT courses at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She founded Bootstrap Incubation and is the general partner of Bootstrap Venture Partners, where she oversees the investments of more than 20 seed and early-stage companies.
She currently serves on numerous boards, like Doctible, Sequoia Consulting Group, and Perceivant.
Michelle Greene | Chief Information Officer, Cardinal Health
As chief information officer, Michelle Greene manages the Global Technology and Business Services organization teams at Cardinal Health. These teams include Digital and Commercial Technologies, Pharma and Medical Segment IT, Global Business Services and Information Security. With her guidance, these teams use data and analytics to improve the patient experience, aid new project implementations and more.
Before joining Cardinal Health, Michelle Greene was vice president of information technology at Masco Corporation. There, she led the planning and implementation of IT solutions, ensured that the IT strategies aligned with the organization's initiatives, and managed the enterprise-wide IT strategy.
She has held numerous senior roles in technology and is committed to simplifying processes through digital technologies.
Meghan Gaffney | CEO & Co-founder, Veda
Meghan Gaffney is the co-founder and CEO of Veda, a company that offers data management and automation solutions for healthcare providers and payers. She’s guided the company through sizable growth phases, such as securing $45 million in Series B funding and achieving partnerships with large commercial health plans.
With more than 15 years of experience in healthcare policy, Meghan Gaffney knows how to identify new technology and grow solutions in ever-changing regulatory environments. She has also worked with senior elected officials, where she gained insight into fundraising and establishing partnerships.
Meena Mallipeddi | CEO & Co-Founder, AmplifyMD
As the Co-Founder and CEO of AmplifyMD, an AI-enhanced, integrated virtual care platform, Meena Mallipeddi aims to address barriers related to specialty care access. AmplifyMD has developed a telemedicine software tool that integrates with EMRs and clinical workflows. It also offers health systems, hospitals and other clients access to its network of multispecialty providers. By leveraging technology, Meena Mallipeddi hopes to prevent unnecessary patient transfers and other care gaps caused by the specialty shortage.
Before starting AmplifyMD, she held Equity Analyst roles where she explored and invested in healthcare and technology stocks worldwide.
Erica Jain | CEO & Co-Founder, Healthie
Since its launch in 2016, Erica Jain has helped steer Healthie, the all-in-one practice management platform and cloud-based EHR, to great heights. The idea born from a personal experience—watching her parents achieve real results through a corporate wellness program. Inspired by their success, she set out to create a platform that makes health and wellness services accessible to everyone while ensuring non-physicians can easily navigate an EHR system.
They’ve grown into an ONC-certified EHR platform that covers over 10 million patients and is utilized by 27,000 practitioners.
Prior to Healthie, Erica spent almost 5 years as a healthcare consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. There, she guided healthcare organizations on strategic issues relating to population health, cost-savings and more. She also worked as a program analyst at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, fostering partnerships to address chronic malnutrition in Rwanda and Ethiopia.
Ellen Rudolph | CEO & Co-Founder, WellTheory
While navigating her own autoimmune journey, Ellen Rudolph discovered the shortcomings of the conventional healthcare system and saw an opportunity to bridge the gap. Thus, WellTheory was born, a digital health company focusing on autoimmune diseases. It’s a remote platform with evidence-based lifestyle and coaching services designed to complement one’s existing care team between medical appointments.
In just a little over four years, Ellen’s business has raised $12 million in funding from Lux Capital, Rock Health, and others. Under her leadership, WellTheory has also expanded to offer B2B and D2C autoimmune care. She’s landed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and Inc’s Female Founders 250.
Before launching WellTheory, she was an entrepreneur in residence at the OVO Fund, a Fellow at On Deck, and a Product Manager at Oscar Health. Ms. Rudolph was a member of the Women Business Leaders of the US Health Care Industry Foundation as well.
Digital healthcare is here to stay
These trendsetting female leaders show us that patient-focused technology won’t be going away anytime soon. Telehealth solutions can boost patient engagement, improve medication adherence, monitor patient biomarkers between visits, and more, ultimately leading to better health outcomes.
However, to make this feasible, companies need the proper telehealth infrastructure and access to a multi-specialty clinician network. At OpenLoop, we provide both so leaders can seamlessly launch and scale their digital health organizations.
Ready to learn more? Get in touch here!
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