Leadership For a Polarized World in Medical Technology (Software & Data)

Medigram Stakeholder Letter on Company Values in a Time of Extreme Polarization

By: Sherri Douville, CEO & Mike Ng, Former Head of Ops/Chief of Staff at Medigram

Thank you to each one of you in your role in our CEO, Sherri Douville’s current ranking as of this writing as the #1 Worldwide overall medical market executive and #1 mhealth, #1 in the U.S. for Mobile/iOS/Android, and #2 in the U.S. for cybersecurity as well as the #1 top executive in the world for private companies on Crunchbase. In this linked in post she shares some details about what the algorithm is intended to measure, which is prominence. It’s like we shared with one of our academic medicine advisors: This is simply more of a signal of potential future success rather than a sign of success in and of itself per se. Regardless, we are grateful to our whole ecosystem and core team, advisors, board, investors, and collaborators for your role in driving towards this validation of the way we have been building Medigram for trust. This is in the face of tremendous widespread knowledge gaps for making mobile medicine a reality in healthcare; this includes how different and much more diverse the healthcare sector population is from a tech sector characterized by striking extremism that you do not find as much in healthcare overall on average due to the value in ethical medicine of humanitarianism.

Dr. Art Douville explains what’s obvious to industry insiders but often news to those looking at healthcare from the outside

Our five principles for building in this market are the following:

1. Core Ecosystem Partnerships- One of our dominant strategies is to partner with our core ecosystem for mutual success. Unlike other industries such as simple consumer products, developer tools, simple web apps, or the crypto and fintech markets whereas a company can rely more on the support of a narrow population; our market has a broader required range to engage with. As a result of this path of working in an ecosystem scope; we have decided that the persona of Medigram the company, is a moderate centrist one that is most productive in an environment as diverse as the medical market.
2. Ecosystem Diversity Requirements- Our ecosystem is made up of a diverse group of stakeholders and as our CMO Dr. Art Douville says, vendors alienate the diverse workforce at your peril.
3. Polarizing Times- We’re living in one of the most polarizing periods in recent times which is perhaps most magnified in healthcare. Obvious examples include strong divides over masks and vaccinations. Healthcare companies are facing this everyday in their workplace and are looking to other organizations like Medigram for real partnership. They want leadership from their partners, not passive inaction. Part of this leadership has to include taking on polarizing subjects when in our

CTO/CSO, Eric Svetcov’s words, “the team agrees that the issues directly impact the business” and our core ecosystem.

4. Where Medigram Stands- We recognize because of medicine’s underlying value of humanitarianism, our ecosystem’s diversity combined with society’s fragmentation, we cannot please everyone. Example- Some minority of people don’t trust physicians as a more recent and perhaps increasing trend. But surveys show that physicians remain amongst the most trusted professionals in our society today.

Despite these complexities, working across breadth in our ecosystem is a necessity to our success for improving patient outcomes and physician work experiences.

5. How Medigram is Partnering Across the Core Ecosystem- Below are practical paths that Medigram is taking to build and strengthen our ecosystem.

Medigram’s current priority ecosystem activities:

1) Leading ecosystem book productions with the top healthcare IT U.S. academic book publisher, Routledge Taylor & Francis (ranked #3WW)

2) Involvement with IEEE and CHIME

3) Weekly risk management ecosystem email newsletter to CEOS, investors, health system execs, engineers, physicians, policymakers, board members by Medigram CEO, Sherri Douville and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Art Douville

4) Sharing relevant to ecosystem updates daily on Social media

High lever society impact service and mutually beneficial networking:

1) Santa Clara University’s Black & Women’s Corporate Board Readiness programs as lecturer and advisory council member for the latter. Diversity in all forms is a critical top priority for healthcare system stakeholders.

Ecosystem issues that may result in criticism or misunderstanding; though taking a stand supports the goals of Medigram as a business/enterprise in a market governed by the oath First, do no harm.

1) Crisis of Physician burnout & impending physician shortage

2) Medical Misinformation contributing to physician burnout; a complex topic given that physicians are not themselves totally immune from acquiring and spreading misinformation; though their training would ideally help to mitigate it.

3) Tackling Impacts of Competency Gaps in Technology Lifecycle Management on Physician Burnout; preparing for the future

4) Diverse skills and other forms of diversity necessary for competence in medical technology.

We must embrace diversity of thought while driving informed decision making. — Joe Mulhearn, Head of Revenue, Medigram Inc.

5) Pandemic personal risk management; To clarify, we at Medigram do not publicly actively advocate for “mandates.”

There will always be 10–15% of people on either the far left or the far right extreme (of the 20–30% extremists) that can’t be made happy with what the majority of the population supports. Take the example that Levi’s CEO, Chip Bergh explains in this podcast at minute 5:40–7:00 about the action of a small extreme minority voice that failed when they got only 1% support on their extremist related proposal. Just like Medigram has a distinct constituent and priority in the medical community; the key constituent for Levi’s is young people 18–25 (minute 11:30). In both cases, physicians and young people; they’re not uniform or homogenous groups and there will also be extremists in both segments; however there are priority trends specific to each constituent set that he explains are mission business critical and can’t be ignored.

The following are the tools that we use to enforce our values (We will continue working as a team on what more can be done here over time)

1. Open dialogue and feedback culture
2. Team Conduct expectations as it relates to medical information

In closing, Medigram’s mission is to help save lives by eradicating a leading cause of preventable deaths, a delay in information while making health systems more financially successful. Our product and service drives safety, efficiency, and profitability while our data product enables better coding and billing driving revenue. This mission requires building and maintaining strong working relationships based on trust and respect with, in particular physicians, as well as technologists, healthcare executives, and additional team members and stakeholders which helps to guide our company principles.

Thank you to Medigram CTO/CSO Eric Svetcov and Medigram Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Art Douville, and Head of Revenue, Joe Mulhearn for contributing to this post and to many other team members, board chair Wim Roelandts, and advisors for your input and feedback.

By Sherri Douville, CEO at Medigram, the Mobile Medicine company. Recognized in 8 categories of top CEOs by Board Room Media (Across SMS, mHealth, iOS, IT, Database, Big Data, Android, Healthcare). Top ranked medical market executive worldwide and #1 ranked in mobile technology categories (mhealth, iOS, Android), #1–2 (on any given day) for the cybersecurity market in the U.S. on Crunchbase. Best selling editor/author, Mobile Medicine: Overcoming People, Culture, and Governance & Advanced Health Technology: Managing Risk While Tackling Barriers to Rapid Acceleration, Taylor & Francis; Series Editor for Trustworthy Technology & Innovation + Trustworthy Technology & Innovation in Healthcare. (contracted to advise top academic and professional education publisher Routledge, Taylor & Francis).

Sherri is the co-chair of the IEEE/UL JV for the technical trust standard SG project for Clinical IoT in medicine, P2933. She is passionate about redefining technology, software and data for medicine and advanced health technologies in a way that’s worth the trust of clinicians, our family, and friends. Ms. Douville leverages her books to inform her work on the CHIME CDH security specialization certification. She also advises and co-founded the Cybersecurity curriculum for the Black Corporate Board Readiness and Women’s Corporate Board Readiness programs at Santa Clara University.