CommonSpirit Health - Most Innovative Woman of the Year

Company: CommonSpirit Health, Chicago, IL
Company Description: CommonSpirit Health is a nonprofit, Catholic health system dedicated to advancing health for all people. It was created in February 2019 through the alignment of Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health. With a team of approximately 125,000 employees and 25,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, CommonSpirit Health operates 137 hospitals and more than 1000 care sites across 21 stat
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Innovative Woman of the Year - Government or Non-Profit

Nomination Title: Suja Chandrasekaran

With more than a quarter-century of technology leadership experience. Suja is an industry pioneer in driving digital transformation.

Suja, whose background spans a wide variety of sectors, has made a substantial mark in the healthcare industry. Widely recognized as a leader in digital transformation, she has long been dedicated to developing and mentoring others, including leaders in technology and business, Women and Asian American leaders, and executives of start-up companies that show promise in making positive change.She is an industry expert in digital marketing, consumer experiences, e-commerce, supply chain, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital platforms.

She is the founder of T200 – Women CXOs in Tech, which is focused on lifting women in technology and preparing them to take on C-Suite level roles. T200 is a tech peer community like none other for women in C-suites. T200 focuses on lifting women in technology, including building a pipeline of next-generation women leaders.

Suja serves as a non-executive director, board member for public and private companies, including American Eagle Outfitters and Blume Global, which provides digital supply chain technologies. Suja plays a key role in advocating for inclusion, equity and belonging of women, especially in board roles.

Suja, who is senior executive vice president and chief information and digital officer (CIDO) at CommonSpirit Health, played a front-running role in serving our nation through the COVID 19 pandemic crisis. She led a team of 5000 with resilience to serve our communities through our 142 hospitals, post-acute facilities, over a few thousand care centers throughout 21 states, and several million patients. As a result of tireless efforts and innovative solutions

CommonSpirit Health remained open and able to care for several million patients during COVID. In less than a year, Suja delivered what would have typically taken several years to achieve.

Among her accomplishments:

-Scaling Digital Patient experiences and Virtual care platforms: Achieved and exceeded goal with over 1.5 million virtual visits. In addition, virtual care technology empowers over 30,000 providers to connect to millions of patients in new and transformative ways. Suja has been a key leader in this effort, influencing and collaborating across the organization’s national enterprise in leading Virtual Care.

-COVID-19 Pandemic response: Suja served as a leading voice during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing insights with the agility to respond to the rapidly changing needs of the organization -- from supply to hospital capacity to workplace safety. Suja led pandemic response that delivered over 2.7 Covid tests, 1.3 million vaccination doses and put organization on path of the recover

Suja launched several transformative actions to ensure IT delivers innovative solutions that help achieve strategic business performance goals in spite of challenges posed by pandemic. As a result of her innovative initiatives, millions of patients got much-needed healthcare services using a platform envisioned and rapidly developed by Suja and her team, saving lives and improving patient outcomes. Healthcare unlike other industries is highly regulated and its infrastructure lags over decades, furthermore, stricter regulations associated with healthcare data restricts rapid innovation, in spite of these challenges Suja transformed CommonSpirit Health by implementing the following key industry-leading initiatives:

-EstablishedVirtual ICU, Virtual Companion, and COVID-19 triageandserved thousands of customers through our COVID-19 chatbot.

-Enabled > 1.5Mvirtual visitson virtual platforms.

-Founded a community vaccination program in partnership with local and national health agencies andleveraged interoperability and data platformstogather vaccine data and enable vaccine outreach, scheduling, & tracking.

-Developedvaccine management solutionsto manage doses and disburse communication to respond to the safety needs of our front-line workers.

-Built foundational capabilities of integrated information availability to support our operators and clinicians lead with thecurrency of actionable informationas a tool.

-Adopted technologies and consolidated legacy platforms;executed the largest migration to Google Workspace in history (190,000+ users) and ramped up theuse of video conferencing applications such as Zoomthroughout the organization in a short span of 1 month.

Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout

Following articles and media releases support Suja's nomination for the prestigious Stevie award as the most innovative woman of the year - non-profit.

CIO Next 2021 - 50 Innovative Technology Leaders - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2021/04/29/cio-next-2021-50-innovative-technology-leaders-transforming-business-for-a-radically-different-world/?sh=5e15e7ba11eb

4 healthcare CIOs top Forbes' most innovative list
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/digital-transformation/4-healthcare-cios-top-forbes-most-innovative-list.html

Where 5 CIOs see IT innovation heading as pandemic winds down
https://medcitynews.com/2021/05/where-5-cios-see-it-innovation-heading-as-pandemic-winds-down/

'I rarely start a conversation focused on technology': How CommonSpirit's Suja Chandrasekaran approaches new tech investment
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/i-rarely-start-a-conversation-focused-on-technology-how-commonspirit-s-suja-chandrasekaran-approaches-new-tech-investment.html

Leading with resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leading-resilience-during-covid-19-pandemic-digitalechedge/?trackingId=ATu2MY3p6q1U1APgVu7LHg%3D%3D

Navigating the Virtual Future of Health Care
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-07-30/navigating-the-virtual-future-of-health-care
https://www.modernhealthcare.com/transformation/innovations-should-improve-patient-experience-reduce-burden-workforce-ceos-say

Most promising healthcare tech in 2020: 15 execs from CommonSpirit, Kaiser Permanente, UPMC & more
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/most-promising-healthcare-tech-in-2020-15-execs-from-commonspirit-kaiser-permanente-upmc-more.html

Women to watch in health IT | 2020
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/lists/women-to-watch-in-health-it-2020.html