Nursing engagement in technology design and implementation is essential to safety and wellbeing – Molly K. McCarthy, MBA, BSN, RN-NI

Episode 93 | Duration: 30:41

Molly K. McCarthy MBA, BSN, RN-NI, is a seasoned executive harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and technology to positively transform healthcare. She is passionate about uniting technology, clinicians and patients to improve care delivery, safety an,d outcomes. Molly is a health technology advisor and strategist to several companies, from early-stage startups to global organizations. She is the host of “The Smart Care Team Spotlight” podcast, which highlights nurses transforming care through technology adoption and change management. Molly is also a limited partner with Nurse Capital, the only venture fund that solely supports nurse-led startups.

Molly graduated with a B.S. in nursing from Georgetown University and worked clinically as a bedside registered pediatric and NICU nurse as well as the Pediatric Kidney Transplant Team Coordinator at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. After finishing her MBA with a focus in strategic marketing, she transitioned to product marketing at Natus Medical in Silicon Valley. She then joined the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, where she was responsible for piloting a benchmark database that extracted data from hospital labor and delivery electronic medical records (EMRs) to provide data analytics and intelligence to hospital leadership. Molly then worked for Philips’ Patient Care and Clinical Informatics Division, where she orchestrated large health system integrations of physiologic patient monitoring networks into hospital networks and EMRs. Prior to her current role, Molly spent almost 10 years with Microsoft as the U.S. Chief Nursing Officer.

In this episode of Caring Greatly, Molly talks about the importance of bridging perspective gaps between clinicians, technologists and business leaders. She describes how engineers need to see clinical workflows first-hand in different care settings to understand real-world applications for technology. In turn, clinicians benefit from directly experiencing software and hardware solution development. This two-way collaboration enables understanding of subtle nuances that make technology successful in the clinical space. Molly goes on to describe how exposing clinicians and engineers to each other’s work early in their respective education creates a shared understanding and vocabulary for solving future challenges. It also paves the way for advancing cultures of respect and collaboration. Finally, Molly outlines a vision for the future in which technology ceases to be a barrier between clinicians and patients and becomes an enhancer of safety and wellbeing for all.

Related links

• University of Florida College of Nursing blog post: It’s time for action: how nursing can lead AI innovation through collaboration
• Apple podcast: The Smart Healthcare Team Spotlight
• Spotify podcast: The Smart Healthcare Team Spotlight