Ashwini Zenooz, MD

I am very excited to announce that Saurabha Bhatnagar, MD, has joined Commure as our Chief Health Officer. Dr. Bhatnagar’s unique experience and commitment to improving the healthcare experience for patients and providers, make him the ideal person to take on this new role.

Dr. Bhatnagar joins us from UnitedHealthcare, where he most recently served as the Chief Medical Officer, Head of Digital & Technology. Originally a software engineer with deep experience in human centered design, Dr. Bhatnagar is also a talented physician, educator, and business executive. We worked together at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where he built the enterprise change-management strategy as Deputy Chief Medical Officer and served as the Chief Medical Information Officer modernizing the enterprise digital health systems. He also has a deep understanding on the challenges of large scale healthcare operations having served as the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary in charge of Quality, Safety and Value enterprise operations for the 1250+ VA hospital systems and clinics. He also has a deep passion for improving healthcare through idea sharing and education, and has taught as faculty at Harvard Medical School in many global executive education courses for several years.

He brings a mix of technology, clinical, and business experience that spans from an executive in government to a Fortune 6 company. I’m excited to partner with him to serve our customers and partners on our platform.

Dr. Bhatnagar and I recently discussed his background, his role here, and why he chose the title of Chief Health Officer over Chief Medical Officer:

AZ: You trained as a physician and a software engineer. How does that experience help you in your role?

 Commure is about connecting best practices from two massive industries, technology and medicine, to simplify and enable every step of the complex healthcare delivery system. While there has been a lot of great work started in this space, the knowledge gap often is having a deep enough understanding of both industries to really enable what patients and providers are hoping for, a simpler and easier to use healthcare ecosystem. A superficial knowledge in either space will result in many subpar efforts and often has even had counterproductive effects of adding complexity. What is exciting about the team we have at Commure and the partners we are working with, is a laser focus on reducing that complexity. We are not looking to disrupt, but instead enable radical collaboration.

 You chose the title “Chief Health Officer” over Chief Medical Officer. Why was that important to you?

 Commure Co-Founder Hemant Taneja’s aspirations for 

 deeply resonated with me when I spoke with him. Like Hemant, I believe we need to fundamentally rethink the way to provide, experience, and pay for care. And when most people think of the word “medical”, they often think of illness and where to go when they or a loved one is sick. “Health” on the other hand is more holistic and signals the way we prioritize keeping people well over just caring for someone when they are ill. Commure is focused on providing solutions that enable overall health, which involves combining what happens inside and outside the walls of hospitals and clinics. This new and missing infrastructure is how we enable an unrelenting focus on the health of populations.

 2021 has seen a huge amount of investment come into companies that want to help improve aspects of both sick care and wellness. What do you think are the biggest ingredients for success for these new digital health initiatives?

 I have seen and built a lot of new digital health offerings for patients, for providers, and for payers and we really saw an acceleration this past year. The healthcare technology solutions that found success shared a few things in common:

They have great industry partnerships. Healthcare is not a sector where new companies can expect to come in, disrupt the market, and most importantly innovate on their own. Healthcare is a collaborative process and very complex and the best digital health companies know that they need to work closely with the traditional health ecosystem to provide the best total care for their members. The larger and more complex the system, the faster the learnings for innovative companies.

They are laser focused on providing a great experience for not just the patient, but all of their users in a holistic way. For lots of reasons, navigating the healthcare ecosystem is hard. It’s hard for patients, it’s hard for providers to provide great care, and it’s hard for innovative new companies to easily come in and navigate the complexity while also working on the problem they want to solve. Companies that understand and can execute on these various points of view through an ecosystem approach are the ones who will have lasting, transformational success.

They have an understanding of the complexities of scale and have experience in how to manage the challenges that arise. I have been fortunate enough to have been a part of two organizations that operate at the largest scale in their health verticals with over 300,000 employees serving millions of patients and members. Things that work in small pilots or MVPs break down without a clear understanding of how healthcare operates at scale. Many efficiencies and truly improving healthcare outcomes, arise with a proactive approach to scale early enough in the design and development process of creating great products.

What’s so exciting about Commure is that we have a clear understanding and roadmap of all three of these ingredients, and we are bringing this diligent mindset in creating our novel products and solutions. We are bridging the gap between innovators, traditional health systems, and emerging models of health delivery.

Our Mission

Dr. Bhatnagar, Commure's new Chief Health Officer, discusses his background, his role at Commure, and why he chose the title of Chief Health Officer over Chief Medical Officer with Commure's Predisident, Ashwini Zenooz MD.





Saurabha Bhatnagar, MD, Joins Commure as Chief Health Officer

Commure Team

A team of undergraduates at Rutgers University used the Commure Developer Platform to create QuickShift, an application that streamlines shift scheduling for clinicians. Developed by Swetha Angara, Ariela Chomski, Brooke Getter, Neha Nelson and Param Patel, QuickShift won $6,500 in grants as a participant in the 7x24 exchange Metro NY 2021 University Challenge for their creativity, impact, and work involving data center consolidation.

We sat down with the team to ask them about their experience creating QuickShift and why they chose Commure to power their application.

To start off, what is QuickShift, and what was the motivation behind creating it?

 QuickShift actually started with stories from my sister. I remember hearing about her having to jump through ridiculous hoops for her clinical scheduling and driving 45 minutes back and forth from work, late at night, to fill out paperwork so she could request a single dentist appointment off. It was ridiculous. It showed how bad the current system really was. We realized this was a huge issue, we knew some engineers at Commure, and we decided to just make it happen.

What advice would you give to other developers, like yourselves, who have a great idea but might not know where to start?

 Work with Commure is what I would say. They will help you.

 I was gonna say that too but in general, I think planning is a big aspect. I think even we could have done a lot more planning. Sometimes it felt like, “oh my gosh we are not going to finish this,” and that was a big stress point for us.

 Also asking for feedback from the actual users. Brooke’s sister took a look at what we made and was able to give us feedback and comment on how we would save so much time. Commure’s inhouse clinicians also showed us what the hospitals started with. So seeing what exists and confirming you’re making it better is great.

 When we started out we had these plans to include different types of clinicians, residents, nurses, etc… and to continue expanding everything. But we kept having to remind ourselves that it's better to have a basic, functional, and well built prototype than to have something with a lot of features which is a mess and doesn't work.

So we cut everything down to barebones to get it functional, then decided we could build off the barebones’ functionality.

Can you tell us a bit about Rutgers Capstones and the Competition you entered?

 The Rutgers Capstone is similar to a senior thesis. It’s a large engineering project that all senior undergraduates have to do, at least in our program. We knew that we wanted to try and do something meaningful with it.

 The competition we won grants in is separate from our Capstone. Our advisor chose our team to enter the 7x24 Exchange Metro NY 2021 University Challenge as representatives of Rutgers University. 7x24 was specifically centered around data centers and efficiency this year, but you can jump off from that at any point. We focused on using Commure and storing data in a single location to improve efficiency.

Why did you decide to use Commure to power QuickShift and which parts of the developer tools did you use?

 There are other solutions out there we could have used to solve this problem, but they’re extremely expensive and a lot less accessible. Commure was very willing to work with us, and help us with our technical needs.

 I think it would have taken a lot longer without Commure’s developer tools. The way we originally had envisioned our project, starting from scratch would not have led us to the product we have today. It would have been a lot less minimal and impactful if we hadn’t used Commure’s resources.

 Having all that prepped was really useful.

 I think in our last meeting they called us power users of the “Resource Manager” tool. We used that a lot, we also used the FHIR rust API and SDK, and a couple of the react components.

 We used the data library a little bit, but the resource management is definitely what we ended up using the most.

What were some of the challenges you faced?

 That’s a really good question. Among us, different things were different roadblocks. Not just getting started, but maybe our team started on the wrong foot. We tried to do the back end first but realized we didn’t know how to model the data. So we pivoted to the front end and it all began to click.

 I think learning FHIR and figuring out what algorithm to use, both of those were tough.

Did your work on QuickShift influence your career goals?

 I think, after learning that there are so many problems to solve, I’d love to continue working in the healthcare space. I know this is something that impacts so many people who need and deserve quality care, but everything is so expensive and broken. Making a schedule should not be as difficult as it is right now. It’s ridiculous, more time should be spent on the people receiving care than the technology facilitating it.

 In theory, if we had more options, this is something we would definitely want to continue and I think a lot of us would go in that direction. But because a lot of this started after our career fair, we had to have a lot of our jobs figured out ahead of time. So we’ve all planned out our next job before we really got into the thick of this.

How did developing QuickShift help you grow professionally?

 I think learning to design with the user in mind is something that we learned along the way in this project and especially when speaking with more experienced engineers at Commure. We learned a new perspective that way.

 We have never had to really code for a “client” in our classes. All of our projects were isolated and clearly defined, so building for realistic use in a complex system is definitely something new that we all got to experience.

 Because it was no longer just a case of deliverables to pass this class, we had to learn to continuously touch base and communicate with another group of people. It gave us a chance to step back, review, and learn as we continued our work.

 I found it really interesting that Commure wanted feedback from us to improve their platform. We gave them some notes which we felt could improve minor details and we got to watch it change within the span of our time working with them. It was really cool to see and it’s definitely influenced how I consider developer interactions.

Commure is proud to feature the QuickShift team. Healthcare will rely on responsible engineers to help deliver a future of care that prioritizes the people within it. We would like to thank Ariela, Param, Brooke, Neha, Swetha, and their professor, Dr. Godrich for their inspiring work and hope their story serves as motivation for anyone who has seen the problems plaguing healthcare today and would like to make a difference.

Join the team

Insights from the Rutgers University QuickShift team - who won $6,500 in grants for innovations in stream-lining healthcare clinician shift scheduling using Commure tools to succeed at the 7x24 Exchange Metro New York 2021 Virtual University Challenge.

Developer Platform Spotlight: Rutgers University Students Win 7x24 Exchange University Challenge with Healthcare Scheduling App 

Falk Gottlob

Commure is in a unique and advantageous position in the healthcare industry. Backed by financial titans, informed by senior healthcare leaders, and led by world class healthcare innovators, we are set to tackle the biggest digital transformation any industry has seen in the last 20 years. But our growth must be as thoughtful as it is quick, and we must be able to bear the pressure of rapid change and expansion in order to achieve our mission at a large and impactful scale.

— The Commure Mission

Empower health institutions to create the future of physical and virtual care.

Strategic partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) have been and will continue to be Commure’s primary growth strategy. From the beginning, we have been cultivating a culture of flexible growth and rapid expansion. We have proven that we are capable of more than doubling in size in less than a year, while remaining unshaken on our trajectory towards a massive impact on the foundation of healthcare. 

The market is experiencing a new need for consolidation. Pressure to grow and satisfy customers and partners in an industry which frequently locks them into a state of, “what have you done for me lately,” is ever intensifying. As a result we 

 continue to embrace a high growth culture, and with it, constant change. In the last year, we added incredible new customers, products, and team members, all fueling our growth. But there is no finish line and the bar is constantly being raised. Our current and future customers require us to continue growing and delivering features at an ever increasing pace. One which we aim to meet and exceed.

Advancing our mission faster than expected, embracing and integrating new team members, new products and new managers are all features of coupling partnership and M&A growth with the culture needed to make it successful. We are paving a road in sore need of repair and we must embrace everything that helps us progress this mission for the greater good of our customers. At the end of the day, our most important goal is to advance our mission of empowering health systems at a level never seen before.

Commure’s culture is built on a foundation of seeing the change around us as an opportunity to grow, both as an individual and as a collective. Each member of the Commure team is part of a group culture which asks them to expect revisions and restructuring as we grow, allowing us to reposition ourselves as needed, to ensure that all of us are on the pathway to achieving our mission.

To accelerate our progress we must embrace change effectively. We prioritize creating time and space for our teams to set clear expectations and goals for themselves and for their coworkers. We express our needs and wants. We address what is not going well and spotlight the successes. We proactively give and receive feedback from those around us and we encourage learning and growth at every single level.

It might sound like many disparate concepts and skills, but ultimately, they all boil down to one idea: our ability to enable ourselves to change. Our capacity for change is something that we have intentionally and deliberately cultivated over time, and I believe it is a key element to our continued growth which we will always choose to nurture.

Oftentimes, we will get excited about a change, but then we snag against a moment of tension. We hit a moment of self-doubt. A moment of friction. A moment of conflict with a co-worker or customer or a stubborn line of code.

When we encounter friction, we have a choice. We can fight the change because the tension is uncomfortable, or we can embrace it as proof that we are advancing the purpose of our work. Accepting that change happens while staying focused on the mission leaves everyone feeling more empowered, so that we can turn every tense moment as a launching point for our own growth. A blacksmith does not focus on the sparks leaping from their hammer as they mold and shape their vision into reality, and neither should we.

Commure’s culture makes a practice of leaving every moment of change undaunted, with a feeling of progress, knowing that we have advanced once more. Our mission will remain as a guide and reminder, long after the temporary sparks of change have passed. Change is inevitable, and our choice to embrace it while remaining focused on our goals will turn any snags or friction into accelerated growth towards our pursuit of a better future for physical and virtual care.

I believe that it is our ability to embrace change at a structural, cultural, and industrial level that enables us to make the most of our strategic partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions. Commure’s growth shows no signs of stopping. I invite you to embrace change with us, and watch as you grow at an unprecedented pace towards a better future.

To accelerate our trajectory we must embrace change effectively. Commure is in a unique and advantageous position in Healthcare to...

Commure Growth Strategy: A Road to What Matters

We’re excited to share that Ashwini Zenooz, MD, has joined Commure’s executive team as the company’s President and Chief Medical Officer. Ash most recently served as Chief Medical Officer at Salesforce, where she led the company's vision for the global healthcare and life sciences business. As Commure sets the stage for rapid growth over the coming months and years, we are thrilled to have Ash’s leadership and experience.

After a career as a radiologist, Ash moved to Washington D.C. to work with the Federal Government both in the Senate and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her mix of medical, government, and technology experience is a perfect match for the vision Commure has for helping bring much-needed innovation and change to the way the healthcare sector thinks about and benefits from modern software technology and IT.

We recently asked Ash to share her perspective on Commure, the industry and some of the things we’ll be working on together.

What made you want a career in medicine in healthcare?

I was always interested in health, science and human biology, and so medicine was a natural discipline for me. Working in Radiology, I had the opportunity to work with some of the top research institutions in the world at Harvard, NYU, and Stanford. When my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer,I realized how challenging the U.S. health system is, and how daunting it can be for patients to get care. There I was, a physician with years of experience working in that system and yet I was just completely overwhelmed helping my mother attempt to navigate it. It’s an experience I return to often.

You’ve had an impressive career in medicine, government and technology. What was it that brought you to Commure?

Two things really brought me to Commure -- the company is taking what I think is the right approach to a really hard problem, and it has a team that I think can really make progress on it. Commure’s Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Hemant Taneja is someone I’ve known for a long time. His passion for solving problems in healthcare, finding the right partners, and coming up with solutions that work that leverage technology in a connected way, as well as the amount of time he has focused on Commure, were huge parts of my decision to join the company.But beyond that Commure is starting to unify healthcare experiences for the consumer, provider and everyone in the system, and it’s taking all these isolated or siloed experiences and bringing them together in a way that works for the people. It’s exactly what the industry needs right now.

I’m energized by how ready the industry is for a new approach to technology. This really is a moment in time when real change feels like it’s possible in ways that it never was before. So much has accelerated as a result of Covid-19 from people’s willingness to participate in virtual care experiences, to the amount of investment that has come into a sector. I wanted to be a part of driving that change forward and I believe I will be at Commure.

We’re excited to share that Ashwini Zenooz has joined Commure’s executive team as the company’s President and Chief Medical Officer.

Welcoming Ashwini Zenooz, MD, to Commure’s Executive Team

Patrice Combatalade

Home hospital is not the same as home care. There is a big difference between the two!

I was being corrected over the phone by a clinician at a leading Harvard teaching hospital in Boston. I listened patiently, sitting in “the phone booth”—a glorified closet in our office, and the only quiet space where I could talk to our customers in peace. It was May 2017 and the doctor and I were discussing how we could help build out his innovative idea: an acute care hospital that treats patients in their own homes.

He was hammering home just how much the right words matter, and how much of a difference a small change can mean.

The distinction between home hospital and home care is profoundly important because the two carry completely different challenges, risks, and costs, while serving vastly different needs. Both services are governed by different rules, procedures, and agreements, but neither can be billed in the same way or to the same payors. It is akin to labeling a body of water a freshwater lake when one is really talking about a saltwater lagoon.

As a UX researcher at Commure, I partner with product and design each day to take complex problems and turn them into simple, actionable plans that our team can execute on. At Commure, we partner with healthcare organizations to modernize care delivery, and it is conversations like this one that make it clear just how important it can be for us to understand the nuance of our words.

"Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today – that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.” - Virginia Woolf

To many, the language used in healthcare ranges from nuanced to opaque. Every word carries linguistic baggage that impacts everyone from patients, to providers, to communities, and beyond. A single word can describe an inconvenience or it can carry life-changing significance.

Healthcare is an ecosystem, which has people in need at its very core. The “people natured” facet of healthcare can both foster new ideas and lock us into antiquated patterns of thought. It is only by having the right conversations, asking the right questions, and finding the right information that we enable this ecosystem to change and adapt. This work is very complex and requires a shared basis of understanding.

Small changes can make big differences. Healthcare leaders are often trying to improve care by testing changes similar to the home hospital program. Many of these changes are local or unknown before they become widely accepted and many already carry risks, costs and a lot of hard work. All of which can lead to nothing if they are roadblocked and killed by small errors in communication in the tools they utilize.

Only when we have a healthcare technology ecosystem which fosters communication around the responsible implementation of new ideas can we benefit from these small changes turning into big differences. This is the future we at Commure seek to create.

The Harvard doctor’s insightful lecture taught me the importance of a shared vocabulary when working with healthcare and the impact that small changes can have. It is only through conversation and shared knowledge that we can bridge the gap between health and technology we see today. To finish this tale, my team and I were able to help the home hospital pilot using 

, a Commure-developed care team coordination application. Enabling secure access to customized patient lists via smartphone and enhancing their care coordination allowed the group to focus on creating a possible evolution in care delivery.

At present, COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on the home hospital program. Throughout the pandemic, the team has been able to maintain their high caliber of care while actively ensuring that vulnerable people would not be put at risk with a hospital stay.

I’m proud that Commure fosters a culture of communication to minimize the struggles clinicians face when providing care. This was just one of many cases we face daily in our challenge of enabling care by minimizing the disruption of technology and maximizing the understanding behind its implementation. Home hospital and programs like it may one day help improve our approach to healthcare, but only if technology is able to pave the way, instead of block it.

Important insights from a UX designer's collaboration with a top Harvard hospital doctor. Pat shares his tips on why language matters in UX design for healthcare technology.

Why Words Matter: The Power of Nuance in Healthcare Technology

Lorenza Ramírez

With a major in Industrial Design, I started working as a UX Designer at a consulting agency 5 years ago. Working with multiple entrepreneurs made me realize the positive impact that my job as a designer could have if carried out using a thoughtful and user-centric methodology at its core. I quickly learned that building digital products only for financial gain caused projects to fail in early stages because they were often unable to effectively solve a specific user need or problem.

In my career, my focus has centered on creating high-impact experiences that meet basic needs. At first, in my work designing a platform to facilitate the communication between job seekers and employers and then later in building platforms that intuitively improve the healthcare space at Commure. If my experience resonates with you, I encourage you to keep reading.

When I joined Commure, I was presented with the challenge to design the future of care based on real necessities from care teams, clinicians, and developers building clinical workflows. Commure is a company that empowers innovation across the healthcare ecosystem with a clear north star of bettering the way health systems and care are currently handled. This was a marked departure from the design needs of any other project I had previously worked on. Our model for healthcare design comes with a higher level of responsibilities and challenges that I would like to share today.

Healthcare is a complex ecosystem and it is challenging to understand all the little pieces that integrate together to form the full health system experience. For example, how care teams manage patient information through EHRs, HIPAA regulations, or the use of FHIR, a standard that defines how we exchange healthcare information electronically. Current common healthcare products have not been designed to understand basic human needs and problems. As a result, they produce frustration, dissatisfaction, and inefficiencies. Working to understand the complex healthcare context is crucial to designing a better future for these products.

Creating relationships with users to make more informed design decisions in any design field is a challenge. However, there is a higher barrier of entry and relation when attempting this in healthcare. We are not real users, and cannot relate to them in the same way we would when designing a music streaming app. Therefore, collaboration becomes one of the most key processes we can focus on, as there is a higher amount of concepts, contexts and information that a designer who has not worked in health could not innately understand. Working through a strong research process and seeking constant cross-team validation is part of our daily routine. I have learned that figuring out what the right questions are, who to ask about them, and how to ask them has had an incredibly positive impact on my decision-making and the effectiveness of my design.

Current healthcare platforms are one of the most complex systems in the world. These products are created to help care teams be more efficient but often result in more inefficient or confusing systems. One of the main reasons for this failure is that much of the current healthcare software has not been designed with the user at the center of every decision. To add even more complexity, the 24/7 importance of these workflows can stump innovators trying to build, update, and maintain modern care systems in active environments. Our goal is to help developers, innovators, and clinicians alike make a difference by reaching better outcomes using intuitive platforms which simplify their current way of work.

I have learned that tackling these challenges as a designer in healthcare is not an easy task but it is incredibly rewarding. Working at Commure has given me the opportunity to realize that these challenges are also opportunities, not only to modernize the experiences that users have with digital platforms, but also my own approach to design.

I want more designers to start seeing these challenges as opportunities to grow and to understand the positive impact their work and attention could bring. I want more designers to feel what I have felt since I decided to become a healthcare designer, that I am helping change the lives of others for the better along with my own. I want to be a designer that looks to create a greater positive impact in the world I live in. I hope that my experience encourages individuals to risk their comfort and venture from the world of basic design and tackle a more difficult ordeal. This industry is in desperate need of more empathy, more thoughtful design and more products built for the purpose of improving care teams lives. It is time to move forward and embrace the uncertainty within challenging design, not only for those around but for ourselves, because it gives us the opportunity to grow and move forward as designers.

Lorenza Ramirez Hoyos, a Product Design Manager at Commure, shares how her design changed to suit the needs of the modern healthcare experience.

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Learning a New Model of Care & Design: How Healthcare Changed My Focus

Escrito por: Lorenza Ramírez Hoyos, Product Design Manager en Commure

Tras estudiar Diseño Industrial, comencé a trabajar como diseñadora UX en una consultora de productos digitales hace 5 años. Esta experiencia con emprendedores me hizo darme cuenta del impacto que podría tener mi trabajo si se llevaba a cabo utilizando una metodología centrada en el usuario. Aprendí que construir productos solo con el fin de ganar dinero hacía que estos fallaran en etapas tempranas pues, a menudo, no resolvía de manera efectiva una necesidad o un problema de un usuario específico.

En mi carrera, mi enfoque se centró en la creación de experiencias que cumplieran necesidades básicas. Como por ejemplo la de diseñar una plataforma para facilitar la comunicación entre candidatos que buscaban trabajo y empleadores llamada Merlin y Commure, donde construimos plataformas que mejoran la experiencia de los usuarios de los sistemas de salud. Si mi experiencia te llama la atención, te invito a que sigas leyendo.

En Commure me encontré con el desafío de diseñar el futuro de la industria en función de las necesidades reales de los empleados de la salud, personal médico y desarrolladores. Commure es una empresa que potencializa la innovación en el ecosistema médico con un claro objetivo, el de mejorar las experiencias actuales de plataformas que no cumplen con su trabajo. Esto ha marcado el comienzo de una carrera que discierne de cualquier otro proyecto en el que haya trabajado. Diseñar para la salud involucra un nivel más alto de responsabilidades y retos que quisiera compartirles hoy.

La salud es un ecosistema complejo y es un reto comprender todas las piezas que integran el panorama general. Ejemplos de estas complejidades giran alrededor del manejo de la información de los pacientes a través de los registros electrónicos de la salud (electronic health records, EHRs), las regulaciones HIPAA o FHIR, el estándar que define cómo se intercambia información médica electrónicamente, entre otros. Las plataformas que permiten hacer estos procesos en la actualidad no fueron diseñadas para comprender las necesidades básicas de sus usuarios y como resultado producen frustración, insatisfacción e ineficiencias. Trabajar para entender el complejo contexto de la salud es crucial para diseñar un mejor futuro para estos productos.

Crear relaciones con los usuarios para tomar decisiones argumentadas en cualquier campo del diseño es un desafío. Sin embargo, existe una barrera de entrada más alta cuando hablamos de los usuarios en el sistema de la salud. Nosotros no somos usuarios reales y no tenemos la habilidad de relacionarnos con ellos como si lo hacemos cuando diseñamos para una aplicación de streaming de música, por ejemplo. La colaboración con otras personas dentro de la compañía se convierte en uno de los procesos más importantes pues hay una gran cantidad de conceptos, contextos e información que un diseñador que no haya trabajado en la salud no comprendería innatamente. Trabajar con procesos sólidos de investigación y validar constantemente con los equipos el trabajo que se hace es indispensable. He aprendido que hacer las preguntas correctas, a las personas correctas en los momentos correctos tiene un impacto positivo en la toma de decisiones y la efectividad de mi trabajo como diseñadora.

Las plataformas para la salud actuales son uno de los sistemas digitales más complejos del mundo. Estos productos se construyen para ayudar al personal médico a ser más eficientes pero a menudo resultan más ineficientes y confusos. Una de las principales razones de este escenario es que gran parte del software actual no se ha diseñado pensando en el usuario como centro de cada decisión. Para agregar más complejidad, la necesidad que estas plataformas funcionen 24/7 pueden prevenir de forma negativa a innovadores que intentan construir, actualizar y modernizar estos sistemas en entornos activos. El objetivo es ayudar a los desarrolladores, innovadores y médicos a marcar la diferencia al lograr mejores resultados utilizando plataformas intuitivas que simplifican su forma de trabajo actual.

He aprendido que enfrentar estos retos como diseñadora no es una tarea fácil pero se ve compensada con lo gratificante que es su impacto. Trabajar en esta compañía me ha dado la oportunidad de darme cuenta que estos retos también son oportunidades no sólo de modernizar las experiencias que los usuarios tienen sino también mi aproximación al diseño.

Quiero que más diseñadores vean estos desafíos como oportunidades para crecer y comprender el impacto que su trabajo podría tener. Quiero que más diseñadores sientan lo que yo sentí cuando tomé la decisión de unirme a este equipo que essaber que estoy ayudando a mejorar la vida de los demás y también la mía. Yo quiero seguir siendo una diseñadora que está en la búsqueda de impactar positivamente el mundo en el que vivo. Sueño con que mi experiencia anime a mis colegas a arriesgar su comodidad de diseñar para nuestro día a día y aventurarse en un mundo un poco más complejo. Esta industria necesita desesperadamente más empatía, un diseño más reflexivo y más diseñadores trabajando en productos con el propósito de mejorar la vida del personal médico. Es hora de avanzar y aceptar la incertidumbre, no solo por las personas que nos rodean sino también por la oportunidad de crecer como diseñadores.

Vacantes

En Commure me encontré con el desafío de diseñar el futuro de la industria en función de las necesidades reales de los empleados de la salud, personal médico y desarrolladores.

Desafíos de diseñar para un nuevo ecosistema de la salud.

Viviana Gomez

 trabaja como Directora de Gestión de Producto para Commure, desde Bogotá, Colombia.

Este año, Commure nos dio a mis compañeras del equipo de producto y a mí la oportunidad de asistir virtualmente a la 

. La conferencia reunió a más de dos mil asistentes y sesenta oradores para compartir historias de sus inspiradoras carreras y conocimientos prácticos sobre la gestión de producto.

Una de las sesiones más impactantes de la conferencia fue de Abbie Kouzmanoff, Gerente de Producto senior en 

, llamada “Featureless Roadmaps: Outcomes not Outputs”. Hoy, me gustaría compartir algunas de las mejores prácticas de gestión de producto que aprendí de Abbie y que he aplicado a mi trabajo diario como Gerente de Producto en Commure.

Tradicionalmente, los roadmaps consisten en una colección de funcionalidades que planeamos construir y las fechas de entrega asociadas. Abbie presentó una alternativa a los roadmaps basados en funcionalidades y habló sobre las dificultades que muchos experimentan con este tipo de roadmaps como resumo a continuación:

Caer en la trampa del teatro del éxito: 

Enfocar el roadmap en las funcionalidades de un producto, puede fácilmente llevar al equipo a celebrar por la salida a producción de funcionalidades de las que ni siquiera se sabe que tendrán un impacto positivo.

Frenar la creatividad y la moral del equipo: 

Los roadmaps basados en funcionalidades no dejan espacio para que los diseñadores e ingenieros desarrollen una mejor solución. Comprometerse con funcionalidades muy detalladas demasiado pronto puede limitar la capacidad de un equipo para encontrar una mejor solución al problema. También afecta la moral del equipo. Las personas están motivadas por el impacto de lo que están construyendo, no por lo que están construyendo en sí. Es fácil perder de vista el problema y la perspectiva del cliente si el equipo sólo está concentrado en las funcionalidades del producto.

 Las conversaciones más importantes para tener con el equipo y stakeholders son las que sirven para alinearlos sobre los problemas más urgentes y la estrategia de negocio asociada. Y aunque hablar sobre la solución no es algo malo, tener esas conversaciones 6 o 12 meses antes del desarrollo puede resultar en trabajo ineficaz.

Para evitar estos problemas y pasar a un proceso más orientado a los resultados y el impacto, Abbie propone dos métodos.

 El primer método sugiere agregar objetivos y temas de negocio al roadmap. Los temas son conceptos de alto nivel en los que el equipo se debe concentrar para lograr el objetivo de negocio deseado.

Este es un método en el que los equipos se comprometen a resolver un problema de usuario en lugar de enfocarse en sacar a producción una funcionalidad en particular. El Roadmap de Problemas desafía a los equipos a pensar en los problemas de los usuarios de una manera más integral.

Los Roadmaps Temáticos llamaron mucho mi atención y encontré varias similitudes con uno de los métodos que yo he usado en los últimos años de mi carrera. Mi equipo y yo definimos objetivos específicos (dos o tres por equipo) que reflejan claramente el impacto en el problema del cliente que planeamos resolver. Después de eso, definimos épicas de alto nivel (lo que Abbie llama temas), que brindan claridad a las partes interesadas sobre el trabajo que vamos hacer, sin entrar en los detalles de la solución real.

Una vez que todos estamos de acuerdo en las épicas en las que planeamos trabajar, cada equipo tiene suficiente espacio e independencia para pensar en las tácticas específicas para cada épica y para cada objetivo. En mi opinión, este método no solo ayuda a evitar los problemas mencionados anteriormente, sino que también ayuda a escalar fácilmente la organización al brindar a los equipos el espacio suficiente para proponer nuevas soluciones, ser creativos y aprender sin sacrificar la alineación del equipo en los resultados esperados por la compañía.

Si bien he trabajado en muchos tipos de productos diferentes y en diferentes industrias como Gerente de Producto, siempre encuentro que los fundamentos de la gestión de producto permanecen en gran medida constantes. Cuando me uní a Commure, el verano pasado como resultado de una adquisición, nunca antes había trabajado en tecnología para el sector salud, sin embargo me sentí como en casa inmediatamente gracias a las prácticas de gestión de producto que usamos a diario.

Con poco tiempo en la compañía, me di cuenta de que el trabajo que hace Commure para acelerar la innovación de software de atención médica es fundamental para mejorar la calidad de la prestación del servicio de salud y proporcionar a los médicos un mejor software. Mi trabajo en Commure me permite no solo mejorar mis habilidades de gestión de producto, sino también tener un impacto positivo en el sector salud con los productos que fabricamos.

Si te apasiona la gestión de producto como a mi, consulta nuestras ofertas laborales y

Esta publicación no está patrocinada ni afiliada con la conferencia, “Women in Product”.

Sobre La Autora: Viviana Gomez trabaja como Directora de Gestión de Producto para Commure, desde Bogotá, Colombia.

Creando Roadmaps más Eficaces: Aprendizajes de la Conferencia “Women in Product”

Daniela Lozano

Como gerente de ingeniería, he encontrado que el uso de la retroalimentación es la herramienta más importante en el proceso de entrenar a mi equipo, y he podido ver su efectividad de primera mano al recibir retroalimentación cándida de mis líderes y gerentes. El uso apropiado de la retroalimentación abre canales de comunicación clara y crea confianza. Los efectos varían entre pequeños cambios de comportamiento, que mejoran desde la calidad de vida hasta provocar ascensos gracias al mejor manejo de las responsabilidades.

Dada mi experiencia previa con la retroalimentación, como gerente, fue importante para mi hablar y reforzar la cultura existente de retroalimentación en Commure para que todos puedan cosechar los beneficios.

Commure me ha facilitado la creación de un entrenamiento para toda la compañía para educar al equipo sobre los beneficios que trae dar y recibir buena retroalimentación. En este blog, mi intención es compartir cuál es la cultura de retroalimentación constructiva que hemos construido en Commure basándonos en estas sesiones.

Todos tenemos diferentes estilos de comunicación, y múltiples formas para entregar mensajes, ya sea de forma escrita, hablada o inclusive con nuestra expresión corporal. Dada la multiplicidad de formas en que podemos comunicarnos, hay espacio para confusiones y malas interpretaciones entre los individuos que pueden estar más acostumbrados a cierto tipo de comunicación sobre otros. He encontrado que para considerar la comunicación franca y fidedigna, 

 debemos velar porque nuestro mensaje y comunicación sean tan claros como es posible. Al mantener este principio en mente mientras damos retroalimentación nos permite crear relaciones de equipo más fuertes al reducir malentendidos, incrementar la confianza y ajustar la comunicación para el contexto en el que se entrega y se recibe.

La confianza es el elemento fundamental en cualquier gran relación, ya sea con nuestros compañeros de trabajo o con cualquier persona. La confianza es muy sencilla de entender, pero requiere mucho trabajo para mantenerla. Si no podemos confiar en el otro, no podemos confiar en la retroalimentación que recibimos, lo que hace casi imposible ajustar nuestro comportamiento.

En las relaciones, la confianza se construye a partir de la paridad entre nuestras palabras, nuestras acciones y nuestras emociones, y se ve aumentada o disminuida por nuestras intenciones.

Las siguientes cuatro reglas de retroalimentación se basan en los principios que he descrito anteriormente. Cada una de ellas es crucial para crear y mantener una cultura de retroalimentación constructiva que genere confianza y fortalezca las relaciones del equipo.

Una retroalimentación oportuna y frecuente hace que nuestros mensajes sean relevantes. La retroalimentación debe darse tan pronto como se identifique un comportamiento que necesita ser abordado o elogiado, y después de que haya pasado el tiempo suficiente para evitar parecer hostil hacia el receptor.

Para evitar que parezca que se está atacando al destinatario de los comentarios: ten en cuenta que debes pedir permiso antes de darlo, busca un momento en el que tú y la otra persona estén tranquilos y asegúrate de que los das en un ambiente adecuado. Creemos que siempre se debe dar la retroalimentación constructiva en privado y elogiar en público (cuando el destinatario se sienta cómodo con ello). En Commure sugerimos que se pregunte a la otra persona cuál es su método preferido para recibir los comentarios y animamos a todos a adaptar sus mensajes respectivamente.

2. Enmarcar la retroalimentación de forma accionable y específica

Para esta regla sugerimos utilizar el marco 

 (por sus siglas en inglés - Situation, Behavior, Impacto) o SCI en español. Las siglas representan Situación, Comportamiento e Impacto. La situación debe describir el 

 por el que proporcionas esta retroalimentación, así como el 

 en que la observaste. El comportamiento describe las 

 de la otra persona y tu sugerencia de cambio. Es muy importante que te centres en lo que hacen, no en lo que son. Por último, debes especificar el impacto de su comportamiento, hacerles saber cómo está 

 al equipo o al desarrollo del destinatario.

Asegúrate de evaluar tus comentarios utilizando el modelo SBI e identifica la retroalimentación que es accionable. Una vez hayas terminado de proporcionar una retroalimentación completa, siempre debes dar a la otra persona la oportunidad de aceptar o rechazar su retroalimentación. El que da la información debe estar preparado para dar una explicación razonable y un camino a seguir para todas las partes implicadas en caso de que la información sea rechazada.

Esta regla es un recordatorio para evitar desmoralizar a los miembros del equipo. En Commure nos esforzamos por difundir la mayor cantidad posible de comentarios positivos. Destacamos las victorias de nuestro equipo y celebramos las contribuciones individuales. Cuando vemos un comportamiento que podría mejorarse, la gente debería sentirse empoderada para abordarlo y encontrar soluciones. Pero nuestro objetivo es encontrar múltiples piezas de retroalimentación positiva por cada pieza de retroalimentación constructiva.

4. La retroalimentación es una calle de doble vía

Y por último, esta es la regla más importante de una cultura de retroalimentación sana y próspera. Todos debemos recibir retroalimentación tanto (si no más) como la que damos.

De este modo, cerramos el círculo de la confianza mostrando confianza nosotros mismos. En Commure creemos que el grupo de liderazgo debe actuar como un ejemplo para todos los empleados, y recibir el feedback con gracia y de forma positiva por lo que es: una increíble oportunidad para crecer.

Espero que este blog haya arrojado algo de luz sobre la cultura de la retroalimentación que he trabajado para fomentar en Commure y por qué la retroalimentación es tan importante para un lugar de trabajo funcional y feliz. Valoro la apertura de Commure al permitirme compartir esto y proporcionar a todos las mismas herramientas que me han dado para crecer.

Daniela Lozano, Gerente de ingeniería, comparte cómo ha ayudado a cultivar una cultura de retroalimentación constructiva en Commure y qué estructuras de retroalimentación funcionan.

4 Reglas para dar y recibir mejor Retroalimentación Constructiva

As an engineering manager, I’ve found feedback to be the most important tool in the process of coaching my team, and I’ve seen the effectiveness of it first hand by receiving candid feedback from my managers and leaders. Proper feedback opens a channel of clear communication and deep trust. The effects of clear and well managed feedback can range from small changes in behavior to promotions due to better management of responsibilities. Given my experience with feedback as a Manager prior to my arrival at Commure, it was important for me to speak on and reinforce the existing feedback culture at Commure so that everyone could reap the benefits.

Commure enabled me to host a company wide training session to educate others on the benefits and nuance of giving, receiving and teaching great feedback. In this blog, my goal is to shed light on the feedback culture we have cultivated within Commure based on these sessions.

Everyone has different styles of communication, people can send a message in a written, spoken or even acted format. These differing styles can leave room for confusion and misunderstandings between individuals who may be more accustomed or able to process one type of message better than another. I have found that in order to be considered frank and trustworthy with one another we must first strive to make our messaging and communication as clear as possible. Keeping this foundation of clear communication in mind as we work on feedback allows us to create a higher form of team relationship by reducing misunderstandings, increasing trust, and tailoring our communication for the context it is delivered and received in.

Trust is the foundational element of any great relationship, be it with our coworkers or any other human. Trust is very simple to understand but requires a lot of work to maintain. If we cannot trust one another, we can’t trust the feedback that we receive, making it almost impossible to adjust our behavior.

In relationships, Trust is built on the alignment of our words, our actions, and our emotions and it is magnified or diminished by our intentions.

The following four feedback rules build on the foundation I outlined above. Each of them is crucial in creating and maintaining a feedback culture which builds trust and strengthens team relationships.

Well timed and frequent feedback keeps our messaging to each other relevant. Feedback should happen as soon as a behavior that needs to be addressed or praised is identified and after enough time has passed to avoid seeming hostile towards the receiver.

To prevent from seeming as though you’re attacking a target of feedback: be mindful of asking for permission to give feedback, find a time when you and the other person are calm, and make sure you’re giving feedback in an appropriate setting. I believe you should always give constructive feedback in private and praise in public (when the recipient is comfortable with this). Here at Commure we suggest asking the other person their preferred method to receive feedback and we encourage everyone to tailor their messages accordingly.

2. Frame Feedback as Actionable and Specific

. It stands for Situation, Behavior and Impact. The situation should describe 

you’re providing this feedback as well as 

the other person did, and your suggestion for change. It’s very important that you focus on what they do, not who they are. Finally, you should specify the impact of their behavior, let them know 

 it’s affecting the team or the recipient’s development.

Make sure to evaluate your feedback using the SBI model and identify feedback that is actionable. Once you’ve finished providing thorough feedback, you should always give the other person the opportunity to accept or reject your feedback. A feedback giver should be prepared to have a reasonable explanation and a path forward for all parties involved should feedback be rejected.

This rule is a reminder to always avoid demoralizing team members. At Commure we strive to spread as much positive feedback as possible. Highlight our team wins and celebrate individual contributions. When we see behavior that could be improved, people should feel empowered to address it and find solutions. But our goal is to find numerous pieces of positive feedback per one piece of constructive feedback.

And finally, this is the most important rule of a healthy and thriving feedback culture. We must all receive feedback as much as (if not more than) we give it.

Thus we close the circle of trust by showing trust ourselves. At Commure we believe in fostering a culture of feedback where leadership acts as an example for all employees, and receives feedback with grace and positivity for what it is: an amazing opportunity to grow.

I hope this blog has shed some light on the culture of feedback I have worked to cultivate at Commure and why feedback is so important to a functional and happy workplace. I value the openness of Commure in enabling me to share this and to provide everyone with the same tools I have been given in order to grow.

Engineering Manager, Daniela Lozano, shares how she helped cultivate a culture of feedback at Commure and explains why feedback is so important.

4 Rules for Giving and Receiving Better Feedback

Commure Developer Experience Team

 to lower the barriers to innovating in healthcare by giving developers the tools needed to build and deploy fully compliant healthcare applications. Today, Commure is releasing a collection of new 

 that improve the developer experience and make getting started with the Commure Developer Platform simple.

Available immediately, developers can create a free account to access the following new resources.

 allows developers to create a randomized, realistic, and hand-curated synthetic dataset to use during the development of an application. With an easy-to-use point-and-click interface, developers can simply select the FHIR® resources they need.

 expands upon the Data Explorer functionality with regards to viewing FHIR resources in a developer’s database. Developers will enjoy a completely revamped user interface from which they can also search, create, edit and delete new FHIR resource records as needed.

 streamlines the process of registering a new application with Commure’s backend and is an important first step in developing a healthcare application on the Commure Developer Platform. This feature allows developers to document their applications and register a new client that can authenticate with our Platform and perform operations through our FHIR API. Developers are also able to view, edit, and delete their existing app registrations on an intuitive user interface.

Users that create a free account on the Commure Developer Platform now have access to four new tutorials that guide developers through the lifecycle of healthcare application development. The new tutorials highlight how to get started with Commure, how to build a complex clinical application, how to understand practical clinical scenarios, and how to navigate FHIR data.

 is an interactive developer guide to help users build a basic patient chart using Commure components and data libraries. Ultimately, the goal of this guide is to give developers a canvas they can use to expand and customize reference applications.

Commure is a San Francisco-based technology company focused on accelerating healthcare software innovation. The company’s developer-facing product, based on the FHIR standard, makes it seamless for software developers to create and deploy next generation healthcare applications with a secure, reliable, compliant and interoperable foundation based on modern standards. Commure offers developers transparent control from security and compliance review to clinical informatics, while enabling integration and a HIPAA-attested cloud environment. Commure was hatched at General Catalyst, which has backed healthcare companies such as Livongo, Oscar, Mindstrong, and Color. For more information, please visit

The Developer Experience team at Commure strives to streamline healthcare app development for all developers. With today's release, making a healthcare app is easier than ever. Explore what's new. 

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