Key Staff: Driving Nursing Outcomes through Robotics

Katherine A. Collard, MS, RN-BC (Katherine.a.collard@christianacare.org) joined ChristianaCare in October of 2018 as the CNIO and head of the nursing clinical informatics team. She is board certified by the ANA in Nursing Informatics. Prior to ChristianaCare she spent 18 years developing a nursing informatics team at Stony Brook University hospital and went from their Director to the CNIO. She has over 20 years of System implementation experience as well as a focus on device integration. At Stony Brook she was responsible for designing 150 smart rooms integrating the EMR with other solutions such as beds and the call bell system. “Kat” recently led a team at Christiana to improve workflow and documentation around pressure injuries by implementing an app called Camera Capture. Kat’s team won an innovation award by Christiana and the workflow they developed within Cerner is now being adopted across other Cerner sites as model experience. She will be leading the Moxi initiative here including coordinating the integration of Moxi to other solutions which nursing uses.

Susan Birkhoff, PhD, RN, (Susan.Birkhoff@christianacare.org) is a nurse scientist at ChristianaCare with a program of research specializing in the advancement of nursing science through the aid of technology. Dr. Birkhoff is a principal investigator who leads, plans, and executes interprofessional digital health studies with the aim to investigate complex health problems with technology-based solutions. She has experience researching innovative ideas from inception through post-implementation evaluating need, usability, engagement, and impact for a variety of end users. Dr. Birkhoff has postdoctoral training specific to technology and innovation (T32NR008857) from the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing.

Catherine S. Fernald, DNP, RN, RNC-OB, NEA-BC (catherine.s.fernald@christianacare.org) our Executive Sponsor, is a senior healthcare executive with over 27 years of experience managing healthcare clinical operations, including nursing, ancillary and support services across the care continuum. She excels in patient/staff safety, quality, customer satisfaction and fiscal outcomes in healing environments that are resource-sensitive, highly competitive, and heavily regulated. She oversees nursing care for ChristianaCare’s Newark location. In her current role as Chief Nursing Officer Acute Care, she is sensitive to the needs of clinical nurses for promoting evidence-based practice. In collaboration with frontline caregivers and other stakeholders, provides the conditions to create workflow efficiencies for transforming patient outcomes.

A decade ago, Steven made a surprise transition into the field of nursing from a combat military leadership role in the US Army. Steven has held senior clinical analyst and nursing leadership roles in the past leveraging his passion for people leading, informatics design, and workflow optimization, analysis, and continuous improvement. As a clinical transformation analyst, Steven works with front line staff to assess and advocate for optimal, efficient, and effective patient care delivery.

Michael A. Zeigler (Michael.ziegler@christianacare.org) is the Project Leader, IT-PMO. For over 40 years, Mike has been driving technology change as an IT Technical Consultant and Project Leader for various global firms. He has contributed to both the public and private sectors and has led technology consulting teams at global companies including Accenture, Deloitte and Microsoft. Mike holds an BA in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University and is skilled in IT service management, change management, strategic planning, team building, and project management.

John Efta (jefta@christianacare.org) is a Senior IT Application Analyst. He has 23 years’ experience with ChristianaCare Health system IT. He has implemented and supported many systems and devices over the years. His areas of expertise are interfaces, operating systems, hardware including servers and many different types of devices such as iPads, iPhones, and desktop computing. John has experience with network, wireless, active directory, SQL, iOS, VMWare, Citrix, IIS, Security and Single sign on. He has held positions as a technical lead on many projects. John has excellent problem solving, communication skills.

William “Butch” Crouse (wcrouse@christianacare.org) holds a BS degree in computer science with a minor in business. He has been at ChristianaCare for over 25 years and has worked on many different projects during his tenure. He has supported the technical side of Cerner EHR which includes handheld devices and Citrix services. He is currently a manager within our infrastructure team supporting desktop/mobile environments for over ten years. His role has recently evolved to manage IT communication services, IT database services and finally our printing/faxing services.

David Ernesto Guerrero (David.e.guerrero@christianacare.org) is a Senior Systems Engineer has worked in Information Technology field for 9 Years with 6 years being a Senior Systems Engineer. He has completed multiple projects that built out the entire server, network and phone infrastructure for small businesses. At ChristianaCare, he has supported and enhanced Vocera & Nursecall for about infrastructure communication platforms. He was responsible for also deploying Vocera Engage (integration engine) along with an integration to Qgenda. Currently he is working on several HL7 integrations to further enhance communication for ChristianaCare. David will also be responsible for the integration of Vocera with the Moxi robot in the Grant implementation.

Connor Bondi (Connor.Bondi@christianacare.org) is a Network Systems Analyst. Connor is a 2021 computer engineering graduate from Virginia Tech. He is working as a network analyst with a focus on wireless networks. For the Moxi project he is focused on the connectivity of the robots as well as the iPad kiosks used to call the robot to action.

Keith Coin (KCoin@christianacare.org) is a Senior Application Analyst in Christiana Care IT who has over 26 years of IT experience. Over last 8 years he has worked in the Telecommunications Infrastructure group responsible for administering and supporting the implementation of the Vocera infrastructure and Rauland 5(Nurse Call) System. His skillsets include (Vocera Integrations and Administration, SQL, IIS, Avaya Aura, Rauland Administrator, Excel, and many more). Keith will be responsible for the integration of Vocera with the Moxi robot in the Grant implementation.

Karen Clarke, MSN, RN, NPD-BC (karen.clarke@christianacare.org) is a Nursing Professional Development Specialist with 13 years of acute care nursing experience, with the last 8 years in the Nursing Professional Development specialty. Karen’s NPD experience ranges from community hospital to large multi-hospital academic center, and she has been with ChristianaCare since February 2020. Karen holds a BS in Applied Nutrition from University of Delaware, a BSN from Delaware State University, and an MSN in Nursing Education from Towson University. Karen is certified in Nursing Professional Development.

Andrea Thomaz, PhD is the CEO and Co-Founder of Diligent Robotics and a renowned social robotics expert. Her accolades include being recognized by the National Academy of Science as a Kavli Fellow, the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Tech, MIT Technology Review on its Next Generation of 35 Innovators Under 35 list, Popular Science on its Brilliant 10 list, TEDx as a featured keynote speaker on social robotics and Texas Monthly on its Most Powerful Texans of 2018 list. Andrea’s robots have been featured in the New York Times and on the covers of MIT Technology Review and Popular Science. Her passion for social robotics began during her work at the MIT Media Lab, where she focused on using AI to develop machines that address everyday human needs. Andrea co-founded Diligent Robotics to pursue her vision of creating socially intelligent robot assistants that collaborate with humans by doing their chores so humans can have more time for the work they care most about. She earned her Ph.D. from MIT and B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UT Austin and is a Robotics Professor at UT Austin and the PI of the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab.

Vivian Chu, PhD is the CTO and co-founder for Diligent Robotics and oversees all technology and engineering development for building autonomous robots. Vivian is a 10+ year expert roboticist that specializes in human-robot interaction and has received high tier industry recognition including being honored as a Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholar, honored as a Stanford EECS Rising Star, awarded Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award at IRCA 2013 and featured on Robohub 25 women in robotics you need to know in 2016 list. Prior to Diligent Robotics, she worked at Google[X], Honda Research Institute and at IBM Research in Almaden. Vivian completed her Ph.D. in Robotics at Georgia Tech, her M.S.E. in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009.

Carisa Raucci, ATC, PhD is the Director of Operations for Diligent Robotics and oversees the implementation, day-to-day logistics, and customer success of the automated robots. Carisa has 15 years of patient care experience working in a variety of clinical settings. She received her PhD in Health Behavior Health Education from The University of Texas at Austin. She has experience implementing innovative technology needs into hospital systems including brain injury hardware and software tools, telemedicine, and automated robotic delivery services. Her passion is to analyze and refine healthcare corporations’ workflows, standards of practice, operations, and efficiency. Carisa’s focus revolves around the installation of state-of-the-art technology to equip health care professionals with the tools they need to operationalize patient care.

Kenna Hardaway, M.P.A. joined the Diligent Robotics team early in 2022 with 10 years of experience within the Healthcare Technology field, focusing on interoperability, with hundreds of projects linking EMR data to trusted third-party systems. Kenna is responsible for the implementation and development of IT systems to support Diligent Robotics and their hospital clients. She also manages the technology operations team and systems to ensure that Diligent Robotics systems are secure, consistent, and reliable. Kenna holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of North Florida, and a Bachelor’s degree from Baylor University.

Brian Oswald is the Vice President of growth and oversees commercial strategies, scale, and overall market growth at Diligent Robotics. Brian Oswald has more than 18 years of medical technology commercialization experience spanning medical imaging and software platforms and their applications in areas such as Invasive Cardiology, Neurosurgery, and Clinical Communications and Collaboration. During his time at Synaptive Medical, Brian led global pre-commercial initiatives in Imaging Informatics, Drug Discovery and Medical Imaging Machine Learning & AI. Brian also led commercial growth at Voalte, a digital health startup, through their Series C investment and helped scale new client acquisition and market growth. At Medtronic, he led customer growth strategies for the Surgical Navigation & Intra-Operative Imaging sector. And at GE Healthcare, he completed the 15-month Commercial Leadership Program. Brian earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, and will be completing an MBA in Health Sector Management & Policy from University of Miami in December of 2018.

Jeremy Davis, CHCIO is the Cerner/Oracle-Senior Director, Embedded Technologies and Interoperability. His role on the project will be Developer Ecosystem Engagement with Cerner’s CODE program. He will lead the integration between Cerner and Moxi during this project.

Liz Harvey MSN, BSN, RN, BC, CHCIO is the Cerner/Oracle-Director & Regional Clinical Executive. Liz is a graduate of the University of Maryland where she earned her MSN in Nursing Informatics. She is board certified in Nursing Informatics and is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Nursing Practice in Executive Leadership. Her role is to provide strategic guidance to her clients to accomplish clinical and business goals. She serves as a liaison between clients and Cerner business units to communicate updated and relevant information that impacts development, sales, training and relationships. Liz is also an operations lead for ITWorks where she uses her extensive knowledge base in the technical, operational and strategic areas to drive operational excellence.

Mik Patel, BS is the Lead Engagement Executive at Cerner/Oracle. Mik is a healthcare IT Professional with over ten years of information technology, healthcare, and management experience with strong background in enterprise IT governance and service management, strategic planning and organizational development, and EHR and AMR systems design, implementation, integration, and adoption.  He has knowledge and experience related to health care operations and processes from acute and ambulatory care, outpatient and physician practice, and corporate health system perspectives. Mik has extensive background in healthcare technology delivery, clinical, financial, and revenue cycle systems conversions, and technology infrastructure implementations for diverse, multi-unit, multi-state, investor owned & not-for-profit organizations.

Herb Ricords, MCSE, CCNA, EACOE (hricords@peakoutcomes.com) has 15+ years’ experience as a healthcare solutions architect. He has worked to design and deploy integrated clinical communications technology for many major healthcare systems across the US. Herb founded Peak Outcomes with the goal of leveraging advanced clinical communications to improved patient safety and clinical outcomes.

Michelle Fisher, MSN, RN (mfisher@peakoutcomes.com) started her career as an OB nearly 18 years ago. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and then later a Master of Science Nursing Administration. After leaving the bedside, she held roles as a Clinical Application Analyst Consultant, Senior Clinical Applications Analyst, System Administrator for OBIX Fetal Monitoring System, and a Clinical Informatics Specialist. Starting in 2018, Michelle joined the Peak Outcomes team as a Senior Clinical Workflow Specialist where she uses all her bedside and technical experience to design, educate and implement integrated healthcare communication systems to improve healthcare staff efficiency, elevate patient outcomes, and positively impact patient safety.