Therasa Bell Cofounder, President & CTO, Kno2 Big Topic: Perseverance Meets Vision You’d never know it, but Therasa Bell describes herself as an introvert. She is “in her head” a lot, synching and strategizing and would be perfectly content to sit behind the scenes. But when you have a vision in the marketplace that has never been thought of before, bringing that vision to fruition can only be achieved through perseverance, and pushing beyond the things that our uncomfortable. It also means identifying where you need the most help, which is why Therasa has made tough decisions for the sake of the vision and the employees, such as bringing in a CEO who understood and shared the same passion for her vision while leading the company through financial growth and scalability. Therasa will tell you the hardest thing in leading a startup company for her is making the pivot from relying on herself for delivery to leading an organization of high performers responsible for execution. We are constantly breaking glass because we tackle interoperability in a completely different way. While we hire for talent, it’s more than knowledge transfer; it’s asking people to think sometimes in a completely different way, break the status quo, and then equip them to take the vision and run with it. When you create a company and establish your core values, it is easy to infuse them into a staff of three, then 10, maybe 20; but the key is making sure you don’t compromise those core values regardless of size. Therasa will share that her passion is equally divided between fulfillment of the employees personal and professional ambitions as it is to fulfill the vision of the company. The most rewarding thing for Therasa is seeing growth in a person individually or in a partner. In many cases we are asking a partner’s customer to embrace something they never thought was possible. Thus, it is extremely important to celebrate small wins. It confirms the vision is correct and the hard work is worth it. It builds trust and loyalty from your team and strengthens partner relationships. Biography Combining her passion for healthcare and extensive technology expertise, Therasa Bell created Kno2 as market forces began to drive more effective, lighter-weight healthcare solutions. With her leadership and drive to solve some of the most persistent challenges facing healthcare, Kno2 continues to create lightweight solutions that enable patient information to be captured and shared across the continuum of care. As President and Chief Technology Officer, Therasa defines the business vision for Kno2 and paves a clear path of execution for the staff. She is responsible for Kno2’s innovation, vision and engineering, and holds six patents for patient information exchange under the company. She believes that the combination of people and the company’s clear purpose makes Kno2 unstoppable. For close to a decade, Therasa has been a thought leader in the healthcare information technology field, serving as a co-chair or member of healthcare IT standards committees that influence national and international standards for sharing clinical information. In 2009, she defined and pushed through a healthcare IT protocol for unstructured clinical content, which passed as part of legislation for the Meaningful Use Stage 2 section of the HITECH Act. Therasa Bell is a woman of “firsts”: • Co-Founder of the HIMSS Health Story Project • An original member of DirectTrust, an original implementer of Carequality, an early participant of IHE and the country’s first FHIR-based EMS care delivery program. • Bell co-wrote and lobbied for the unstructured CDA (UCDA) was incorporated as the ninth template in the C-CDA implementation guide referenced by Meaningful Use. • First to integrate to multi-function printers to send a Direct message straight from the touch panel. (patented) • First to bring interoperability to Microsoft Office 365, integrating Kno2 specifically to Teams to enable the use of Direct messaging and query to a collaboration tool well understood my millions of providers across the country. • First fax server to convert outbound fax transmissions as Direct messages without human intervention. Publications • December 2019 – Blog, If it Doesn't Breathe, it Doesn't Matter - Kno2 • February 2017 – Blog, Kno2 meets with the ONC to further interoperability in post-acute care settings https://bit.ly/2Gdyk7k • February 2017 – Healthcare IT News article, Interoperability: Staying the course, long and meandering though it may be written by John Andrews https://bit.ly/2KwUh58 • September 2016 – Becker’s Hospital Review earned placement, How to Use Fax to get Rid of Fax https://bit.ly/2uX1px6 Public Speaking • August 2021 HIMSS Panel Discussion, Unleashing Unstructured Value Through Artificial Intelligence • June 2021 DirectTrust Summit, ADT Notifications • November 2020 Health Data Unbound, (1) Innovation with Interoperability…Going Beyond Traditional Use Cases, (2) Panel Discussion: Telehealth, Interoperability & Data Sharing as well as • July 2020, HIMSS Webinar: Interoperability and the “Post-COVID” Healthcare Digital Revolution • June 2020 DirectTrust Summit, EMS Use Case • April 2020 McKnights, From Chaos to Clarity: Assisting Post-Acute Providers with their Transition to Interoperability • June 2019, DirectTrust Summit, Innovations Priorities Panel Discussion • May 2019, Casamba Partners in Progress, Panel, How Technology is Shaping the Future of Post-Acute • August 2017 – DirectTrust All Member Meeting, Driving Fax out of Healthcare with Direct • July 2017 – Hosted a “Happy Interoperability Hour” in St. Louis, MO for a community of Skilled Nursing and Post-Acute providers to educate them on how interoperability can streamline workflows, improve care coordination, reduce readmissions and decrease costs • April 2015, HIMSS Panel in Surescripts Booth, Connecting Underserved Markets • April 2015, HIMSS Roundtable, Direct Patient Exchange Outcomes Awards • Named in 2021 Inaugural Class of Interoperability Heroes by DirectTrust • 2020, Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies, Ranked 1544 • 2020, Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies, Ranked 2107 • Named in 2019 Class of Most Powerful Women in Health IT • by Health Data Management • 2019 Microsoft Corp.’s 2019 Health Innovation Award • Category: Empower Your Care Teams and Employees • 2019 Named “50 Most Promising Healthcare Solution Providers” • CIO Review • 2014 Fierce Innovation Awards: Healthcare Edition Program About Organization Kno2® connects all participants across the care continuum, human or technology, for the secure, effortless and maximized exchange of patient information. Serving as healthcare’s largest network aggregator, provides connectivity and exchange across every major national network, a growing number of regional networks such as HIE’s, cloud fax, proprietary platforms that drive critical workflows, and continued expansion of EHR integrations, all through a single set of patented APIs. A technology vendor no longer has to be concerned with the heavy lift of connecting to each network and can stay focused to their core business and application, driving the best user experience possible within their technology. This is what it means to be Kno2 Connected™. To discover how to scale beyond time consuming, costly and antiquated point to point connections, visit www.kno2.com.
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