Today is International Women's Day. A day marked annually as an opportunity to celebrate, raise awareness and move towards gender equality.
In our blog, women in the CLEO Systems team speak about their roles in healthcare software and what today means to them.
Susan Spriggs – Senior Product Manager
Tell us about your role at CLEO Systems. How does your daily work contribute to the team’s success?
In my role as Senior Product Manager, whilst working closely with our colleagues across NHS England, I try to ensure that those national digital and service enhancements and the voices of all our customers/end user’s wants and needs are heard and shared with the wider product, development & testing teams.
Using my 25 years of experience within the urgent care sector, the goal for me is to take these new and innovative wants and needs and work collaboratively with the wider team continually enhance our solutions whilst ensuring they remain intuitive and easy to use.
What does International Women’s Day mean to you? Why is it important for everyone to recognise today?
International Women’s Day is for me a day to celebrate those Women who inspire me and to celebrate women and their journeys to success, however small or large that success may be.
Everyone is successful or inspiring to someone. I, therefore, think it is important for everyone to recognise all the days that allow us all to reflect on those life’s success stories, taking inspiration from the journeys and life lessons of others and creating our own journeys from those reflections.
What makes you proud to be a woman working in healthcare software?
I am very proud to work in HealthCare Software as it means that on a daily basis, I have the opportunity to improve patients’ journeys using new and innovative digital solutions and for myself, I learn something new every single day.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2023 is to #EmbraceEquity. How can we embrace gender equity in our day-to-day life?
We can embrace gender equity in our day-to-day life by building a diverse and inclusive team, retaining talent and nurturing them, removing obstacles and challenges to ensure that everyone has everything they need to succeed.
Emma Dew – Head of Customer Experience & Marketing
Tell us about your role at CLEO Systems. How does your daily work contribute to the team’s success?
I look after Customer Experience, Marketing and Pre-Sales for CLEO Systems, ensuring that our prospects and customers understand how our products can help them to gain efficiencies both for their clinicians and patients.
In my role, I ensure that I am the voice of the customer internally and can communicate the issues and problems that the customer is currently experiencing and how our solutions can solve them. It takes careful communication with a variety of stakeholders internally including Commercial, Product, Development, and Infrastructure. We want our implementation and continued use of our products to be as smooth and easy as possible.
What does International Women’s Day mean to you? Why is it important for everyone to recognise today?
By increasing the visibility of women's achievements and by celebrating International Women's Day, we improve our collective awareness of women's history and increase our understanding of bias, discrimination, and inequity.
What makes you proud to be a woman working in healthcare software?
I have worked in Healthcare Technology for 20 years; I am proud that in a male-dominated environment, I have been able to have a seat at the table with my peers irrespective of gender. As time has gone on, Senior roles for women in healthcare tech have become much more common and I am proud that collectively all my colleagues past and present have made hugely valuable contributions to healthcare tech and improving the patient pathway. A shared vision and goal to make things better for the patient should be what drives decisions around the board table, not what gender you are.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2023 is to #EmbraceEquity. How can we embrace gender equity in our day-to-day life?
“Fair treatment, access and advancement for everyone.” Equity takes into consideration the context and unique circumstances of each individual and demands that treatment and access be adjusted accordingly. I think that is massively important in all spheres of our working and personal lives, everyone is equal and being mindful of that fact when we interact with each other should mean that our behaviours make equity the norm, not the exception.
Aimee Carney – Marketing Executive
Tell us about your role at CLEO Systems. How does your daily work contribute to the team’s success?
My day-to-day work involves developing marketing strategies for business growth, managing all social media activity and email marketing campaigns to drive traffic and leads, whilst also analysing and monitoring our results to determine their effectiveness going forward.
What does International Women’s Day mean to you? Why is it important for everyone to recognise today?
By acknowledging International Women’s Day, we can help to promote greater gender equality by empowering women to break the glass ceiling and have more seats at the table. This can lead to a more just and equitable world, where women have equal opportunities to pursue their dreams and reach their full potential.
It is also just as important for men to acknowledge International Women’s Day to recognise the importance of gender equality. This can help create a more inclusive society, where everyone is valued and respected regardless of gender.
What makes you proud to be a woman working in healthcare software?
I’m extremely proud every day to be part of this field as healthcare software constantly evolves and pushes the boundaries of innovation. Being in the marketing team, I hope to make more people working in this sector aware of new technologies and solutions that can save lives and improve healthcare outcomes.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2023 is to #EmbraceEquity. How can we embrace gender equity in our day-to-day life?
We need to continue celebrating women’s achievements no matter how big or small, speak up when we witness inequality or discrimination and educate ourselves more by learning about gender issues and the experiences of people of different genders.
Seema Doijad - .NET Developer
Tell us about your role at CLEO Systems. How does your daily work contribute to the team’s success?
I’m a .NET developer at CLEO Systems. I work on fixing issues and adding new features to the systems. This indirectly helps the health care practitioners provide better community services.
What does International Women’s Day mean to you? Why is it important for everyone to recognise today?
I can think of a few reasons why I would want this day to be celebrated. Awareness about many such points will help us work on them, not just for a day or a year but constantly.
It will take nearly 140 years to bridge the gender gap
1 in 3 women will experience violence
181 million girls and young women are not in education, employment or training
72 countries don’t allow women to open a bank account
Women make up 70% of the health workforce but hold fewer leadership positions than men in the sector
What makes you proud to be a woman working in healthcare software?
Perhaps the biggest reason that women work in a health career is to make a difference in the lives of others. You will contribute to creating a healthier world. I feel very proud about this aspect of women choosing this industry to work.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2023 is to #EmbraceEquity. How can we embrace gender equity in our day-to-day life?
Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities.
Equity recognises that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. Equity acknowledges that people don't begin life in the same place and that circumstances can make it more difficult for people to achieve the same goals.
Karen Ventura – Product Director
Tell us about your role at CLEO Systems. How does your daily work contribute to the team’s success?
My role at CLEO systems is to lead our product and development teams, lead the next part of our product strategy and coordinate the innovative vision for the CLEO product portfolio - express new ideas, take initiative and save lives. Every role at CLEO Systems is made that way and to succeed at that we need to provide the right environment for creativity. A flexible environment to provide space for ideas and creativity to drive the portfolio forward is key for us.
What does International Women’s Day mean to you? Why is it important for everyone to recognise today?
Whilst the world has moved forwards significantly over the years, we still have a lot to do. It is important that we promote technology careers to females from a young age. I would love to engage with schools to talk about this. Technology careers are not just about coding, which often deters girls from moving forwards in the tech space. There are so many more roles that can be played – we need to talk about that more!
What makes you proud to be a woman working in healthcare software?
Healthcare technology means a lot to me. I truly feel I can be part of the world that can help change how care is delivered to patients. When considering health tech product design, I always have the patient at the heart of what I do. The product we deliver to healthcare professionals when treating patients can and do improve health outcomes. This is my motivation every day.