Her Story
About Deepashree
I started my career as a dentist in India, where I completed my dental education and established my own practice that I ran until 2022. My educational background included extensive coursework in both general medicine and dentistry, which gave me a strong foundation in medical terminologies and healthcare workflows. When I moved to the United States, I pursued a master's degree in health informatics and data analytics at Boston University, choosing a concentration in data analytics and business intelligence. I discovered there was a significant gap between healthcare professionals who couldn't understand IT language and IT professionals who couldn't understand clinical language, and this program helped bridge that divide. During my master's program, I began my US healthcare career at Corwell Health in Michigan, where I worked for 8 to 9 months, followed by a 6-month position at Advocate Aurora Health. I then secured a full-time role at Carolyn Clinic, a nonprofit organization where I currently work as a business intelligence developer. In my role, I work with Epic Systems and various IT tools to create dashboards and reports for hospitals. My unique combination of clinical background and technical skills allows me to easily navigate medical terminologies and understand what healthcare clients are asking for, which my colleagues from pure computer science backgrounds often struggle with. I've found that having a medical or dental background is highly respected in hospital settings because it enables better collaboration and prevents critical errors in reporting. My day-to-day work involves a lot of medical terminology, and my dental and medical education allows me to understand the differences between conditions like type 1 and type 2 diabetes, advanced disease states, and cost implications, which helps me create accurate reports and dashboards that ultimately improve patient outcomes.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Deepashree
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say figuring out how to network and learning through someone who has done it before really helped me get a little bit of confidence, because I was not the first one. There were a few people who had already done what I was trying to do, so I connected with them through LinkedIn and came to know that there are ways to explore and get a full-time opportunity. After talking with several people, I learned the path forward and gained the confidence to pursue this career transition successfully.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say they should make sure whether they're passionate about programming, coding, and all that, and whether they are good with medical or dental terminologies, or any healthcare knowledge. They need to understand healthcare workflows and how the hospital is working, and what all things they look for. They should know the basic outline of a hospital and how the US healthcare system works. If they're familiar with that, I would say 40% of the work is done, and the remaining 60% is just learning on the go. It differs from hospital to hospital. I would also say having a background in medicine or dentistry really helps, because a lot of my colleagues coming from computer science background have no idea when they come across healthcare terminology or medical terminology. They don't know the difference between conditions like type 1 and type 2 diabetes - they think everything's the same. If we select the wrong factor, the entire report will go wrong if we don't understand what the client is asking for. Having a medical background really helps because we won't be spending too much time learning those things. In a hospital setting, especially within my team, they respect people who come from healthcare backgrounds already because it helps with collaboration.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I would say there is a lot of competition between men and women, and I feel that men are recognized easily even if they have less skills than a woman, and they are given promotions or they are given higher pay. There is some sort of gender inequality, I feel. I'm not sure whether it is prevalent everywhere, but I somehow feel that most of the leadership roles are being taken by men, and I see only one or two are occupied by women. The field is still male-dominated, though I'm seeing a lot of females are also entering the field and trying to learn coding and programming. I would say it's about 60-40 as of now, so it's getting better.
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