Women comprise the majority of the healthcare industry. Their tremendous decision-making abilities make them vital, and women leaders are a linchpin in the healthcare industry. Their intact determination has always helped them to be dauntless and plunge ahead. One such duo is Denise Juliano and Myla Maloney, who have leveraged their collective experience in developing and implementing innovative strategies in healthcare.
Denise is the Group Vice President of Premier Applied Sciences® (PAS), while Myla serves as the Chief Commercial Officer of Premier Applied Sciences. Premier Inc. is a healthcare improvement company that has created one of the most comprehensive databases of actionable data (the Premier Healthcare Database, otherwise known as the PHD), clinical best practices, and efficiency improvement strategies.
Denise is an innovative leader with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and extensive healthcare industry experience. She has led efforts in the development of strategic account management programs and was featured in the book; Beyond the Sales Process: 12 Proven Strategies for a Customer-Driven World by Steve Anderson. In addition, she is known as a mentor and coach and was the first recipient of the Linda A. Rooney Award for Executive Women’s Leadership. She is an executive sponsor of the LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group (ERG) at Premier. Myla is an inspirational leader, thinker and doer with a laser focus on new, out-of-the-box ways to improve the delivery of healthcare. She is not only dedicated to advancing Premier’s mission of improving the health of communities, she’s equally dedicated to developing people both professionally and personally. She developed a training program based on StrengthsFinder which has resulted in the entire Premier organization leveraging a strengths-based approach to individual and team development. She also serves as an executive sponsor of the Military and Veterans ERG at Premier.
The Journey So Far
Since starting at Premier, Denise and Myla have led the team to transform Premier Applied Sciences, into a doubledigit EBITDA and revenue growth business. They have successfully developed their overall strategic vision and business plan, while creating a culture of excellence. Denise and Myla are developing and implementing innovative, real-world evidence solutions with life sciences organizations to accelerate care alignment with evidencebased guidelines and best practices. They are not only identifying and facilitating business development with emerging technology companies to remain competitive, but also leading strategic engagements and developing value co-creation with the highest regarded life science companies.
Bouncing Back Strong
Challenges are nothing new to Denise and Myla, and they have always risen to the occasion and provided with resolve. Below are some of the challenges that the duo came across in their careers:
- Starting a new business – reshaping strategy, reorganizing and expanding, leading change management, establishing new roles and capabilities.
- Establishing and meeting aggressive business development goals. Ÿ Innovating in a highly regulated market.
- Acquiring new companies and creating strategic partnerships all while managing a P&L.
- Leading homogeneous teams.
- Creating a culture of a business owner mindset while being part of a larger organization.
- Developing strategic account management programs with a client facing mentality.
Spearheading Solutions
Through its PINC AI™ platform, Premier uses technology, data, and analytics effectively to drive value for the organization and its member health systems. Its data-driven, clinically integrated, tech-enabled improvement solutions integrate seamlessly into a health system’s electronic health record (EHR).
Being powered by artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML), these solutions provide real-time information at the point of care. They leverage the largest benchmarking database in the U.S., with 100 Billion points of data from more than 1,100 facilities representing 45 percent of all U.S. discharges.
Premier’s solutions are helping to remove waste from healthcare, modernize and automate manual tasks, and ensure success in value-based care, including clinical decision support to ensure the highest quality outcomes demanded by payers, employers, and patients alike.
The Pandemic Response
As the pandemic began, it left clinicians scrambling to find a cure, and life sciences organizations searching for up-todate, real-world evidence. There was a clear need for data to uncover solutions to combat the effects of COVID-19. While hospital data would be ideal, the typical lag time was five months.
Denise, Myla and the PAS team knew it was urgent to support the emergency response to COVID-19; thus, the PAS COVID-19 Response Team was assembled.
The team developed a Special Release of the PHD (the PHD-SR) that shortened the data lag time from five months to two weeks, creating the ideal dataset for COVID-19 research. The PHD-SR was made available for licensing to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH), life sciences organizations and academia to conduct research studies on COVID-19. The PAS Applied Research Team collaborated with government agencies and academia to conduct essential studies, many of which have been published in top journals, including JAMA. These studies informed healthcare professionals about the risk factors of mortality and clinical outcomes of COVID-19 and helped save lives.
A Collective Contribution to the Community
Premier’s mission is to improve the health of communities. Through the collective power of the alliance of approximately 4,100 U.S. hospitals and health systems and more than 200,000 other providers and organizations, the company is leading the transformation to high-quality, cost-effective healthcare.
Premier is committed to making a difference in the communities its members serve by enabling them with the tools and technology to collaborate faster and more efficiently, improve quality outcomes, and deliver better care while safely reduce costs. Alongside its members, they are transforming healthcare together.
Pathing the Future
When asked about the envision of the organization’s future, “We’re looking to expand our capabilities to continue to address the challenges faced by life science companies in concert with our healthcare systems’ needs. One such challenge, clinical trial innovations is key area of investment for PAS,” says Denise.
Clinical trials require broad populations of many different types of patients. Finding patients with suitable characteristics is often a challenge, as up to 80 percent of clinical trials fail to meet targeted recruitment timelines.
“Using our data and broad provider network, we can identify patients in complex therapeutic areas. This is a tremendous value to the life science companies who must demonstrate effectiveness using real-world evidence,” adds Myla.
Advice to the Upcoming Leaders
In their advice to aspiring women leaders, Denise and Myla say, “Take calculated risks, don’t be afraid to stretch yourself, take on assignments beyond your comfort zone, be a daily learner, don’t be afraid to ask for what you want, don’t wait until you’re completely ready to take on your new role, mentor others, know your own capabilities and surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and can do things you don’t.”
