April 16, 2025: Laura O'Toole, CEO of SureTest, and Robin Parkin, CIO of UVA Health, explore how SureTest automation revolutionizes healthcare IT testing. How are leading healthcare organizations reclaiming thousands of staff hours previously lost to manual testing? What unexpected benefits emerge when IT teams are freed from the burden of repetitive system validation? As UVA Health implements continuous automated testing, the conversation reveals how this approach prevents system errors before they reach end users and serves as a powerful recruitment tool in a competitive talent market. As the conversation closes the discussion extends beyond technology to address the critical issue of women in healthcare IT leadership.
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[:Continuous testing is critical and getting it right saves lives. Discover the future of healthcare IT automation with SureTest. Visit ThisWeekHealth. com slash SureTest today and elevate your healthcare system's performance.
Bill Russell: Welcome to This Week Health. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time.
Now, onto our interview
ed by Laura O'Toole, the CEO [:Test. And Robin Parkin. The CIO for UVA medicine. Is it UVA medicine or U-V-A-U-V-A Health UVA Health. Got it. Yep. Fantastic. Thank you guys for joining. This is our second time recording this, and I can't believe in the eight years we've done the show, we've only had three recordings not work out.
And the recording we did while we were at VIVE did not work out. So I'm looking forward to revisiting this. when we were at VIVE, we talked about. How you guys what are some of the things you guys were doing at UVA and what are some of the problems you were looking to solve by partnering with somebody like SureTest
so, Robin I'd love to start with you and Sure. Just see, what problem were you looking to solve at the time?
. That was the original idea [:Test. And that's. Certainly has given us a lot of hours back that we can reuse and purpose for something else. But some of the other things that maybe we didn't anticipate is. Our team members really didn't care for manual testing. It required a lot of coordination and work on everyone's part, and so having a process that would handle that on our behalf and we didn't have to deploy people to do it all, it's worked out really well for us.
Bill Russell: And Laura, I'm sure you hear that all the time. That's a common refrain. Both of those the team that has to do the operation on a daily basis doesn't necessarily appreciate doing all the testing that's required and the regression testing and other things that have to happen with every change that's made to the system.
just time and people Talk a [:Laura O'Toole: Yeah. It's really interesting and Robin and her team have just been such a phenomenal, fabulous partner for us. And I think actually we just went through and are going through a renewal for another, three year contract with UVA.
But you know, much like Robin. Said it's interesting, people don't realize how much time they're spending on manual testing and all the components of manual testing. A lot of times people just think about, that two week upgrade period or where you have to take a particular monthly su.
What they don't think about is making sure that the scripts are continually maintained and updated, and that documentation is all in place and preparing. The conference calls to do the testing, preparing the time to report back out on the testing and all of that with a solution like SureTest is done.
g over the last few years to [:We have some clients that actually use this as a recruiting tool to say, Hey, you know, you come work with us, you don't have to do manual testing 'cause we have a, we have a partner in SureTest And we have automated that process. And it's really a joy to watch clients be innovative and be a part of the innovation journey that so many of our clients are.
Moving toward today.
Bill Russell: Yeah. The automated testing is interesting. And Robin, I I I want to ask you, because I've talked to some other Suretest clients and it's interesting. They start with one thing and then they're like, Hey, I think we could use this over here and it can also do this.
Did you have that same experience?
ually had some conversations [:All the time. Anytime it doesn't, it's, it can be on the fly. If we put something in production and we notice something, we can run these scripts and it's just a lot more rigor and keeps us more stable. And our, so our environment doesn't, we don't encounter the kinds of problems that we may have encountered in the past where we have our end users calling us up and telling us we have a problem.
We get the opportunity to find it before they do.
the solution. Our goal is to [:We have now billed probably 30 or so third party surround applications in our library. To your point, because our clients have come to us and said, I wanna do a round trip automation, or I wanna include this third party, or Now let's start to, look at moving up the enterprise. Even for things like Workday.
So now that library continues to get robust, because my ultimate dream for the company was really that all of our clients were gonna share in this de-identified knowledge to be able to help them on their journey just move up the value chain in terms of automating more and more
tomation just happens in the [:What's the lift look like, Robin? What's the lift for bringing a SureTest in? Is it like a year long, big. Massive project or what does it feel like for somebody?
Robin Parkin: So it didn't for me, it didn't feel like a project at all with considering some of the projects that we have. Because SureTest carries a lot of that weight.
So we have to provide the materials. They run those scripts and they build those. Methods for us to be able to do the testing. It's really awesome. And our teams, it's more about the rigor of keeping everything up to date and everyone informed is what makes it all work well.
how we identify the client's [:And we have a very specific approach to that, especially now. And Robin's team, if you look at what UVA has done they've been an innovator. I believe they're the number one hospital in Virginia. So actually our partnership with them has helped us. Evolve our methodologies to the point that now, when we come in to a health system, we have a very methodical way of capturing that information for the particular area of that workflow where they can come in, show us their workflow quickly, and they can leave and go right back to their work.
arily minimal for the health [:So,
Bill Russell: so Robin, I'm gonna do a case scenario here. Let's, Let's assume I'm gonna take a SureTest away from your environment. What, what would happen like over the next couple of weeks if I took it away?
Robin Parkin: So, one, we would have. First probably with the news that it was going away. A lot of very unhappy employees within the IT organization.
But then we would have to figure out how to gear back up to be able to do this work that we haven't been doing a manual way. And that's gonna be very unsatisfying, I think, to everybody, including our. Operational partners who get the benefit of us having that done the way it's done right now.
Bill Russell: Yeah. But you probably have the headcount, right? You just hire as many people as you want.
Robin Parkin: Oh no, no. Um, I wish We would have to figure out how to do it with the people that we have.
verything is heading in this [:UVA number one hospital in, in Virginia. That's a great accomplishment for the team. It
Laura O'Toole: certainly is. Yeah, indeed. And you know, bill I think Robin and I should have talked before we came to this call because we're members of the Yellow Hat Club and we should have been wearing ours. I could have
Robin Parkin: done
Laura O'Toole: that.
Robin Parkin: That would've been awesome.
Bill Russell: I appreciate you guys. It's been uh, it's been a great it's been a great journey. This community is so generous. And, last year we raised $130,000 and this year we're already up over 150 and it's only. April and it's contributions from people like you.
ke this. I'm curious, are we [:Laura I'll, I'll start with you.
Laura O'Toole: I don't know how Robin feels, but I've been in healthcare technology for, my entire career, and it has certainly been. A struggle to rise up to a key leadership role, and I continue to see in healthcare technology that we, I think, are doing a good job of rising up our women leaders.
But from my perspective, there's still not enough that have a seat at the table. So I'm excited to continue to watch that journey shift.
Bill Russell: Robin would I, I would assume you're seeing the same kind of thing.
myself to be able to see the [:They don't think they can, they don't expect some of the same things that maybe some of our male counterparts in those departments might feel that they aspire to be something that some of these women may not know that they could actually accomplish. So you have to pull 'em along sometimes and, and help
Bill Russell: them.
Is there something we could do at the industry level? It's interesting 'cause we do the 2 29 project meetings and I would say that it's indicative because we have CIO meetings or CMIO meetings and invariably it's because it's an IT space. Because women are fairly well represented, healthcare in general, but in, in the IT space it's 20% of the seats.
nts for a while and it Right [:Robin Parkin: when I, When I get into the IT department and within my own organization where I see the. Proliferation of women in it is where somebody is coming out of nursing to do it work.
Like maybe it's epic inpatient work or orders or that type of thing. It is not someone who trained in technology who decided they wanted to go into healthcare most of the time, which is what I did. So I, I was a. Software engineer and
Bill Russell: oh gosh, you must have been the only woman in that class.
Robin Parkin: That was a long time ago too. So even less of them.
ction. I'd be curious to, to [:How the percentages have changed and if that's going to lead to a change. we did a chief Technology officer meeting and there wasn't a single woman in the room, and I thought, yeah that's a very technical role. I'm sure there's women who do it across various industries, but just in our meeting there, just, there wasn't one in the room or.
Laura O'Toole: Yeah, I definitely think the STEM programs are helping, significantly helping. I think just the focus on, women in general in technology. We're seeing, whether you're going to himss, whether you're at Vibe, whether you're at Chime Ball forum there's been several groups that have begun to pop up that I think are.
hnology or across the health [:Yeah.
Bill Russell: Yeah, absolutely. And Robin I'll close with you 'cause one of the things I remember I was interviewing for a CIO job way back in the day and they they were saying, well, you don't have enough experience with this specific technology. And I looked at 'em and I said, if your CIO is logging into that system.
You've hired the wrong person. It really is a leadership role today. It's an influence. It's a budgeting role. It's a mentoring role. It's a organization. It's aligning your resources role. I it's it's not speeds and feeds like maybe it was 20 years ago and more tech like, what kind of hard drives are we gonna use in the computers and that kinda stuff.
letely to a leadership role. [:Robin Parkin: It's, there is a tremendous amount of simple, Management and strategy kinds of work that needs to be done. You're struggling with and trying to put strategy around staffing and how to get work done and not grow your technical debt.
You're trying to do rationalization and shrink your technical debt. All of those things in our. Problems that any kind of business, I think has to deal with, not just it. So it's not really about technology, it's about the right processes, hiring the right people and having the right strategy.
Bill Russell: Yep. Fantastic. Well, Robin, Laura, I want to thank you for sitting down with us and I look forward to catching up with you guys again here real soon. Thank you. All right.
Laura O'Toole: Awesome, bill. Thank you.
Thanks
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