Cadence Conversations

The clinical skills health tech can't stop hiring for

Episode Notes

Join host Eve Cunningham, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Cadence, in conversation with Dr. Stephanie Lahr, founder of Vital Thread Advisory and one of the earliest physician CIOs in the country.

Stephanie's career has been anything but traditional – from internal medicine hospitalist to CMIO to CIO at Monument Health, then President of Artisight, and now running her own fractional executive advisory practice. In this episode, Drs. Eve and Stephanie trace that journey and dig into what it really takes for clinicians to make the leap into health tech leadership.

Their conversation covers:

• Why the non-traditional physician career path is rarely planned and why that's okay
• How clinical skills like systems thinking, change management, and communication translate directly into health tech leadership
• What it feels like to cross from the provider side to the vendor side, including the isolation nobody talks about
• Why the health tech industry is hungry for physician experience, and what fractional and advisory work looks like in practice
• The gap in community and mentorship for physicians navigating non-traditional careers and what needs to come next

Segments:

• Introduction – Eve welcomes Dr. Lahr and frames her non-traditional career arc
• Origin story – From OB-GYN to internal medicine, and building a hospitalist program in Coeur d'Alene
• The hand-raise moment – How a question to a CEO about EHR led to an informatics career
• CMIO to CIO – How Monument Health's CEO saw something different, and how Chime's CIO bootcamp filled the gaps
• Leading 200 people – What Stephanie misses most about being inside a health system
• Crossing to the vendor side – The pace, the loneliness, and learning to wear the buyer's lens
• The Artisight chapter – Smart hospital technology, startup culture, and what the commercial side taught her
• Speaking it into existence –  Why she's thinking about building a new community for physicians in industry
• - Vital Thread Advisory — Why fractional work was scarier than any previous pivot, and why it's working
• Closing advice — Be bold, think outside the box, and never stop learning