Squash Your Imposter Syndrome! Real World Data, Women's Health & Humans In AI— Camille McWhirter

Squash your imposter syndrome before it squashes you. That's the sage advice that we hear from Camille McWhirter, VP of Clinical Trials, real World Data and Cancer Registry at Omega Healthcare. Camille. Is not only an OG in this space, but a leader who really brings heart, to everything she does. Big thanks to her for helping me take a break, take a breath and take a sip of water. Before we got started on this interview, the care that she brings to every interaction was just so clear. From the very beginning it was such a pleasure knowing that she has this care and human side to the work that she does to really talk. About the technology, the inspiration, and where she sees transformation falls flat in healthcare. This is all from the Vive event, in February in Los Angeles. Also, is there even a cooler title than VP of Clinical Trials and Real World Data When we talk about AI what's really behind it is how we can process and better understand the data that we work with on a daily basis. What McWhirter sees is that we are too focused on point solutions that solve these narrow track innovations, and we're getting overcrowded. there's crowding in the tools. There's crowding in overlap, there's crowding, between how different players record and save their data. As VP of Clinical Trials and Real World Data and Cancer Registry, McWhirter division supports AI and machine learning as part of their revenue cycle management, we're all about the back office this week on The Tech Glow Up, There's a through line in Camille's work from the early cancer research to doing digital transformation with software as a service tools and now moving back to clinical data, there's really high expectations about the quality of work, the safety and care that, patients and their data is treated with, and the kinds of impact that these kinds of programs can have in organizations if they are aligned and hold the right kind of data as well as values in their implementation. You know, that patient and customer experience are some of the key things that I look for when we talk about robust, impactful uses of technologies and innovation and Omega Healthcare and the work that Camille does shines through on these points. Camille sees AI and machine learning as a path to both better patient experiences and better employee experiences. Can we have happier, healthier patients and nurses and doctors who don't burn out doing the tough work to keep people healthy? Camille is another one of those leaders in health technology who talks about the importance of mentors opening doors and pushing her into new strengths and leadership that she maybe wasn't certain she was ready for? This is where that reminder to squash your imposter syndrome and take those big swings, ask for those meetings, connect with those mentors because why not, squash that imposter syndrome before it squashes you. This episode with Camille McWhirter is. Filled, with key insights from a leader who has been at the heart of digital transformation in healthcare and knows the importance of including real world data, not just from your patients, but from your employees and across the ecosystem so that you can provide the best connected care for the best prices. It was a real treat to talk with Camille McWhirter, my new conference, BFF. At the VIVE event on The Tech Glow Up, take a listen.

And on three we clap. 1, 2, 3.

Whoops. Do

you wanna do it again?

Yes.

1, 2, 3. Hello and welcome to the Tech Glow Up from Vive. I'm Nathan C, and today I'm here with Camille McWhirter of Omega Healthcare. It's so great to see you.

Great to see you. And I've seen you on the show floor and now in person

I know,

which is fabulous.

Camille, let's just jump in. Can you introduce yourself and the work that you do?

It's okay.

Can you introduce yourself? Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

So I'm Camille McWhirter and I'm the VP of Clinical Trials, Real World Data and cancer registry. But we also do in our division, AI and ML modeling and support, which is fabulous and, and part of the big, all of the big conversations here today. But, yes. So we also are an RCM company, so revenue cycle management company. That's, primarily what we're known for best in class winners. But, my division has a customer satisfaction of nearly 100%.

amazing.

But we will be soon.

what's the secret? To being a healthcare technology with a customer. Satisfaction rating above like 12, right above 80, a hundred. Nearly a hundred percent.

And that is exactly what drew me to this company because my background, and I'll tell you. Is technology in the SaaS world. Digital transformation as well, infrastructure, ai, all of that piece. It's my favorite. I've been in healthcare for over 20 years. Mm-hmm. It's my passion and what drew me to Omega is exactly that customer service piece. How the heck are we doing this? How in the world is. you know, how are we able to achieve 100% in, in RWD world in services? It is a phenomenal testament to the leader of the team.

Yeah.

So Heather Gray, who you may have met, last year, absolutely phenomenal. And, Sri on our offshore team chief, our operations manager mm-hmm. Managing teams of physicians, nurses, pharmacists. I mean, doing the most phenomenal work. I just love it. So I, again, it's just, it's, a testament to the leadership.

there's nothing better than joining a team who's leaders you trust and are inspired by. you mentioned a background in. technology, in digital transformation, I'm always curious when somebody, adds a field or steps from one into the other. what was that origin that drove you specifically to healthcare technology and to do this kind of multithreaded complicated space.

Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like I'm coming back to my roots. And this is almost 20 years, 20, 22 years where I started as a lab rat. Mm-hmm. So to speak in a cancer research lab.

Mm-hmm.

worked for a couple years in, in that space and then found the love of technology as you know, from that piece. Moved into digital transformation infrastructure, you know, all these backend systems, all the sis, Microsoft, Oracle, so on forth AWS, all of the wonderful services that they've been providing for years and years. And then back to services, and, and clinical services. Mm-hmm. So now I'm back into clinical trials and clinical or cancer research where I started over 22 years ago. Mm-hmm. But I am just, I'm fascinated with. The ability to make patient care better, to make communication better internally. Mm-hmm. To reduce burnout, which is frustrating. And, and it really improved employee satisfaction too.

Mm-hmm.

I don't think we talk enough about that, so I often will go down that road.

Do you have, a thought about what. Delivering great customer experiences drives on delivering great employee experience.

Yeah, I think a lot of the tools that we're using internally I think are very important and mm-hmm. I'm gonna say something that's a bit controversial here, so you will, you will enjoy this.

Yeah.

I'm not a fan of plugging in. I think there's phenomenal technology out here behind us, in front of us. I think they're all phenomenal when we all work together and create an interoperable tech stack and product. I don't care for the plug. The plug and play. But when we all work together as a team and stitch them all together properly, then we have employees that are better satisfied.

Mm-hmm.

We have patients that are better satisfied.

Yeah. if every problem is solved by a new tool, how many tools do you have to jump into to solve a day of doing healthcare work?

Yes.

Which has all sorts of problems.

Absolutely. Amazing. Absolutely. Yeah.

So,

maybe on the, On the spicy take. Mm-hmm. trend. I love to ask people about their vision for healthcare in the next year. So I'm curious, knowing that a Glow Up the show is called The Glow Up. And a Glow Up is a transformation.

Yes.

what's the transformation you wanna see happen in healthcare in 2026?

Yes. And you started with controversial or spicy, so I was thinking spicy for a second.

Yeah.

I feel like the sp the spicy take is me just being frustrated, you know, many of us executives being frustrated about this, you know, stitching together, stitching together. Mm-hmm. But then on the other side of it, the Glow Up could be, why aren't we working more together? Mm-hmm. To, to make these pieces talk. Yes. And, and the interoperability play. You know, so there's, there's, you know, the infrastructure piece, there's the, Hey, I need ai. It's not, it's not about. When, when I'm gonna do ai, it's, or it's not, if I'm gonna do ai mm-hmm. But, you know, a lot of times it's, it, it all comes down to can I actually, get this implemented, get my staff trained, are they going to be satisfied doing this? Mm-hmm. And can I retain, retain my customer or my, my employees as well?

Mm-hmm.

Conversation that needs to go on that is a bit spicy and a bit Glow Up.

Love it.

Yeah.

So specifically for the work that you're doing at Omega mm-hmm. Working with real world data, working with this oncology data, what's the Glow Up that you see for your team, in the next six months?

Well, I'm excited about women's health research advancing.

Finally,

finally, and did you know, just 10 years ago was when NIH said, okay, we're, we are actually going to accept. Sex is a variable, or a biological variable.

Mm-hmm.

In clinical research. Mm-hmm. Just 10 years ago, but it was in 1986 that the IH recommended, and actually I have, I should, I should pull my, my correct verbiage.

yes.

But the NIH releases a policy that encourages the inclusion of women in clinical research.

This is 20 years ago, wait 30 years ago.

it's amazing.

We thought it was a good idea that we should study the impact of healthcare on

women. Yeah. I'm excited about all this because, I mean, there's a real explosion of data.

Mm-hmm.

You know, but there's an explosion of wearables, wearable data. All the above rings. Now health systems, clinical research organizations, academic medical centers have a bit of a mess that they have to clean up. So that's where my team comes in. Clean up the mess, take this unusable, unstructured data. Clean it up so that we can get more women into these clinical trials. And the right patients into clinical trials and not keep using the same patients over and over again that are located at the academic medical center region. Right

on the coasts and in the big cities.

We need to make it to rural health. We need to make it to community health centers, and that's where Omega comes in. We can come in and clean up the data and increase the number of patients for trials.

One of the conversations, and you've kind of talked about this, right, like we need some AI for this. We need some AI for that. I've been really trying to understand like what is the state of effective responsible ai and maybe even that's like driving revenue or making a difference Today, like a lot of the press releases, a lot of the talk happens. In the future tense, but like, where are we at for like real responsible, you know, effective use of these kinds of tools? Like where is that happening? What's,

and it's very important that the AI doesn't take over completely because what you lose is quality. So it needs to be a human in the loop as opposed to AI is going to take care of everything.

Yeah.

Okay. it's great and phenomenal in the absolute best safe use cases.

Mm-hmm.

And we utilize it to the best of our ability, but it is more, operational. And less quality driven it, it still needs, I mean, there is a lot of very complex clinical data that needs to be, curated pro properly.

yeah,

ai, human in the loop.

Keep, keep the people in the loop.

Maintain research quality, FDA grade data.

Amazing. Cam here, Can you talk about how mentors or coaches have helped you get to where you are today?

Yes, I love it. And even if you go on my LinkedIn today mm-hmm. You will see the last word in my profile is how can I help?

Yeah.

I'm getting a little emotional because this is probably. one of the most important pieces of, of my journey and many, many of ours here today. I mean, maybe yours sitting here today, mentors are really important, but I, I will say that, without many, former female leaders, I've had phenomenal male leaders as well. It doesn't matter. What sex it doesn't really doesn't matter. But I have a few that come to mind because they taught me that I can't, I don't have to be quiet. I can be passionate.

Yes.

And you better damn well squash that imposter syndrome because that will squash you. So I think a lot of that, has come from some of these former leaders. And I pass that along to others. So I, like I said, I, I do lead a HIMSS chapter mm-hmm. In Pennsylvania. I do offer mentorship, just on the dl. So don't be, you know,

don't put it on some podcast.

but I, it's very important that, you know, that I give back because I've, I've gotten a lot. Of feedback from other people, and I welcome feedback. I want, I want that feedback at all times. It's, it's constructive or helpful. Helpful feedback.

Yeah.

At all times. You have to be accountable for, what you say, what you do. And, I, I will take that to the grave. It's very, very important to me I wanna give back. So

how can I help? Is yeah. I love it. Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah.

So slightly different speed, but we've really blazed through our time together.

that's

fine. Mm-hmm.

I would love to give you the opportunity and we kind of touched mm-hmm. On a little bit, but, do you have a spicy hot take to share? a. A strong opinion on healthcare, ai, real world data, or even culture, otherwise.

Ooh, culture.

sky's the limit.

there you got the

mic.

Culture, and it kind of dovetails on my, my comment about imposter syndrome and, in, in really being there to mentor others. Mm-hmm. There needs to be more of that. Okay. Everybody. Mm-hmm. Everybody. Yeah. Everybody should be helping each other. This should be an industry where we lift each other, each other up. This is, you know, we talk about, the technology in general. Mm-hmm. Interoperability, let's all play together. Okay. But culture wise, let's all play together. Let's, let's help each other, you know, improve this, this industry. But my other, the other spicy take, I. I've already sort of talked about was, you know, you really can't plug in a piece of software here and there. Yeah. And just expect to, to solve,

yeah.

The business challenge

one-off solutions are gonna be death by a thousand clicks.

So

if you're talking about interoperability in healthcare. Why aren't we also building connections between each other is a lovely hot take and like to your point, like very much why we are here at an event like five, right? Like this kind of business runs off of personal connections. Absolutely. And you can have all of the technology in the world. People still buy and build business partnerships. With people. Absolutely. At least for the moment.

Absolutely.

Amazing.

So, great.

Camille, how can people learn more and follow up if they wanna learn more about your work or the importance of real world data?

Sure. You can, follow me on LinkedIn and, again, my name's Camille McWhirter, MC, W-H-I-R-T-E-R. omega hms.com is our website. You can also reach out to our general manager, Heather Gray, GREY. I'm here with Taylor, Taylor Elko as well. And, but thank you so much.

I appreciate it. It was so lovely to get Thank you. A research perspective. Yes. a real patient data perspective on the kinds of both interoperability and innovation that it's gonna take to get us to where patients and people are first in this space. It's been such a delight.

You too.

I the tech Glow Up.

Thank you.

We got one last thing. We gotta clap it out.

Oh yeah.

Okay. Ready? 1, 2, 3. Amazing.

Awesome.

Let's staying in. Yes. Awesome.

Love it.

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