Shirley Williams
Chief Transformation Officer
New Media Enthusiast and Advocate
Experience Enabler
Shirley is a result-driven and passionate leader. She has led numerous business transformation initiatives across the globe that has included Canada, US, South Americas, Europe and Australia. Her 20 -year career has spanned Biotechnology, Brand & Generic Pharmaceuticals, IBM Global Business Consulting, Healthcare and New Media.
In addition to her own blogs on global leadership [William Pearl] and social media [Social Media Pearls], Shirley is a blogger for Pharma iQ , Huffington Post and currently produces her own talk radio shows including, Rise Of The Patient. Shirley has introduced the term COMsumers to reflect today’s informed and empowered consumer. Shirley helps organizations to become better through the eyes of the consumer, by improving the consumer experience.
Leveraging her talk radio show, business transformational know-how, Shirley facilitates engaging conversations, collaborations and performance to improve systems, processes and operations. Academically, Shirley is a scientist with a Master of Science degree in Pharmacology. Shirley is also a certified practitioner and professional in Change Management (Prosci), Project Management (PMP/PMI) and Social Media (OMCP, Online Marketing Certified Professional).
INITIATIVES
1. Rise Of The Patient.
Elevating The Voices in Health Care to Drive Collaboration
There is a movement happening. It is a quiet one, however a critical one.
Patients are finding their voice and are driving conversations in various arenas that are not necessarily in your traditional health care space.
The movement has grown significantly since the advent of the social web.
Social technology has enabled patients to have conversations and connections with exceptional reach and amplification.
They are driving change.
As I crossed the forums of these conversations, I was inspired and became extremely motivated about elevating these voices. I wanted to provide a platform for these stories. I wanted to elevate meaningful stories of both patients and health care leaders who are driving change and collaboration in the health care system. I felt that these stories deserved a wider audience. As a result, the talk radio show, Rise Of The Patient, was born.
I designed the show with the following objectives:
- To facilitate conversations across the health care sector;
- To engage Health Care Professionals and Industry Leaders to join in the conversations;
- To ignite ideas and bridges across the health care value chain that under normal or traditional circumstance may not otherwise occur.
The format of the show has four categories:
- The One Voice:Guests are encouraged to describe their health care experience from an individual perspective e.g. Patient, Physician, Nurse, Care-giver.
- The Organized Voice:Guests are representatives of Patient Groups and/or Therapeutic Associations. In this category, guests are encouraged to describe the objectives of their group and the group’s experience.
- Collaboration:Guests describes their experience with Participatory and Peer-to-Peer health care management.
- Enablement:Guests are leaders in Health Care Technology. They describe how industry and technology are enabling better health care management
I have been so inspired by my guests. For many, it was the first time they have shared their story publicly.
To-date, the show has had over 26,000 downloads! The connections have been rewarding. The stories, elevating.
TimeWise-It.
A consumer-driven initiative to increase the visibility of patient-centric organizations, communities and businesses
As a result of having met so many patients, patient communities and health care leaders, I realize that although the term patient centricity is widely used, it is also widely interpreted. Recently, I was very excited about seeing a conference titled “Patient Centricity”, however it was obvious that the audience was not for patients or patient communities, it was more targeted for corporate leaders. I have often heard many institutions sharing their patient-centric effort and yet when I speak to patients, so few have been asked to collaborate on these initiatives. During the interview I had with the late Kevin Leonard, he shared that he was often contacted for patient initiatives because he is a biostatistician and not because he is a chronic patient. So I kept asking , how is success defined?
My new initiative TimeWise-It, is to give visibility to those institutions, business, products and services that are doing patient centricity and patient experience well from the patient and/or consumer perspective. I believe “Time” is life. Life is about what you do in the time you have. I think we can all agree we would want quality in our lives and we would want to use our minutes, hours, days and years as much as possible, wisely. Hence the term, TimeWise. So, who are the leaders that are TimeWise? As we look in the health care space, many government bodies recognize the value of time too. It has been interpreted as waiting time. Linked to this from a consumer perspective, who and where are they doing this well? What does this look like from a consumer perspective? Transparency in excellence, patient centricity ad consumer experience is what TimeWise-It is all about. Who is doing “It” well?
Today’s consumer wants to be informed; they want communication and collaboration before consuming; before an operation; before taking a pill. TimeWise-It is about providing that platform when this information is exchanged, reviewed and discussed. It is also about interviewing those leaders, businesses and organizations who are driving innovation to improve processes, products and services that improve our time and quality of life. This will be a platform where the “silos” converge and consumer perspectives are readily available. TimeWise-It is in the conceptual stages. For more information email: TimeWiseIt@williampearl.com
Follow Shirley online www.socialmediapearls.com on Facebook and Twitter @williampearl
See the stories of each of the XX in Health Week healthcare transformers: