Meet the Changemakers: Katie Crenshaw

HIMSS serves the global health information and technology communities with focused operations across North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Our members include more than 80,000 individuals, 480 provider organizations, 470 non-profit partners and 650 health services organizations. The HIMSS staff is made up of changemakers who collaborate with members to reform the global health ecosystem through the power of information and technology.

Katie Crenshaw is an Informatics Senior Manager at HIMSS. Within this role, she works specifically with HIMSS content areas related to interoperability, health information exchange, data access and emerging technologies like blockchain technology.

How long have you been at HIMSS?

This summer will be four years at HIMSS. However before joining as an employee, I also served as an intern in our Government Relations office while in grad school.

How do you support our mission statement?

There is a lot of tremendous work being done by our members that leverage information and technology to improve processes, connections and care delivery. I feel lucky to be able to work directly with these ‘boots on the ground’ members on a number of content areas to share out these best practices, tackle challenges and educate the broader community on these technologies so we can move all in the direction of better health and care.

How do you know your work at HIMSS makes a difference?

One of my favorite parts of my job is hearing the value directly from our members — whether it’s a thank you for a resource or webinar, requests for help in getting an answer to their question or suggestions on new topics and education how we can share lessons learned to better inform others. These messages are reminders that while we are working to improve an industry, it’s really the individual that will lead this change and we can be a resource to better equip those individuals.

What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about the work you do at HIMSS?

It can be incredibly challenging to serve as a convener and platform for so many various voices and perspectives. Especially with the topic areas I work with, there is a need to include a wide range of stakeholders who have different priorities and views of the path forward. Coming to consensus on these very complicated topics is never straightforward, but when we can provide broader awareness and direction to the broader industry, it makes the effort worth it.