Bringing boundless positive energy to everything she takes on, Marilee Benson is passionate about using interoperable technology to improve health outcomes. She has thirty-four years of experience in healthcare information technology, currently as President of Zen Healthcare IT, a company she co-founded in 2015. Under her leadership, Zen has become a trusted interoperability technology partner working with a diverse set of healthcare stakeholders including leading health information exchanges, healthcare IT/digital health vendors, and provider groups.

She believes that collaboration is the key to removing interoperability barriers, and is active in a number of industry workgroups, including the Carequality Advisory Committee and the HIMSS Interoperability and HIE Committee.

How did you become an executive in the health care industry? Have you always been interested in health care?

In college, I majored in microbiology and then got my MBA. I have always had a love of both science and business/entrepreneurship.

Shortly after my marriage (celebrating 38 years this month!) my husband and I founded our first healthcare IT company together. We are both entrepreneurial and share a love of technology and healthcare, so it’s a perfect match. Some of our early accomplishments were implementing the earliest lab interfaces in the country, and setting up one of the first ever “paperless” physician practices.

After selling our first company to WebMD, I continued to work at an executive level for EMR companies rolling out clinical solutions. That gave me a front row seat in understanding how vital healthcare data interoperability was for optimal provider and patient workflows. And that is ultimately why we founded our 2nd company – Zen Healthcare IT. New data exchange standards just create a more complex environment. We solve this problem by translating between all the standards, so our clients don’t have to.

Data sharing can play a key role in better understanding the widespread challenges and inequities patients face. Why and how should healthcare organizations prioritize interoperability to improve health equity?

The most important levers we have to address health inequities require understanding the full picture of the patient, both from a clinical and a social perspective. However, the dedicated people working to improve outcomes for at-risk patients are scattered throughout the healthcare ecosystem. That means the data needed to identify and address gaps in care and risks related to social determinants of health are siloed across different systems. The only way to effectively improve health equity is to break down these data barriers.

We are making progress. I suggest every WBL member who has an interest in improving health equity through information exchange take a look at the recently published Social Determinants of Health – Information Exchange toolkit. It represents best practices and lessons learned across a wide range of SDOH-related projects. It probably won’t surprise anyone that the biggest barriers to data exchange are often not technology related.

Good leadership depends on an open mind and a willingness to adapt. What’s a recent “lesson learned” that has stuck with you?

Recently, I have recognized that the entire game has changed in terms of how to grow your business in the healthcare “B to B” space. I have acknowledged that “I know nothing” and have embarked on relearning the sales and marketing side of what we do here at Zen. Luckily, there is an amazing ecosystem of organizations working with SAAS founders to share knowledge, provide amazing content, and provide a safe place to relearn how to successfully grow a SAAS business in today’s world. WBL provides that same level of support and is one of the reasons I am a member. You must constantly be learning and evolving, and WBL supports that need in a huge way.

Personally or professionally, what might the WBL network be surprised to know about you?

I am a credited writer on IMDB for a feature film called The Rig. Our family produced it “accidentally” after our kids spent some time as child actors in Hollywood. (A long story best told over a glass of wine!) It’s a great B movie – with an emphasis on the “B”. The concept was apparently exciting enough that the recent TV series with the same name (on Amazon Prime Video) borrowed heavily from our storyline. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?