A longtime employee of UPMC Enterprises is getting the opportunity to further grow his skills by moving to a portfolio company – highlighting how UPMC’s broad reach across the health care landscape can give staff new challenges and career advancement.
Chris Waters, Senior Manager of Development Support and Operations (DSO), who’s been with Enterprises since 2011, will join medCPU as Director, Implementation and Operations, in November. Waters, who spent several years in UPMC ISD prior to joining UPMC Enterprises, has worked on many projects in his time at Bakery Square, including mobile apps and clinical workflows.
Early projects Waters was involved with include UPMC EMS Navigator, a mobile app that provides decision support tools for first responders, and Fluence, a 2015 software platform that gave physicians a consolidated view of key patient health data. Waters said he was particularly proud of the first successes of EMS Navigator, which enabled increased speed and accuracy deploying care teams to victims at an automobile crash site.
Paul Dudeck, Director of DSO at UPMC Enterprises, worked closely with Waters over the past seven years. “Chris’ key strengths include his collaboration and working relationship within UPMC.” Coming from the ISD group and a tech support role, Waters interacted with many folks at all levels at UPMC. His people skills and staff management skills contributed to the successes of the DSO group, Dudeck said.
medCPU is a UPMC Enterprises’ portfolio company using natural language processing to capture relevant clinical data to power a real-time, clinical-pathways compliance solution providing in-workflow alerts to clinicians following the ERAS protocols (Enhanced Recovery After Surgery) for complex abdominal surgeries.
“It goes without saying we were confident Chris Waters would be a cultural fit for the organization coming out of Enterprises and having worked with many members of the staff at UPMC in the past,” said David Epstein, CEO of medCPU.
“It is Chris’ more recent work that will be instrumental in his new position, including accomplishments in AWS Cloud Infrastructure, certification as an AWS Solution Architect, and his efforts around implementation and service and refining DevOps and building out the UPMCE Cloud Infrastructure team as a shared service at UPMCE,” said Adam Berger, Chief Technology Officer at UPMC Enterprises.
“Chris Waters ticks every box we had defined from a managerial and technical perspective. Yet it is his drive and passion for health IT that has us so excited,” said Jeff Jones, VP of Research and Development at medCPU.
UPMC Enterprises has done a tremendous job of educating and exposing their technical staff, from engineers to designers, on the nuances of software development within a hospital system, Jones said. When an applicant arrives from UPMC Enterprises, we are confident that these core principles have been engrained into his or her development life-cycle, he said.
UPMC Enterprises seeks to be the employer of choice, to attract and retain talented individuals and give staff a place to work that contributes to the overall success of the organization. Enterprises provides meaningful work that creates positive change in health care, enabling staff to lead the way in their field, and to solve for unique, complex health care issues.
