When my co-founder, Robert Lord, and I started Protenus in 2014 as medical students at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, we saw the benefits electronic medical records brought to patient care, but we also recognized the challenges that they presented. This included how access to patient information by healthcare employees influenced the quintessential element of trust that has traditionally served as the backbone of the patient-provider relationship. It became our mission to reinstate trust in the care environment. This was also the starting point for our company values, which are our cultural cornerstones at Protenus, guiding the decisions made across the organization, including the company’s strategic direction, the service we provide to our customers, and the people we hire.

Soon after the completion of my military service in the Air Force, I took a job repairing laser printers and small servers and offering small service contracts to select customers. This quickly turned from just a job to a passion, as I learned that I not only had the right skills to be successful but I also really enjoyed helping my customers tackle complex challenges at both the individual and organizational levels. I continued to flourish in my sales career and became interested in Protenus when I noticed their media coverage in 2016. It immediately caught my attention because the team was tackling the challenge of patient privacy in an entirely new way - utilizing the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to proactively identify and prevent threats to patient data. It was revolutionary and I wanted to be a part of their mission. Protenus allows me to continue to pursue my passion and encourages professional growth through innovation, company culture, and providing the necessary tools for success.

At Protenus, few things are as important to us as delighting our customers. It is important to us that our customers are happy with their experience from the very beginning, starting with our implementation. We want our customers to be more excited about using Protenus after the implementation than they were before. To do this, we dedicate an entire team to facilitating an efficient implementation process. This ensures our customers can begin using the Protenus platform as soon as possible, with minimal time and effort.

In my role as Director of Customer Success at Protenus, I am often asked by new colleagues, customers, friends, and family: “What is Customer Success?” When I explain what I do, it sounds something like this: I make sure we’re retaining as many customers as possible through the value they receive from using our products. I can always see wheels turning as the person tries to relate my explanation to something familiar. They often ask, “Is that like customer support? Or is it making sure they keep buying from you?” The answer is yes and yes!

For many hospital systems, handling a stratified-risk privacy operation is a time-consuming process. Depending on what type of privacy posture the organization is using, this can lead to an even greater influx of notifications, especially for less nefarious cases such as family member snooping or self-lookups. Due to a lack of resources, Privacy Officers either spend extensive amounts of time following up on the large volume of lower-risk violations or ignore them in favor of pursuing higher-risk cases. Both of these scenarios result in increased liability and inefficiency, and only target a small portion of the system-wide privacy violations that are occurring at any one time. Email automation can help Privacy Officers re-educate the hospital workforce, reduce their workload and increase their efficiency.