WoW Women in MedTech | Carolyn Mattes-O’Brien and Kimberly Mazili, VirtaMed
Interview by Marija Butkovic
A graduate of MIT and a Ph.D. candidate at ETH Zurich, Carolyn has 9+ years of industry experience as both a product engineer, manager, and research engineer. Her professional focus is on human factors and the interactions between systems and people. As a developer in the medtech space, she has worked at the intersection between doctors, teachers, and medical device companies for many years.
Kimberly is a registered sonographer who owned her own sonography business in Tampa, FL. Kimberly has since moved away from both the patient interaction side of sonography and the United States to Switzerland where she currently works as a specialist in Sonography simulators and is a sales representative for a Global Medical Simulation Company.
VirtaMed is a Swiss company that develops & produces highly realistic surgical simulators for medical training. Surgeons use original instruments to train in a safe environment before performing surgeries on patients. VirtaMed's vision is to improve the quality of medical care with state-of-the-art, virtual reality based medical training and education. We sat down with two WoW Women from VirtaMed, Carolyn Mattes-O’Brien, and Kimberly Mazili who shared their stories with us.
Tell us a bit more about you and your projects so far. What does your current job role entail?
Carolyn: This is such a hard question to answer! For the research side of my job, I look at the interaction of humans with technical systems. How do people perceive it, interact with it, change it just by being human? I also do systems and integration engineering. I make sure that the tools and systems that are running in the background of VirtaMed and that make everything else run, are functioning. This is essentially automation that passes information around and is built up and stable so that people can work without knowing what is running in the background. I also help write patents and manage the patent portfolio and conduct training on intellectual property.
Kimberly: I have been a registered sonographer (RDMS) for over 8 years focusing mainly on Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and joined VirtaMed just prior to the launch of their OBGYN Ultrasound module that was added to the GynoS simulator. I have made it my goal to try to get this into the hands of as many residency programs and sonography schools as possible because these would have been a game-changer for me when in training and built my skills and confidence levels much more rapidly. Student sonographers/residents get very little actual patient scan time, typically never able to complete a full protocol, and with the point of care ultrasound becoming more widely used, MFMs need to be able to achieve biometric measurements. VirtaMed focused on developing an Obstetric ultrasound trainer that covers the full spectrum from the ISUOG 20+2 full anatomy scan to the abbreviated 6 Steps approach, or specialty scans such as the Nuchal Translucency. Proficiency and confidence are increased, while procedure times are decreased. The transvaginal simulator helps new sonographers master pregnancy dating and viability, while the transabdominal simulator focuses on 2 nd trimester biometry measurements and recognizing trisomies or high-risk pregnancies. These are two skills that are very difficult to master without repeated practice, and that is not always available when it comes to these types of scans. The idea was to build hands-on confidence in the educational setting that transfers seamlessly to the clinical setting all while recognizing the rules of ALARA.
I am a Hospital Sales Specialist with VirtaMed, so my main responsibility is to educate residency programs in the fields of Orthopedics, OBGYN, Urology, and General Surgery on how to incorporate virtual high fidelity surgical simulation into their medical education programs. Simulated surgical cases allow residents the freedom to sharpen their skills and procedure times outside the clinical setting while the technology allows Chief surgeons cloud-based access to view resident progress and tailor instruction to the individual resident and to create courses that supplement.
Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
Carolyn: Yes, it was an easy industry to get into, but only because I was already an engineer. But getting into engineering as a woman was a bit different. As an American, it was easy and considered’ fine’ but in Switzerland, it was a different story. In Switzerland, I felt the difference a lot and I was much more of an anomaly. My master’s program in Zurich has about 250 people, and of those, 2 were women - and neither of us was Swiss. When I went to MIT in the states it was different, about one-third of the class was women. And I find that the Ph.D. is also different in that we are back to about a one-third ratio because my subject area is interdisciplinary. Socially, I got hit on a lot in class. So much so that I started wearing rings to avoid all of the attention.
Kimberly: I was lucky enough to join VirtaMed as a registered sonographer at the launch of their Transvaginaland Transabdominal Obstetric Ultrasound simulator to help address the needs of sonography students. The biggest challenge for me has been to learn procedures in Orthopedics, Urology, and General Surgery which are the other surgical specialties that work with our OBGYN simulator so that I can address the needs of entire simulation centers and understand the needs of each residency program.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle?
Carolyn: I suppose there are two answers to that question. You could say that I am currently 32 years old and it has taken that long, but you could also say that this journey started when I graduated from MIT in 2009. The biggest obstacle is that the opportunities for advancement for women are always balanced against the family situation. You might not have kids but maybe you want kids and that is a consideration. Do you want to be a serious manager - there is always a maybe, and I always have to push back against this assumption that you can’t have both and you need to prioritize. Men don’t get asked ‘Can you balance work and home life?’ if they are ‘leadership material’ of ‘do you want to be the boss?’ You are always assumed to be pursuing a ‘career’.As a woman, you have to actively advocate for your advancement. One of the motivations for me to get a Ph.D. was so that I could get the Dr. in front of my name and de-genderize my work.
Kimberly: 10 years, (8 years as a sonographer and 2 as a Hospital Sales Specialist with VirtaMed)
What was the biggest obstacle?
Kimberly: The biggest obstacle in the 2 years I have been with VirtaMed would have to be Covid related. Hospital residency programs struggled early on in the pandemic with the halt of elective procedures which is where the resident focus their training on fine-tuning surgical skills and procedure times. In many hospitals, patient interactions are still limited in addition to budgets being drained for Covid related purchases. It has been a challenge to provide educational support to these training programs when the residents were no longer on campus and many simulation centers were shut down for months. Slowly we are seeing the programs opening again and I am excited to be working with several institutions to ramp up their virtual learning environments and help as many residents get back on track.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
Carolyn: I am finishing up my Ph.D. which focuses so the impact of non-visual feedback on surgical simulation. I am hoping to finish it in January and then continue my research in the human factors component. Ideally, I would like to validate the impact of simulation on education.
Kimberly: Currently, VirtaMed has launched its Laparoscopy simulator for General Surgery LaparoS, and I am blown away by the new technology. For me, the exciting part is adding the Gynecology Surgery module to our OBGYN simulator offerings in January 2021, to be able to help surgical gynecology residents have access to a high fidelity simulator to sharpen their skills to pass the new fundamentals of laparoscopy requirements.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
Carolyn: It depends on my mood. Some days it is practical and others it is academic. I am proud of where I am in general and where I am in life. I have a good job and I have my Ph.D. to work towards - I get satisfaction and feel well balanced in my home and work life. I am always learning and gaining new things.I am proud of not getting jaded and having the view I have lived a great life so far, but acknowledge that there is still so much to learn. I am proud of having developed and maintained a growth mindset and an open-mindedness towards learning.
Kimberly: I am actually grateful to VirtaMed for being able to make the jump from the practitioner as a sonographer in the field working with patients, to working with a Swiss-based surgical simulation company that focuses on the residents and medical education. To be able to offer virtual reality learning tools and environments that keep up with the latest in technology, medical devices, and accredited content for our future surgeons, I still feel as though I am affecting patient care from a new and even better angle.
What are the challenges of being a woman in the VR/AR industry?
Carolyn: You always have to prove your credentials and fight against the assumption that the white man in the room is senior. You have to play the role to get respect. Women are forced to prove they are competent whereas men have to prove they are incompetent.
What will be the key trends in the VR/AR industry in the next 5 years and where do you see it heading?
Carolyn: I want to say wearables because that is, from the patent point of view, where things have exploded. Thousands of patents have been filed for AR/VR and I do believe that this is part of it. But I think this is playing to a young audience. As the population gets older, I think the trend will be for more age-inclusive technology. A lot of techs right now do not accommodate older adults who have the conditions that come along with aging - such as poor eyesight and less-reliable coordination. For instance, they are also more prone to getting ‘simulation sick’. I hope there is a move towards more inclusiveness and towards bringing in people who currently can’t interact will with VR due to things such as skin color, age-related infirmities, proprioception, perception, etc.). As developers get older, I believe they will also begin to adapt. Phones are an example, small phones didn’t work for older people until the numbers got larger again. If we want people to use our technologies, we have to be more inclusive.
Kimberly: I see VR and AR being increasingly incorporated into the education programs in many areas and COVID and a lack of ‘live’ training opportunities change the way that medical personnel is taught. I feel that it is a positive transition that will improve medical training and make that a better experience for practitioners and that it will ultimately improve patient care.
What is the most important piece of advice you can give to all women in VR/AR out there?
Carolyn:
1. Don’t be afraid to ask for help
2. Go for it
3. Ask for what you need - advocate for it. Pride shouldn’t be your downfall.
4. You will fail, and that is okay.
5. It is okay to change your mind. It is the face of being open and willing to learn.
Who are your inspirational women in VR/AR?
Carolyn: Roberta Klatzky for her work in haptics and Susan letterman for her psychology.
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This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic.