UCI Health leaders named Women in Health IT to Know
Dr. Deepti Pandita, Dr. Tamera Hatfield are finding innovative ways to use AI to improve patient care, clinician workflows
Orange, Calif. — Dr. Deepti Pandita, chief medical information and artificial intelligence officer at UCI Health, and Dr. Tamera Hatfield, associate CMIO, have been named Women in Health IT to Know by Becker’s Hospital Review.
Both Pandita and Hatfield are redefining how artificial intelligence can be used in the healthcare space to reduce clinician burnout, improve patient safety and create more efficient workflows.
“At UCI Health, she was key in implementing AI to assist clinicians in responding to patient messages and led implementation of ambient listening tools that enable clinicians to focus more deeply on patients, particularly those with chronic disease or severe illness,” Becker’s says.
“Pandita set up the academic health system’s first-ever AI governance framework and has been a nationally recognized leader in bridging digital disparities, publishing opinion pieces and speaking at national meetings on ensuring digital solutions reach underserved and marginalized populations.”
Hatfield, who is also a maternal-fetal medicine physician, partners with leaders throughout the six-hospital system to unify and streamline nursing and physician communications.
“She was at the forefront of a new electronic health record (EHR) implementation across six hospitals, leading a full-scale, EHR-centric unified communications transformation that streamlined provider and nursing communication through secure messaging, EHR-integrated phone calling, code and critical result notifications and nurse call system integration,” Becker’s says of Hatfield, who is also an associate professor in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at the UC Irvine School of Medicine.
“Hatfield implemented an electronic surgical consent platform that achieved more than 90% adoption and championed end-to-end integration of an inpatient telehealth module enabling cross-site subspecialty consultation.”
About UCI Health
UCI Health is one of California’s largest academic health systems and the clinical enterprise of the University of California, Irvine. Established on July 1, 1976, UCI Health has grown into a 1,461-bed health system that includes UCI Health — Orange, UCI Health — Irvine, four Community Network hospitals and a growing network of ambulatory care centers across Orange and Los Angeles counties. As Orange County’s only academic health systems, UCI Health is home to the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center based in the county, the region’s only American College of Surgeons-verified Level I adult and Level II pediatric trauma center, American College of Emergency Physicians Gold Level 1 Geriatric Emergency Department and a nationally recognized regional burn center verified by the American Burn Association. Powered by UC Irvine, UCI Health serves 5.6 million people across Orange County, western Riverside County and southeast Los Angeles County through excellence in patient care, research and medical education. Follow UCI Health on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.