Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw


EP. 105 Needed: More innovation, more disruption….with evidence please….

October 28, 2022


Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Kathy Ford, chief product and strategy officer at Project Ronin, a company founded in 2018 by Larry Ellison and Dr. David Agus with a moonshot objective to transform cancer care.  It has been a “short thirty years” in healthcare and Kathy has been focused on launching healthcare solutions globally.  She describes being raised by big companies – first falling into it, then falling in love with it, and today, being absolutely driven to have a large impact on the clinical outcomes in healthcare.  While Kathy has spent her career bringing health tech solutions to market, she describes her work at Ronin as perhaps the most impactful.  And this excites her.


Did you know that 50% of cancers are preventable?  I didn’t. As her PSA, Kathy also implores all listeners who may today or someday face a cancer diagnosis – get a second opinion on that pathology report.  From her work she states this particular area is still equal parts art and science in medicine – and while AI may change that in the future – today the second opinion could be life altering.


Hear Kathy talk about:


  • How she has chosen when to move to a next career opportunity (spoiler alert, the answer comes down to learning and also thinking about opportunity for impact).
  • What has changed over the years with technology. The advancement of the data science toolsets today is phenomenal.   The question remains as to how this can shorten innovation adoption cycles.
  • Her optimism in how data tooling and patient focused solutions can actually impact patients – better patient communication, real time communication with physicians. And with the potential to both prevent adverse events today – with promise to move to prevention.

You can follow Kathy on LinkedIn.


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Ford is responsible for the ideation, development and commercialization of Ronin, a provider of cutting-edge clinical intelligence software and AI services that helps clinicians understand the context between data points for patients undergoing oncology treatment. Ford has a long history in leading and bringing innovative technology to market at Rhinogram, GE Healthcare, Siemens Medical, McKesson and NantHealth.