Leading the Healthcare Analytics Frontier

When Carilion Clinic recognized the need for one person to lead and manage all analytical systems, they chose Steve Oake. The combination of extensive experience with data analytics and a broad administrative skillset across systems and databases, uniquely qualified Steve to unify Carilion’s analytical systems. Consolidating multiple systems and data teams under Steve’s guidance will enable Carilion to deliver better patient outcomes and advance the organization.

Steve works in five different environments to manage patient data, work with insurance company claims, and update systems. Steve works alongside a team of Data Engineers to build data pipelines between these systems to provide less savvy users the information they need to make better decisions.

Before creating Steve’s new position, the pipelines between the systems often broke because each system was managed by a different team. Under Steve’s leadership, a single data management team will own the entire pipeline ensuring all systems work together.

Steve credits Radford University’s Data and Information Management (DAIM) Master’s program for preparing him to succeed in such a challenging role. “DAIM helped me develop a deep understanding of SQL and data warehousing”, Steve explains, “two fundamental skills for data analytics.”

When Steve joined Carilion, his score on his SQL evaluation was the highest the company had ever seen. He applied his data warehousing experience to clean up and bring to production a system that had limited availabilty for several years but never fully utilized and often forgotten. This project saved the company money and demonstrated his value quickly. 

He also improved the data infrastructure thanks to his strong mental model of database architecture. Steve stands out and rises above his peers because of the experience he gained in Radford’s DAIM program.

Steve wants prospective students to know that data is the future of computer science. “As smart as ChatGPT and other tools are, they need a database. AI will eventually write programs, but a person must manage the data, ensuring job security and high pay.” DAIM graduates have the skills to contribute on their first day out of school. “Acquiring high demand skills in school is essential,” Steve explains, “because employers cannot afford to teach data skills.” DAIM prepared Steve to lead an exciting new frontier of data management.