Enterprise Analytics Leader | Healthcare Data and Analytics Expert | Data Management Professional
Abdoul Aziz is a result focused executive, promoting and evolving enterprise data and analytics strategies to support care transformation while supervising the care delivery investment portfolio. Proven record of driving value, patient safety, and improving quality by utilizing organization’s data assets.
What attracted you to data management or IT, and why did you choose to pursue this career?
I was working for VCU Health Systems and decided to take advantage of the 100% tuition reimbursement benefit to earn a master’s degree in Management Information Systems. One of my professors introduced us to a data management organization and the importance of establishing comprehensive data management across the enterprise. I immediately connected the knowledge areas to some real problems we were facing at the time. I introduced data governance to the leadership, worked on a project to increase data literacy, improve data quality, and formalize the structures necessary to identify data stewards in some key departments. This was early on in my analytics leadership journey, and I became really passionate about the impact of good data governance on our analytics products. We educated the stewards on the importance of data quality at the point of entry as well as IT professionals on the importance of building validation rules at the application layer whenever possible to minimize the opportunities for end users to enter invalid values. The experience was so fulfilling that it set me on the journey to be a data management evangelist.
What has been your greatest career accomplishment so far, and why has it been important to your career?
Reflecting on this question, it is sometimes hard to say what the greatest career accomplishment is. I have obtained my certification at a Master Designation which has been a personal goal. I have been around the globe working on data management in the US, Africa, and the Middle East.
If I had to choose,
- The creation of a Visual Command Center at a green field hospital system in the middle east. This was a hub with team members from scheduling, emergency and urgent care, bed management, patient transport, and other departments looking at real time data to manage patient flow. This significantly improved patient satisfaction, operational efficiency, and reduced cost.
- Coordinating data categorization across a branch of the federal government with over 300 disparate offices using the NIST standard. We selected representatives from the Information Security Officer community along with Business Leaders to create an inventory of the different information types, identify the systems within which they were stored, and risk assessed them based on the CIA model. This informed the controls we then adopted based on industry best practice.
What are the two or three biggest challenges you face as a data management professional / CDO and how can we address them?
The biggest challenge by far is finding and retaining talent, especially in the healthcare domain.
Lack of understanding from business leaders, that data management is as much a business function as it is an IT function.
Establishing data governance and educating the enterprise that it is not the tools but the people and processes that make it a success.
How do you see data management / the role of the CDO / IT changing in the next 2 – 3 years?
Managing data across multiple tenants, public and private cloud, on-prem, and hybrid cloud will continue to pose a challenge. CDOs and IT Leaders will continue to have to educate business leaders on data valuation and how to leverage it as an enterprise asset with a potential to monetize. In Healthcare, the industry will have to continue to balance the right to patient privacy and sharing information to improve population health.
Do you have any planned next steps for your career?
I have recently transitioned from the federal space back to healthcare where my passion lies. I have some lofty plans in the works. Advancing AI/ML in personalized medicine and hospital operations are just a couple of collaborations that we are pursuing at the moment.
What is the single best piece of advice you have received in your data management / IT career so far? Why has it been so important to you?
It may sound simple but simply admitting that “I don’t know”. My late mom told me this as a young man: acting as if you know, deprived you of the opportunity to learn. I’ve been a student of life ever since.
Can you share something about yourself as a person that people wouldn’t know about you?
I am a jack of all sports and master of none. I play basketball, soccer/football, volleyball, tennis, and ping-pong.
I am conversant in 5 languages including French, Arabic, Wolof, and Mandinka.
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