With years of experience in health care, most recently at Boston Medical Center (BMC), Sheila Phicil has recently switched gears, paving her own unique path to modernizing healthcare. As the former Director of Innovation for the Health Equity Accelerator at BMC, Phicil organized and interpreted patient data in order to seek ways to center patients and their unique needs.
Sheila holds a dual Master’s degree in Public Health and Financial Economics, is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), and a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE).
As a “social change futurist” and former “intrapeneur,” Sheila brings her unique skills to existing data collection systems by addressing racial health disparities. Like an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur is a self-led member of a larger organization, such as BMC. Through trial and error, several hospitals nationwide have adopted the same initiatives that Phicil helped onboard. She has spent the last few months sharing her expertise and guidance with healthcare facilities across the nation.
Her hands-on, interpersonal connections with patients, caregivers, and medical professionals have led her to create a niche product of her own to advance healthcare on a global scale.
The Woman Behind the Innovation
As a Black woman of Haitian descent, Phicil shared how she’s witnessed the potential for science and technology to “provide the change needed for social change.” Scientific processes often help actualize the socioeconomic outcries we have experienced over countless years, quantifying them and bringing these experiences to life. With greater accessibility to education and opportunities, more people are getting a chance to enter the science field and ask meaningful questions that embody the facts of life.
Staying grounded amidst navigating and deciphering the minutiae of this patient data is vital. Sheila creates a balance between her work and her well-being by enjoying time in nature, soaking up the sun, and traveling. She also actively checks her perception and privilege to embrace deeper expansion and understanding of herself and the complex world around her. She is also sure to set boundaries between her work and personal life.
Life as a Social Change Futurist
Sheila’s multifaceted venture, Phicil-itate Change is an innovation studio that brings high-potential healthcare concepts and radically patient-centered solutions to life. Following their SEEDS Framework, the team supports fellow healthcare innovators, patients, and venture studios. The innovation studio is rooted in bringing real-life solutions to everyday people that will improve the medical experience on all fronts. With countless hours of dedication and expertise applied to the project, the team is building a platform to ensure a sustainable, actionable, and effective product for both patients and healthcare providers.
While collecting data in a broad sense can be helpful, Sheila’s program will help humanize the data and numbers collected in different forms and files in healthcare offices. Providing deeper insights into each patient will allow healthcare startups to offer resources that encourage advancement and wellness for each person. The team’s flagship product, the COMPASS Project, brings these features together in an AI-powered platform. The COMPASS Project paints a clear picture of the powerful potential when innovation meets human empathy and care.
The Inspiration Behind the Work
“Why are they in that circumstance and I’m not?” echoed through Sheila’s young mind when she saw the sad commercials of starving children back in the early 1990s. As a true community beacon, Sheila spent much of her youth organizing and working with diverse groups of people to meet common goals. She’s always found inspiration and wisdom from the guidance and collaboration with teachers, colleagues, and patients alike. Since supporting her younger siblings and honoring the ways of her parents as a young girl, Sheila Phicil has grown into a nurturing and harmonizing force, driven to bring as many people along with her towards a brighter, healthier future.
She was particularly inspired by a 10-day mission trip to Haiti in her early college days. After visiting the island to disperse medical supplies, such as wheelchairs, prosthetics, and crutches to locals in need, she discovered several discrepancies. Despite the organization’s kind-hearted efforts, speaking to the locals individually revealed unique challenges that these well-intended resources merely exacerbated.
A majority of the locals traveled across various terrains to get supplies. Before she left, a surprising number of items were returned. Her team members were hurt and confused, but being the only Haitian-Creole speaker present helped her communicate with the locals in greater depth. These deeper, personal conversations revealed that many of the locals couldn’t use the supplies in their daily lives, so continuing without them was easier. Rather than being ungrateful or ignorant of the use of the items, the team simply didn’t supply what the locals needed. This revelation sparked a deep awakening in Sheila that has since shaped her work to facilitate greater change.
With many active components to her work, Sheila is set to make big and lasting changes in the field of healthcare innovation. We look forward to seeing how Phicil-itate Change continues to grow and foster deeper trust in the healthcare system.
