Phicil-itating Change with Sheila Phicil

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.

Beets, Sutures, and a New Generation of Medicine

Dasia Taylor is a young woman who began to define her career in STEM just shy of her senior graduation. Back in 2019, Dasia spent months developing a “novel suture additive” to help doctors and patients detect infection sooner. As she perfected the sutures, Dasia’s invention catapulted her across several regional and national competitions. In 2020, she landed among the top 40 finalists of the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s oldest, most notable science competition. The next stop on her journey is obtaining a patent for her novel work.

So, How Did She Do It? 

Dasia spent several months testing her sutures in beet juice. She noted that the liquid would change from bright red to dark purple, indicating a change in patient pH and likely an infection.  

But, why beet juice?  

There have been recent efforts to produce biotech sutures with a similar purpose. But with features like pairing up to smartphones, these high-tech sutures would be intricate and costly to produce. Beets are naturally more accessible and cost-effective. 

Considering healthcare needs on a global scale, biotech sutures that connect to smartphones would likely be a challenge for most people to obtain. 

With infections developing at much higher rates in countries outside of the U.S., Dasia’s invention can bring the benefits of high-tech sutures to a much wider range of people. In doing so, countless lives and billions of dollars can be saved annually by using Dasia’s beet juice and cotton blend sutures. 

 

All Of This at 17? What’s Next?

Since her debut in the science world, Dasia has created a local kids' science program in her home state of Iowa, inspiring younger generations of problem solvers. Growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood and navigating a predominantly white field have empowered Dasia to continue to be seen and heard. Along the way, she carefully weaves important narratives about Black history and culture into local spaces and dialogues. In her quest for knowledge, she informs others through thoughtful work and storytelling. 

In her preliminary studies, Dasia’s passion for accessible healthcare was born from her concern for the life-threatening socioeconomic and healthcare challenges facing women throughout Africa, in particular. Naturally, her equitable nature is intended to improve healthcare globally, for all people.   

Education and equitability are at the heart of her passionate strides toward accessible healthcare for those who need it most. Dasia is nothing short of phenomenal, as she works toward getting a patent, she continues to bring her community along with her. We look forward to seeing more of Dasia Taylor’s journey as she breaks barriers in STEM.