Meet the Penn people who fix problems with tech and ingenuity

By: Kim Maialetti

As a cardiologist, Emeka Anyanwu, MD, MScBMI, enjoys taking care of patients’ hearts. However, when asked what else he’s passionate about, he doesn’t miss a beat.  

“I love software,” said Anyanwu, physician lead for software and informatics at the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation and director of the Penn Medicine Center for Cardiovascular Informatics.  

At the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation, teams of physicians like Anyanwu, engineers, software developers, and other top minds come together to help rethink how to make health care easier for patients and providers alike.  

Though they may come from different professional and personal backgrounds, they share a curiosity about how things work and a love for solving problems.  

“They are all curious and they are all doers,” said Raina Merchant, MD, MSHP, vice president and chief transformation officer at Penn Medicine and executive director of the center. “They always ask, ‘What’s the problem and how can we fix it?’”  

A heart that beats for software  

Anyanwu’s passion for software started during elementary school when he began reformatting computers for fun. It grew throughout adolescence when he created and ran his own blog.  

When it was time to go to college, Anyanwu wanted to study computer science, but “funny enough, my family had different ideas.”  

They wanted Anyanwu, a first-generation Nigerian Canadian, to become a doctor. So, he entered college as a pre-med student and minored in computer science.  

It was then that he discovered the field of clinical informatics. “For me, it was a way to apply my passion for software to medicine,” said Anyanwu.   

Fast forward to today, and Anyanwu is one of the developers behind “coordn8,” a software program designed to speed the processing of faxes received from outside Penn Medicine. The program has reduced the time to input each fax from an average of three minutes to just about half a minute, which results in less burden on staff, and consequently lower processing costs.  

“The beautiful part about coordn8 is that it addresses a universal pain point,” Anyanwu said. “And it provides an immense savings to the health system.”  

Anyanwu said he is driven by the desire to apply the “latest and greatest” technology to help make health care more efficient.  

“It’s in my DNA,” he said. And his heart.  

From chocolate to health care  

Lauren Hahn, MBA, senior director of product management at the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation, didn’t start out in health care.  

Prior to joining Penn Medicine, she worked as a graphic designer, designing packaging for a chocolate company in New York.  

But it wasn’t her sweet spot. “I was looking for something that felt a little more impactful,” Hahn said.  

She initially worked with Creative Services in the Marketing Department at Penn Medicine, then later transitioned to the innovation center. In her current role, Hahn directs a product team for the Switchboard app.  

Switchboard was developed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as a web application to enable virtual medical visits and allow patients access to care while avoiding potential infection.  

The application supported approximately 30,000 virtual appointments a week at its peak. Since then, the application has expanded to deliver appointment reminders, communicate logistical changes, and encourage adherence to pre-procedural instructions via text messaging.  

And in November 2024, the platform began delivering messages in Spanish for Spanish-speaking patients.  

“Patients deserve to have multiple modalities in which to communicate with providers,” Hahn said. “I always want to make sure when we develop or build something, we are thinking about equity.”   

An improvement mindset 

“The biggest thing we are trying to do is to help improve people’s lives, whether they are patients or clinicians,” said Mohan Balachandran, MA, MS, executive director of the Penn Way to Health team at the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation.  

Balachandran, along with a team of fellow engineers, is the force behind Refill Express, an automated system that guides patients through an easy-to-navigate text conversation to process specialty prescription orders through the Penn Pharmacy Department in a matter of minutes. 

Prior to the launch of Refill Express, Penn Pharmacy was processing 7,000 specialty prescriptions per month by phone for patients with serious conditions such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, and autoimmune diseases. It typically took pharmacy staff making calls at least four days to reach patients, which in some cases led to patients missing doses because they didn’t get their medicine refilled on time.  

Now, Refill Express reaches the majority of patients within 24 hours with no technician needed and has increased average fill rates from 84 percent to 96 percent.  

“This is important for patients because these are medications that are more or less needed to keep them alive,” said Balachandran, an entrepreneur at heart who has worked in supply chain management in the past.  

Moreover, the automated system has cut the staff time spent on the refill process in half, increasing the capacity to serve more patients. In fact, given the success of Refill Express, Balachandran’s team launched a version specifically for weight loss drugs. Called GLP-1 Refill Express, the system serves nearly 7,000 patients.   

A healthy obsession  

Whether it’s tackling the New York Times crossword puzzle or figuring out how to make operating room schedules more efficient, Rachel Kelz, MD, MBA, MS, is “obsessed” with solving problems. A surgeon who specializes in endocrinology and oncology, Kelz is director of the Core for Precision Research Utilization (CPRU) at the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation.  

Kelz lauded her CPRU team for developing an algorithm that helps determine how long certain types of operations will take. The resulting Operating Room Case Length Estimation tool, in use at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, has helped take the guesswork out of OR case scheduling. Thanks to the new tool, patients and surgeons don’t have to wait as long for an operating room and fewer surgeries are cancelled or rescheduled because an operating room isn’t available.   

Kelz, who majored in math as an undergraduate, has always had an interest in using data to solve problems, and she is excited to be able to use technology to enhance patient care.  

“It’s been very exciting to translate science into improvements in patient care,” said Kelz, who noted that using an algorithm to fix just one inefficiency in medicine has already impacted thousands of people.  

Penn proud  

Kathleen Lee, MD, described the team at the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation, where she is associate chief transformation officer, as a “Swiss Army knife of problem solvers.” 

“We focus on deconstructing complex and pressing problems in close partnership with our system leaders and teams,” said Lee, who is also associate vice president at Penn Medicine.  

Like her colleagues, Lee has a passion for knowing how things work. She credits her parents, who were entrepreneurs and small business owners, with teaching her how to embrace problem solving. “There was never a problem too small to delight in,” Lee said.   

One of the best parts of her job, Lee said, is the spark that occurs when she is strategizing with other Penn Medicine teams about how to make health care easier.  

“You feel so proud to be part of Penn and this ecosystem,” Lee said. “That spark is what keeps you going.”  

Explore more stories about technology, transformation, and innovation  

A series of related articles will be published in the spring 2025 issue of Penn Medicine magazine and are available early online. Read more: