Kari Lawrence, senior site manager at TRIMEDX, was recently nominated and selected as TechNation’s professional of the month. She was interviewed for a feature article in the November issue of the magazine. The full article, as it appeared Nov. 1, 2024, is below.
The nomination reads “She is always finding a solution for our complex problems. She is great at facilitating our team members to work together. She keeps us organized and helps us to prioritize critical areas or our work.”
With leadership that inspires that kind of description in a professional nomination, it is clear that someone is checking all the boxes.
That glowing assessment describes TRIMEDX Senior Site Manager Kari Lawrence, CBET, MSHM. Lawrence has biomed oversight for several facilities in Wisconsin, including hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and labs.
“I went to Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) where I received my bachelor’s in biomedical engineering. During that time, I took an internship working in the biomed industry. I loved the challenges the team faced and how no two days were ever the same. At that point, I knew I wanted to work in this field,” Lawrence says.
She adds that one of her professors was a forensic biomed and that she found his work fascinating.
“He would provide presentations on the types of device failures he had to investigate and how he went about performing those simulations,” she says.
Since getting her degree, Lawrence has been a biomed, lab specialist, and has held a supervisory/lead role before transitioning to the management side. Kari Lawrence, CBET, loves working in HTM as a technician and as a manager.
A Love for the Field
As both a tech and a manager, Lawrence has been involved in her share of projects and challenges. Those projects have included working with her IT colleagues, rolling out an AEM program and a CMMS rollout.
“During my time as a biomed, I helped the facility transition to an upgraded CMMS. I was also involved in creating its MEMP (medical equipment management plan) and AEM (alternative equipment management) programs. I coordinated with the hybrid CE/IT team members to get a cybersecurity program started as well,” Lawrence says.
She says that the cybersecurity program was particularly challenging.
“Understanding the importance wasn’t an issue, but building a program from the ground up to include basics like the IP/OS/MAC of a device made it immediately apparent how much work we had to do,” she says.
She worked closely with a co-worker when the requirements for having equipment on an AEM program initially rolled out.
“We collaborated with another leader outside our organization who provided a presentation on AEM programs. He was able to give us some great insights that we used to create the framework for our internal AEM. Once we had the framework created, as a biomed team, we worked through every equipment category we had in our database to perform the risk analysis and AEM scoring,” Lawrence says.
She says that it required a significant time commitment as well as buy-in, since they alone didn’t have the expertise to properly score devices, they weren’t responsible for supporting.
“The program required knowledge of the type of failures the device could exhibit and what the possible consequences were. We turned this into a weekly project where we had a goal of working through a certain number of categories until we reached the end,” Lawrence says.
She says that with the CMMS rollout, they ran into some initial challenges due to changing data fields and functionality.
“We also rolled it out across multiple facilities to get everyone onto the same CMMS for data sharing. There were super users selected to both teach others but also have increased provisioning. During these changes, the decision was also made to start locking down certain fields, so only select individuals could complete certain tasks. Locking down fields was necessary to ensure that assets were inventoried in a consistent manner across multiple sites as well as preventing unintentional data erasures since other sites could now access each other’s information,” Lawrence adds.
Biomed leadership has come to terms with the role cybersecurity plays in HTM today. Lawrence says that the decision to start implementing a cybersecurity program became apparent after technical conferences started sharing the increased risk of cyberattacks with legacy systems still in place across health care.
“Where I worked, we had individuals in a hybrid CE-IT role, so we were already well-positioned to start setting up this process. I worked closely with this team to start identifying which data elements we felt were necessary to capture. Given this would be a new process, we knew we had to start with a targeted focus,” she says.
Lawrence says that with that in mind, they chose to focus on the operating system, MAC addresses and IP addresses for networked devices.
“As new equipment projects were rolled out, we also started requesting copies of the MDS2 paperwork and storing it with the equipment record. As a team, we decided the best way to approach this was identifying any devices that were at a higher risk and gathering the information on those first. From there, as a team, we came to the decision to gather data on the lower risk devices when the next repair/PM came up,” she says.
Lawrence has been recognized by her employer for the qualities mentioned by her nominee.
“I have received internal awards at TRIMEDX. At our 2021 Women’s Leadership Conference, I received the Associate Empowerment Award. My team and I were also recognized internally as the 2020 Top Site in the West at TRIMEDX,” she says.
Away from work, Lawrence loves reading and working in the garden.
“Living in Wisconsin, I love being out on the water boating, tubing, wakeboarding and kayaking. I’m married to my husband, Adam. We have two boys, Oliver (4) and Spencer (1). We also have a dog and two cats,” she adds.
Lawrence loves working in HTM and says that there’s a new challenge every day which keeps things interesting, and this allows her to interact with so many different types of people from technicians and caregivers to hospital executives.
“Additionally, I enjoy working with my team on equipment when they run into challenges and need a fresh perspective to chase down the problem. I also take pride in the opportunity to partner with the local technical college, both as a resource for interns looking to get their practicum experience and also being part of their advisory board to help ensure the curriculum matches the direction of the biomed field,” she says.
BIOMETRICS
- Favorite book: “Fourth Wing” and “Queen of Shadows”
- Favorite movie:“The Two Towers”
- Favorite food: Tacos
- Favorite part of being a biomed? I love the opportunity to help people in the health care space and ensuring patients and caregivers are kept safe from the equipment.
- Why do you read TechNation? It’s a great opportunity to stay up to date on industry trends, best practices, and challenges facing the health care space.