Q&A with the Lumis Team

by Anastasia Klipa and Ellen Durkin

November 11, 2020




Cartoon image of people gathered together with various speech bubbles above them filled with ellipses, as if in conversation

One of the many reasons behind Lumis’s strength as a company is our wonderful team. Having a team that believes in our products and supports the work that we do reflects our dedication to delivering a better future for healthcare and healthcare education. We are grateful for each and every member of our team and for all that they contribute to our company. Thank you!

This piece is meant to highlight the voices of our coworkers, allowing readers to have an inside look at Lumis. Continue reading to understand more about Lumis through the eyes of our team members:

How would you describe the company culture at Lumis?

“One of my favorite parts is just how kind everyone is. It’s nice to work at a company where everybody’s voice is important, everyone's treated like humans, and is involved in whatever they’d like to be involved in.” - Alexandra Gales, Software Developer

“I think we have a pretty open and inclusive culture, we look for different thoughts and opinions from all of our team members because we all have differing backgrounds and have something that we may bring to the table that somebody else might not have experience in or different ways to look at problems and solutions.” - Doug Nelson, CEO

“I will say that we have a company culture that really values transparency and high levels of communication.” - Tania Taloute, Product Manager

“I think the company culture is really a team environment every day. It's great because my experience has been that you have the support of everyone within the company, if you ever have a question, and your opinion is always valued but you also have the flexibility and the trust given by management to bring your ideas to the table and work through projects asynchronously.” - Tyler Baum, Business Development Associate

“I think it's a very collaborative culture, it's very open and forward thinking. We’re putting so much thought into making sure it's a place that's inclusive and diverse.” - Ryan Torbic, Software Development Intern

What inspires you?

“Healthcare is so important, now more than ever, so being able to work on something new that I can build from the ground up and sort of put my own spin or at least know I created this - this is something tangible that I helped make - and it be something that's so important and so helpful for potentially thousands or millions of people is a big responsibility, so it inspires me to do my best.” - Ryan Torbic

“The potential for social impact. That’s what drove me to even want to work at Lumis. I saw that the tools and solutions that Lumis was creating had potential to serve populations that didn't have the resources. Coming from that angle, I saw that it could actually really help people, from a healthcare standpoint and also from a patient standpoint. [The most rewarding thing about working at Lumis is] working alongside people who truly care about what they are doing and care about the people who are using the products. We are very customer-focused, and we are driven by the impact of what we are doing.”- Tania Taloute

How has the COVID-19 changed your perspective on healthcare and how do these things motivate you on the job?

“Some of our training is on opioid use disorder training, where we want to teach providers as well as lay people and police officers how to rescue a patient who has had an overdose. So we know that with COVID, one thing that's happening is there's increased mental illness and there's increased drug dependency going on as a result of people being stuck in their homes. So, some of the areas that we're continuing to work on are very, very much addressing some of the issues around COVID.”- John O’Donnell, RN, CRNA, MSN, DRPH, Chair of the Department of Nurse Anesthesia, Director of the Nurse Anesthesia Program at the University of Pittsburgh, and Director of Curriculum and Customer Engagement at Lumis.

“In the ever changing environment with respect to the pandemic, with respect to the sales cycle, we had to rethink how we may be able to do in-person demos because that was not possible in the early part of this year. In response, we’ve built a remote demo of our solutions that we can provide over video conferencing to give clients the experience of using our platform. We also built a lite, web-enabled version of our platform that's currently in alpha testing, and it is close to being ready to deploy for all of our existing customers. Moving forward, we will build out new learning modules so that there's an online-only option coupled with our in-person system.”- Doug Nelson

“Well, it was definitely a huge change because our original product was set up to be used with physical manikins for training simulations in classrooms and hospitals, and since classrooms aren't fully open for in-person training, we had to adapt pretty quickly to the new scenario that we found ourselves in. That is why we've been working on the web-enabled version now, so we can come out with a different way to share the product with the world that's just as good of a product as the full scale version.”- Ryan Torbic

“Healthcare is one of the most important roles at all times, especially right now in our nation and in the world. There are a lot of people experiencing the healthcare system in ways they haven't before, or who maybe don’t have access to healthcare, and I think being able to work everyday for a company that is committed to making healthcare systems more efficient and enabling providers and clinicians to offer better care is really essential.” - Tyler Baum

What is special about our product?

“Our product is different. When I first started here, one of the things I really liked was that Lumis wanted to make sure that this product is affordable - affordable in the grand scheme of this type of education - so not a $100,000 system plus immense human resources. So, I really like that our product is geared towards keeping the cost down, not that I think we should undersell ourselves, but I think it's good to keep that in mind.” - Alexandra Gales

“I think Lumis fills a void in the healthcare simulation market in that we use technology to make healthcare simulation portable and seamless, rather than requiring a lot of operators and systems designed specifically for expensive manikins. Our platform will work anywhere, with anyone, at any time so you could have training any time of the day, you could have it with very few people involved, and you could also do it with any manikins that you have laying around. I think that unlocks so much potential in terms of learning for healthcare professionals and for those in healthcare training. It is something really special that we bring to the table and is a niche that isn’t filled yet by anyone in the industry.” -Tyler Baum

“One of the aspects of the Lumis InSight Platform is that it literally glows. There's something interesting about that, that you were literally looking at a physical object, but it is actually glowing with light. And that light in this case is achieving the purpose of helping you to be a better health care provider. I think there's a kind of engagement there that's really interesting, and I've seen that time and again when people interact with the system.”- Joe Samosky, PhD, Swanson School of Engineering faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, and Director of Innovation and Engineering at Lumis

“I think where our platform differentiates itself is we combine the benefits of both the digital world (like on a computer with graphics or animations) with the physical world on the physical simulators, whether they be full-body patient simulators or the smaller tasks-trainers like an IV arm, and now our platform can live on the web. Our solution is unique in that it can run from a website, but it could also be in a simulation center working with a manikin. I think that modularity of our platform and scalability from purely online to physical in-person training is what differentiates us from others in this space.” Doug Nelson

“There's no other system that's using projection technology with the ability to interact with the images on the market. And no other system that is is setting up an instructor feedback design so that students could work independently across online and physical simulations.”- John O’Donnell


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