Post-ASCO Special: Kathryn Doornbos Spills the Tea on the Power of Data Abstraction to Boost Cancer Trials and Care

Welcome to HITea With Grace, where we spill the tea on health IT—and celebrate the women transforming care with compassion, intelligence, and bold innovation.

Fresh from ASCO, I’m thrilled to welcome Kathryn Doornbos to the pod, Director of Clinical Partnership at Carta Healthcare. Kathryn brings an inspiring blend of scientific rigor and real-world clinical insight, and today she shares how her team is reshaping cancer care with technology that’s as practical as it is powerful.

In this episode, Kathryn spills the tea on:

• Her career journey from molecular biology to health tech leadership

• A groundbreaking study that’s reducing overtreatment in older women with breast cancer

• How Carta Healthcare and UPMC cut patient screening time from over an hour to just one minute

• Using AI and natural language understanding to make clinical trials faster, smarter, and more inclusive

• A 5x jump in patient enrollment—and what that means for trial access and equity

• The balance between AI-powered care and human-centered medicine

• How surgical guidelines are being de-escalated in real time using EHR-integrated tools

• What all this means for patients and caregivers, especially those often overlooked in trial design

Kathryn also opens up about the personal “why” behind her work, the challenges of implementing innovation in clinical settings, and her advice to women navigating their own health IT journeys.

Plus—don’t miss her favorite tea, the story behind her mug, and what it symbolizes about working in cancer care.