Interview with Rae Heeraman Women In Tech, Health & Patient Empowerment
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For International Women’s Day, we sat with Rae Heeraman, data scientist, chapter lead of the Women in Data in Trinidad and Tobago, advocate for patient empowerment and patient-centered care and diabetic, to discuss her challenges faced as a woman in male-dominated spaces, her journey with diabetes and her opinions on patients taking charge of their health.
What led you to be a data scientist?
According to Rae, she had always been a curious person. “I’ve always wanted to understand, not just why things were happening, but how they were happening,” she said. She started out a data in career with Excel and then moved on to Crystal Reports. Her love for data led her into programming, and studying IT.
Data intimidates most people, but it doesn’t intimidate her. In fact, her passion for data has coined her the name: creator of aha moments because her analysis and assessment of the data has helped generate lightbulb moments for her and other people.
Could you tell us some of the projects you worked on without giving too much, if it’s not confidential?
She responded that her projects have ranged from financial analytics to sales to marketing to telecom to oil and gas to HR and much more.
Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) is a growing demographic but tech-based occupations are usually male-dominated, and male-dominated spaces are not entirely welcoming for women. Did you have any experiences where your gender was used to discredit your work and accomplishments?
Rae wholeheartedly agrees that STEM was and still is male dominated. Her own experiences are no different from the countless anecdotes heard worldwide on the barriers that women face in the academic and corporate environments. Nevertheless, it serves as further evidence of the ongoing global struggle.
Her full name is Rawati Heeraman, but everyone calls her ‘Rae’ because it is easier to pronounce. Rae said that her shortened name has caused a bit of confusion for her as the lead of IT departments because of the male version, ‘Ray’. So, when she has walked into meetings as the IT department lead, she is met with questioning looks and questions on her ability to get her work done.
She described how discreditation has happened in academic spaces as well. During a networking course, she was in a class full of men, and she had mentioned that she was a systems analyst. Her lecturer was taken aback by this and even told her, ‘No, that can’t be right’, to which Rae countered with, ‘Why not?’
Could you tell us your experience as a diabetic, especially in terms of the public and private health sector in Trinidad?
Rae was diagnosed with diabetes in April of 2022.
“I’ve always known that I’ve been predisposed to diabetes because it’s hereditary, it runs in my mother’s side of the family. So, even though I was surprised because I’ve always been cautious, preventative, I always do my checkups and stuff, there was a three-year gap between 2019 and 2022 because of the pandemic, and I was surprised that coming out of that three-year gap that, I went from being not diabetic to being fully blown diabetic.”
She refused to be a statistic. She observed people poorly managing their lifestyle diseases and have far worse outcomes than they needed to. Her mother was her role model in managing her disease, as she was disciplined in her management.
Her diagnosis was unusual though. Her doctor said that she didn’t even fit the criteria for diabetes. So, it was recommended that she tests for LADA, latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, a rare type of Type 1 diabetes that affects 5% of the population. The results were positive. She took her diagnosis in stride and with her passion for data, she did extensive research on triggers for her rare form of diabetes. She started monitoring her diet, her sleep levels, exercise rate and water intake measuring them against her blood sugar levels.
However, from a traumatic event she experienced last April, she learnt that stress and anxiety were triggers she had to account for as well when managing her health. Despite her continuous attempt to manage her eating habits, sleep, exercise and water intake, her A1C levels had skyrocketed. It was only when she started to heal from the experience, did her levels drop.
What technology was available for you to manage it? Was it helpful? Where did you wish to see improvements?
Rae responded that in terms of technology, there is a lot available, namely smartwatches. She explained that her smartwatch gives her reminders of when to drink water or get up and move about—a habit that she definitely needed reminders for when she had to work remotely during the pandemic.
“The Internet has a wealth of resources, but being a person in tech and data, I would tell people that take what you get on the Internet with a pinch of salt? Meaning, don’t take everything at face value. You should be able to recognize data that’s valid from what is not valid, what are legit sites, what are not legit. . .”
When she says this, she speaks from experience. Rae had downloaded an app to monitor her sugar spikes but quickly noticed that the measurements were inaccurate. Her experience in data science and programming came in clutch: she created a dashboard to monitor her blood sugar levels, equipped with an Excel spreadsheet and graphs and charts. Despite her advocacy for technological use for health management, she also advocates for the affordability:
“There are also continuous monitoring devices that you can wear like on your arm and stuff similar to like those nicotine patches, et cetera. Those, however, I found are quite expensive. . . I would say if technology was a lot more affordable, you would see a lot more people using it and being able to manage their diseases.”
You are an advocate for patient-centered care and patients taking control of their health, was there a project or initiative in your work as a data scientist that created that passion or was it your experience as a diabetic?
“I think it was a combination of both”, Rae said. Being diagnosed with diabetes during the pandemic made her more knowledgeable on healthcare analytics: specifically, COVID-19 cases and deaths. She used these statistics as a guide to go even deeper in terms of analyzing her diabetes. She looked at her diet, her exercise, the step count, sleeping patterns, among others. The passion is also motivated by her mission to reverse her diabetes.
The general population is unaware that their medical health record belongs to them, and they are at liberty to request it at any time. How do you think this lack of awareness prevents individuals from managing their health effectively?
Rae stated that it was a double-edged sword.
“I would say if you take a step back, the general population, most people, and I’m not in any means belittling anybody here, but people don’t even realize that that is data that could help them. . . and if I were to use my mom as a reference, God rest her soul, I don’t think she realized when she was managing her diabetes that she was using data to do it.”
She advised that before we look at telling people that their records belong to them, people need to be educated on what to do with the records, how to use the medical information to govern their lifestyle decisions. Rae said that this would take an increase in data literacy and that while the diabetes associations are educating the public, the conversations are too generic, and not-data driven.
There is a lack of effective ways to share health records between the public and private health sector, do you believe that giving patients access to their records allows for that gap to be bridged?
“It can help to some extent”, Rae said, but the gaps between the public and private health sectors exists because they operate in silos. To amend this, first, the silos need to be addressed and treated with clear, consistent, mutually friendly and effective communication because often both these sectors are possessive with patient information. This takes the focus off the patient and instead redirects it to the patient data, which is not what healthcare is about.
She briefly commented that there needs to be accountability when a patient is misdiagnosed, and the health data is not relinquished. She did not want to delve too deeply because of the topic’s problematic nature, but she did reiterate that it was a big problem.
Do you think you have better clinical outcomes from your ability to manage your own healthcare?
As she said before, the public needs to be educated on data literacy first. She drew herself as an example, as someone with a data analysis background, using the information she had educated herself on, such as, what her test levels should look like, her triggers, the effect of trauma her medications and lifestyle in order to make decisions to curate her lifestyle to manage her diabetes well. People with diabetes would need to educate themselves the same way, keeping in mind that they can reverse their diabetes. She commended the DATT (Diabetes Association of Trinidad and Tobago) for educating the public on diabetes but advised that more associations, people and/or bodies needed to get more involved with bringing awareness, especially across the region.
