We sat down with our US account manager, Sarah Quiroga, BS, RDCS RVT, (pictured with our founder, Will Hewitt) who joined us in September 2023 after starting her career as a sonographer, to learn about her life before and after joining HeartLab.
I graduated from Grand Valley State University’s Bachelor program for cardiovascular ultrasound and immediately began working at a nearby hospital system. After three years I ventured out and worked as a travel sonographer for several months before joining West Michigan Cardiology.
At that time we were still using paper and pen reporting, and then re-typing the finished reports into our EMR. After several months of this, and dealing with the challenges it brought, we chose HeartLab for our PACS and reporting. I know I sound biased, but after working with so many other PACS over the course of my career as a sonographer, I was truly impressed by HeartLab. So much so, I eventually joined the team as their US-based account manager.
As an account manager, my role involves both sales and customer success. I see people through the process from beginning to end: from their first demo of the platform, to onboarding, and then providing ongoing support. It is incredibly fulfilling to see others realize just how much HeartLab has improved their workflow and, by extension, their patient care. Our sales team works very closely with our engineering and product teams to share feedback and develop new features for our customers, which means I get to keep putting my real-life experience to work.
Sonography is such an incredibly valuable diagnostic tool. To be able to provide data that changes the course of a patient’s treatment, and non-invasively at that, is an incredible privilege. In addition to the valuable information we gather via ultrasound, we spend a lot of time with our patients, and we often hear things that another clinician wouldn’t hear.
By providing a comfortable environment where patients can express their concerns, questions, and symptoms, in perhaps greater detail than an office visit, we can often help provide additional info that may aid in the patient’s prognosis or care moving forward.
One major challenge I found over and over again at many sites was the complicated workflows most PACS entail for writing reports or making edits. Often, it could take weeks to learn a new system, let alone troubleshoot any issues on your own. And when there’s an IT issue, getting it fixed can take a long time, which holds up patient care and creates a lot of frustration.
Increased demand for testing, and ever-reduced scheduling windows, often leave sonographers with little time to complete reports, and may even cause them to miss things either while performing the exam, or while filling out the report.
I was genuinely so blown away by the simplicity and overall usability of the platform after about a year of using it, that I felt compelled to be a part of what this team was creating. HeartLab was solving all our day-to-day reporting and storage problems, plus creating solutions to issues we didn’t even know we had!
HeartLab’s cardiology imaging platform has been built with sonographers and cardiologists in mind, and that is just so incredibly apparent when you use it. When I was a customer, the team was always quick to sort out our support and troubleshooting needs, much more so than other larger PACS companies.
After seeing the value HeartLab brought to the table for our practice, I thought, “Other people need to know about this!” So here I am, part of the team bringing efficient and user-friendly workflows to clinics across the US. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of a company that cares so deeply about helping clinicians provide better patient care.