Ashley Reina, BSc. OT: OT in Health Technology
In this post, we will learn from Ashley Reina, BSc. OT. Ashley is an Occupational Therapist in Health Technology who builds practice management and electronic medical record software. She is a graduate of Univ of Alberta in 2005. She has worked in pediatrics most of her career with a love for private practice. She is a visionary and lifelong learner with superpowers including awareness and vulnerability, which makes room for lots of self-reflections and growth opportunities in life. She is a mom to 3 littles, 2 boys 11, 8 and 1 girl - 8 months old. Throughout her day, she loves to build in moments of yoga, meditation, walking, and swimming. She loves the water and being by the water, paddle boarding, and just watching.
Q & A with Ashley:
Please tell us a little about yourself and some of your favorite occupations:
I am a visionary and lifelong learner. My superpowers are awareness and vulnerability, which makes for lots of self-reflections and growth opportunities in life. I am a mom to 3 littles, 2 boys 11, 8 and 1 girl - 8 months. She is a blessing and a joy. I love to build in moments of yoga, meditation, walking, and swimming. I love the water, swimming, paddle boarding, and watching. I just love being by the water.
What motivated you to contribute to this podcast series?
I wanted to share my voice with the other uncommon OT areas. I love the OT profession and feel that it has gifted me so many incredible opportunities because of the skills I have gained from my work. It has made me a better mother, partner, human and business owner. I love the strength and diversity of the profession.
Please describe the UncommonOT work that you do and the setting in which you work, the population you serve and the needs that you address.
Well, my uncommon OT area is health tech. Several years ago, after complaining about the redundant tasks of running my private practice, my husband you was just finishing school in IT believed that he could build something. That was the beginning of a journey and a mission to build tech/software tools specific to OTs. I have a low for minimalism, efficiency and organization and that is what I wanted for myself and all OTs in private practice at an affordable price. I believe that all OTs, even the little guy deserved the tools and automation to more easily run their private practice. And that is what we build in a practice management software and EMR.
How did you get there? Can you describe your path?
We moved to the kelowna BC area, it has been named silicone vineyard, and we wanted to be closer to a tech hub. Then we were accepted into a cohort with a company that supported Start ups called accelerate okanagan. It was called the venture acceleration program, it was the introduce to building a tech start up, learning about having a business plan, validating your idea, understanding your market, building your MVP. We have continued to work with AO over the years in different capacity with different programs and coaching. Early 2019 I started using the app in my private practice and that year, we made our first sales. 2020, I committed to taking on the CEO role and was determined to continue to understand the pieces of business and how to start marketing and getting the word out. Honestly, the last 3 years has been learning by fire as I have absorbed sooo much information about customer journeys, sales, marketing, customer support and more. But really it was my work in private practice and working in several different jobs in the first 10 years of my career that exposed me to several different workflows, systems, some I liked, most I didn't and a belief that we could do better for our profession. More recently I have started doing workflow strategy sessions, this is where I feel my OT skills shinning through.
Please describe a typical day or OT session at your uncommon setting? What OT skills do you utilize?
Typical day - I review customer and lead activity - sending emails and phone calls as needed to support and engage people as they learn about Therabyte, review social, making posts and engaging in conversation. I might have a strategy session, where I dissect someones workflow for their business and help them adjust things within Therabyte to make it work best for them. I have grouped my days into different chunks monday - CEO/personal growth/higher level tasks Tuesday - customer contacts and email reach outs - creating content, blog posts, social, emails Wednesday - manager/product meetings - mixed with my own OT practice emails Thursday - see OT clients Friday - reserved for discovery calls and meetings That is the ideal, it seldom is that clean, but I try to plan it that way.
Can you talk about some recent highs (successes) and lows (challenges) of your current role?
Challenges - we are expanding our team, Last year I hired a VA and now that role has split into 3 different roles and we are hiring into those roles. 2 now and 1 later. It is
How do you continue to learn in order to stay on top of things within your role?
Online workshops and trainings, group coaching
Can you share a little bit about salary and compensation in this setting? How do OT or the services you provide get funded?
Well, Therabyte is a SaaS company, which means we work on monthly subscriptions. It is common for tech startups to take on loans or investors in the early stages as there is an amount of capital that is needed to build the tech before it can be "sold as a service". We haven't taken on any investors yet (this is a whole other thing I had to learn about), in the industry they call it bootstrapping, which means we have raised all the funds ourselves and with support from family and friends. Its common to not be able to pay yourselves within the first 2-5 years depending on your business model. OT business owners pay for our services. We are looking forward to being able to start paying ourselves at the end of this year.
Any career advice for our followers and listeners on how to get started on this path?
Health tech and practitioners transitioning, is big right now. There is alot of activity on linkedIn with people leaving healthcare and moving into roles where they can use their rehab analytic skills and apply it to various fields, UX, data analyst, customer success, project manager. It is an exciting time in health tech. With a switch link there there is online learning and be ready to get your feet wet and apply for internships. This year we had our first 3 intern students. It has been cool to watch them grow. If you choose to seek the management route, being a CEO and running a business, be prepared to work on our own growth and mindset, it takes a significant amount of self confidence and belief to have an idea and push it through to a profitable stage.
What’s a common myth or misconception about your job/role you’d like to call out or demystify?
You don't need to know a ton about tech to have an impact in the tech world. You just need to make the right contacts and share your vision.
How do we find you, follow you, be in touch with you and promote your unique work?
FB - https://www.facebook.com/TherabyteApp
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/therabyteapp/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-reina-03b811146/
LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/therabyte/ https://therabyte.app
Email: Ashley@therabyte.ca
Please list any resources you would like me to include with your Show Notes (courses, articles, assessments, tools, etc.)
6 minute demo - http://bit.ly/Therabyte-6-minute-demo
Connect for a discovery call - https://tidycal.com/therabyteapp/therabyte-discovery-call
As always, I welcome any feedback & ideas from all of you or if you are interested in being a guest on future episodes, please do not hesitate to contact Patricia Motus at transitionsot@gmail.com or DM via Instagram @transitionsot
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