The Nashville chapter of the Blacks in Technology Foundation (BIT-Nashville) launched a statewide health care tech initiative aimed at providing nonprofit health care organizations with analytics training free of charge. The initiative is sponsored by HCA Healthcare and Dell Technologies and will provide nonprofit health care employees with training in Excel, analytics, and data visualization/storytelling.

Amazon is the title sponsor of BIT-Nashville, which was co-organized by Holly Rachel and Lena Winfree of Rachel + Winfree Consulting in March of 2021. Since then, BIT-Nashville has partnered with multiple local nonprofits, companies, and educational institutions with the purpose of increasing the diversity of the Nashville technology community.

“We are excited to be working with HCA Healthcare and Dell Technologies to bring this program to nonprofit health care providers across the state,” Rachel said. “We know that health care, technology, and data go hand in hand, so this is a very fitting initiative for us to be launching. We’ve been working really hard since last year to make sure that the training that is being offered is relevant, effective, flexible, and yet challenging for our participants. Our nonprofit health care providers serve our most vulnerable populations across the state, and we wanted to provide something that would be a value-add to them and could help them advance their missions. We believe providing this training is doing just that.”

"We know how important it is to have health care workers on the frontlines being knowledgeable about data,” Winfree said. “This knowledge can very well revolutionize the process of data entry and data-driven discovery for our nonprofit health care workers, especially as we are in a global pandemic.”

The 12-week training will be held virtually and is a mixture of self-paced and guided learning courses. BIT-Nashville has collaborated with local training partners, such as Nashville Software School, LocalTek, and Next Generation Health Analytics, to provide the training curriculum.

“Nashville Software School is thrilled to be working with BIT-Nashville on this new initiative," said John Wark, founder of Nashville Software School. "Helping our state's nonprofit health care providers better understand how to leverage data analytics and make better data-driven decisions is consistent with our own nonprofit mission. We're proud that BIT-Nashville asked us to partner with them on this valuable project."

“HCA Healthcare is a proud supporter of Blacks in Technology and their various efforts to connect, educate, and promote a more diversified, equitable, and inclusive technology community,” said Marty Paslick, CIO of HCA Healthcare. “This training program is an excellent example of their great work.”