Dr. Thomas leads nursing informatics and innovation at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, working at the intersection of clinical excellence, data strategy and transformative technology to equip care teams with smarter tools that drive better patient outcomes. She has successfully led the integration and scaling of virtual nursing across MD Anderson, with a deployment strategy anchored in workflow design, nurse acceptance and incremental trust-building rather than technological sophistication alone, beginning with admission and discharge workflows that carry significant administrative burden and pull bedside nurses away from direct care activities. Dr. Thomas has established innovation units and an innovations workgroup largely comprised of frontline nurses, and hosts innovation days where nurses can engage directly with what the future of care delivery could look like and provide input on how it should be shaped. She is also launching a work-sampling study to delineate pain points across nursing workflows.
