Health Tech ServicesHealth Tech · About
The nurse who speaks
both languages.
Emily Stanforth, MSN, RN, NEA-BC has spent more than a decade at the intersection of clinical practice and commercial healthcare — and can credibly speak both languages to every stakeholder in the room.
Background
Emily Stanforth, MSN, RN, NEA-BC built her career across the full spectrum of healthcare — from the bedside as a perinatal and NICU nurse, through clinical informatics and enterprise analytics leadership at UCSF Health and Epic, to clinical strategy embedded inside commercial and product organizations.
Today, as Senior Director of Nursing Strategy & Innovation at Abridge, she partners directly with commercial, product, and customer success teams to ensure clinical solutions address the real-world challenges nurses face. She has been on both sides of the table — the nurse skeptical of the pitch, and the strategist making it — and she knows exactly where the credibility gaps are.
That experience is what Vekata brings to health tech companies: the clinical fluency to earn trust in a room full of people who have seen too many vendor pitches, and the commercial grounding to turn that trust into a deal.
Vekata is named after Emily's three kids — Vera, Kaden, and Etta. Based in Madison, WI, she spends her time outside of work outdoors and active with her husband and three kids — the same people who remind her daily why getting healthcare right actually matters.
Consulting Philosophy
How I think about
this work.
01
Clinical buyers know immediately when you don't get it.
Frontline nurses have sat through hundreds of vendor pitches. They can tell within two minutes whether the person in the room has ever actually worked a shift. The fastest path to trust is not a polished deck — it's demonstrating that you understand what their day looks like, what slows them down, and what they've already tried. That credibility cannot be faked, and it cannot be trained in a weekend.
02
The best technology still fails without clinical buy-in.
A product can be technically excellent and still get worked around at the bedside. Adoption is not a launch event — it's the result of clinical input at every stage, from product design through sales conversation through go-live. When the people selling a solution can speak to clinical reality with authority, the whole process moves differently.
03
Every engagement should leave your team stronger.
I don't build dependencies. Every playbook, training program, and enablement framework I deliver is designed to be owned and deployed by your team long after our work together ends. The goal is not a consulting relationship — it's a capability your organization keeps.