Kate Donovan, PhD
Boston Children's Hospital

Kate Donovan, PhD is the Clinical Director of Immersive Technologies for the Innovation Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children's Hospital. She is also the Innovation Technology Coordinator for Medicine Patient Services at Boston Children's Hospital and co-founder of Hacking Pediatrics, an annual pediatric focused healthcare hackathon held in Boston. Dr. Donovan is a serial idea generator and has a deep interest in exploring pain points to help deliver enchanting solutions to improve the patient and family experience as well as operational efficiency for clinicians. She has been instrumental in bringing immersive technologies to Boston Children's Hospital and has been creating and designing solutions as well as researching its use with the pediatric patient population for the past 4 years. Dr. Donovan has focused her most recent clinical research in the digital health arena where she has studied the validity of wearables, clinical adoption and use of virtual reality and augmented reality and the use of voice technology in the pediatric clinical environment. She is also a member of VR-CORE, an international committee of Virtual Reality Clinical Outcomes Research Experts who are working together to create guidelines for future VR clinical trials. Dr. Donovan is a sought after influencer, sharing her expertise with prominent organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK's National Health System and NASA. She is passionate about sharing knowledge and encouraging children living in underserved communities to pursue careers in STEM related fields. She is a mentor and STEM educator for multiple organizations in the Greater Boston area including YouthCITIES, Boston Children's Hospital Teen Advisory Committee, Boston Public Schools, Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America, Technovation and Generation Citizen that all provide opportunities, education and leadership skills for inner city children. Dr. Donovan received her PhD from MIT and focused her research on the complexities of integrating data from consumer healthcare applications into clinical care management.