Chante Butler of Flatiron Health dishes on technical compliance, cancer research, her tennis game

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Chante Butler's ultimate goal is to build a culinary program for children that opens their minds to science and technology all around them, even in cooking. But in the meantime, she's building her entrepreneurial and technical skills in the Life Science industry at Flatiron Health. Read on! 

Describe in a few sentences your career path leading up to Flatiron Health

I came to Flatiron Health after an extensive career in technology and supply chain consulting in the pharmaceutical industry. Flatiron Health was a perfect culmination; I was able to combine my years of entrepreneurship, technology, and advisory consulting focused on the pharmaceutical industry with companies like Accenture and Deloitte. Flatiron afforded me the opportunity to build something from the ground up at a company that is disrupting cancer research, cancer care, and healthcare technology.

What is a Validation program? How did you go about building one for Flatiron?

Technical compliance is the method by which computer system validation (CSV) is applied at Flatiron Health. CSV is the documented process of assuring that a computerized system does exactly what it is designed to do in a consistent and reproducible manner.

The goal of technical compliance at Flatiron is to demonstrate control without limiting innovation. In the world of automation and the speed at which software is developed at Flatiron, there is a fine balance that companies must strike in order to achieve the below tenets of technical compliance:

• Demonstration of traceability from requirements to code, testing, and deployment

• Document creation without overloading Engineering

• Confirmation that controls are in place to mitigate potential risks associated with data integrity and data quality

A risk-based approach is applied throughout our framework and based on assessment of system risk, complexity, novelty, and detectability. Applicability of external regulatory requirements, international guidelines, and internal Flatiron procedures are also taken into consideration throughout the software development lifecycle.

 What is the part(s) of your job you the most passionate about?

I am most passionate about building a validation program that leverages the speed and agility at which we develop software but still demonstrates our commitment to quality and meeting the requirements of the regulated healthcare industry.

Do any non-technical teams at Flatiron use Atlassian products? If so, which ones?

Everyone at Flatiron uses Atlassian products; our non-technical teams use Confluence as we use it for our internal documentation. So, documentation of our engineering playbooks, process policies and procedure, process maps, document repository for approved controlled documents. 

What is your #1 question for the Atlassian team?

How can DevOps tools be employed to build a quality and compliance program for a regulated industry that aligns with the methodology of continuous integration and continuous testing?

What do you do for fun?

I am passionate about tennis, cooking, and science. In my dream world, I am both a world-class tennis player and a chef creating culinary experiences for friends and family.

[Monique vdB]

@Chante Butler great article! Do you use science in your cooking? Molecular gastronomy to tie it all together? :)