Speaker Biographies

Dr. Kenneth Thean
Group Vice President, IT & CMIO,Parkway Health, Singapore

Paul Sharek, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Medical Director of Quality Management, Chief Clinical Patient Safety Officer, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital

Dr. Sharek graduated from Columbia University Medical School in New York, completed residency and chief residency in pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, received a Masters of Public Health from University of California, Berkeley and completed a fellowship in health service research at Stanford University. Dr. Sharek is presently an assistant professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University, a pediatric hospitalist, and is Medical Director of Quality Management and Chief Clinical Patient Safety Officer at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Dr. Sharek’s experience with large scale collaborative quality improvement work begin when he was appointed co-medical director of the national 14-site children’s hospital quality improvement collaborative known as the Child Health Accountability Initiative, from March of 2002 to December 2004. This collaborative focused on collectively creating and implementing pediatric quality and patient safety initiatives. Dr. Sharek is presently the Director of Quality Improvement for the California Perinatal Quality of Care Collaborative (CPQCC) and is directing CPQCC’s first statewide collaborative quality improvement project in community level NICUs focusing on decreasing healthcare associated infections. Dr. Sharek was the principle investigator on the CHCA -housed Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ) “Partnerships for Quality” grant, a $1.3 million, 4-year award focusing on pediatric safety and is presently an investigator or co-investigator on numerous grants focused on pediatric patient safety including a recent grant from HP aimed at leveraging the LPCH Electronic Medical Record to identify risk factors for harmful events in the hospital setting.

Dr. Sharek has given a substantial number of presentations at national academic meetings related to quality of care and patient safety and is a faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) presently developing the measurement strategy for their 5 million lives campaign. He has published extensively on the topics of pediatric quality of care and patient safety, and is recognized internationally as a thought leader in the area of pediatric patient safety.

David Memel, M.D.
Head of Aetna Informatics

David S. Memel is the Head of Aetna Informatics. Aetna Informatics provides rigorous analytics and information solutions for clinical quality and cost-effectiveness oversight, for developing clinical initiatives that address opportunities for improving quality and decreasing costs of care, and for giving constituents proof of the value of Aetna’s programs, products, and services. These activities provide the foundation for Aetna’s work to positively influence the quality and cost of health care.

Dr. Memel joined Aetna in August 2008, building upon his nearly two decades of health care and pharmaceutical industry experience. Prior to joining Aetna, Dr. Memel was the Chief Medical Officer and Head of Medical Affairs for Roche Professional Diagnostics, in Rotkreuz, Switzerland. During his time with Roche Professional Diagnostics, Dr. Memel laid the foundation for the first Global Medical Affairs organization. From 2003 through 2007, Dr. Memel served as the Director of Medical Data Management and Analytics (MDMA) at Roche Pharmaceuticals. He built MDMA from the ground up into a global center of excellence for innovative, actionable analytics. Dr, Memel also served as Roche Pharmaceuticals’ U.S. Director of Medical Outcomes Research and Economics from 2002 to 2003. Prior to joining Roche, Dr. Memel was the corporate Vice President of Information Management at PeaceHealth, a multi-state, nonprofit, integrated delivery system.

Dr. Memel has presented at regional and national conferences, and has published in peer reviewed journals and books on topics including Pharmaceutical Innovation and Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Information Management, Data Warehousing, and Healthcare Quality Improvement.

Dr. Memel is a board certified radiologist. He received his B.S. and M.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles. He also holds an M.S. in Medical Informatics from the University of Utah School of Medicine, and an M.B.A. from a joint international program at Cornell University and Queen’s University in Canada. He did additional training in clinical effectiveness research at the Harvard school of Public Health.

Alain Herrera, MD
former Corporate Head of Oncology Sanofi-Aventis

Alain Herrera, MD., is currently Consultant in Oncology. He created Alain Oncology Consulting (AOC) in November 2008 after heading the Oncology business at Sanofi-Aventis where he was successively Vice President responsible for Global Oncology Business Strategy and Development (2007-2008) and Head of Global Oncology Franchise (1998-2007) and contributed to the worldwide registration of two products: oxaliplatin (ELOXATIN®) and rasburicase (FASTURTEC®/ELITEK®) as well as the Gastric and Head & Neck indications for docetaxel (TAXOTERE®).

His previous responsibilities within the Pharmaceutical industry include the roles of Chairman of Chiron Therapeutics Europe, Director of Chiron B.V, Corporate Vice President and Member of Management Council of Chiron Corporation and Managing Director at Pierre Fabre Oncology Laboratories.

Besides these duties, since 1991 Dr. Herrera has been Hematologist Consultant at Antoine Beclere Hospital and Beaujon Hospital. He was also Senior Resident, assistant to Prof. Pierre Boivin (Beaujon Hospital/University Paris VII).

Dr. Herrera has published and lectured extensively as an invited speaker at national and international meetings on cancers. He has authored a lot of original manuscripts in addition to contributing to numerous review articles and book chapters.

He is an active member of ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) and ESMO (European Society of Medical Oncology) and has served on the Executive Committee of ESH (European School of Hematology) since 1985.

Professor Jean-Louis Misset, MD
Oncology Department Head, Hôpital Saint-Louis, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, France

J.L.Misset is Professor of Oncology at University Paris VII and head of the department of Medical Oncology at Saint-Louis hospital in Paris. He is member of the French National Council of Universities, and president of the scientific board for Positron Emission Tomography in Oncology at Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris. He is past-president of the French National College of Professors in Oncology, and of the Institut de Cancérologie et d’Immunogénétique, Villejuif.

Dr. Misset underwent medical training at University Paris XI, Bicêtre medical school, and was a close co-worker to the founder of French Oncology, George Mathé, in Paul-Brouse hospital, Villejuif. He became head of medical oncology in that hospital in 1989, until 2001, when he moved to Saint-Louis hospital in Paris.

His main scientific interests are in new drug development, multidisciplinary oncology, including geriatric oncology and supportive care, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, gastro-intestinal malignancies.

Dr. Misset is author or co-author of over 200 papers published in referenced journals and is member of the editorial board of "Critical Reviews in Oncology and Hematology ," " The Oncologist" and "European Journal of Cancer."

Dr. Ing. Jiří Bedrlík
Chief Information Officer, VZP ČR

Dr. Bedrlik graduated from the University of Mining – Technical University of Ostrava in 1998, and in 1996 he attained his post-graduate doctorate at the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) in Prague in the field of mathematical modeling of transmission phenomena. By 1996, he was working at ICT as a scientist and then as project manager for the implementation of measurement and control systems for Prague heat power supply by waste heat from Melnik power plant for Prazska Teplarenska. From 1997, Dr. Bedrlik was general manager of Lotus Development, an affiliate company of IBM for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2001 and 2002, he worked as business manager for Europe and Swiss-based IPS AG. In 2002 Dr. Bedrlik was marketing and business director of DIGI TRADE and, following the acquisition of his company by German-based PC WARE, he shifted to the management of the latter where he was regional director for Russia, Poland and the Baltic countries. Since November 2007, he has been a director of information and telecommunication technologies at VZP CR.

Dr. Bedrlik is married and has three children; one daughter in university, the other in kindergarten. He also has a son in elementary school. Dr. Bedrlik enjoys reading science-fiction literature in his spare time.

»

Return to top

Diane Beattie
Integrated Vice President of Health Information Management
CIO, London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) & St Joseph’s Health Care, London (SJHC), Ontario, Canada

George Rathbun
CEO/Executive Director, CRIX International Association

As Executive Director of CRIX International, Mr. Rathbun is responsible for leading the organization formed to oversee an information-sharing environment for the life sciences industry. Mr. Rathbun has nearly twenty years of experience in architecting innovative business solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, and is a subject matter expert in the areas of research systems architecture, electronic content management, identity and access management, and digital signature technologies. Prior to joining CRIX, Mr. Rathbun was a Director of Informatics Architecture at Pfizer, Inc. where he was responsible for architecting and developing multiple, enterprise-wide services for business enablement. He was also instrumental in collaborating with government agencies, industry forums, and IT vendors to successfully complete the first FIREBIRD pilot. During this time, Mr. Rathbun was CTO of the SAFE-Biopharma Association from 2005-2006.

Chris Nicholson
Director of Strategic Communications, Humana, Inc.

Christopher J. Nicholson is Director of Strategic Communications for Humana, one of the largest health and supplemental benefits companies in the U.S. His background in telecommunications, retail marketing and healthcare has positioned him well for integrating technology and marketing strategies. Communications initiatives developed by his team have been recognized in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.com. Mr. Nicholson was featured on the cover Insurance and Technology Magazine for his work in creating best-in-class personalized communications for the insurance industry. In addition, Mr. Nicholson’s team won several awards for the SmartSummary and SmartSummary Rx – health finance statements for Medicare and Commercial members. These Awards include the American Business Award, “The Stevie.” Most recently the team was recognized for with an Outstanding Achievement Award at Consumer Health World and third Visionary Award from HP/Exstream.

Mr. Nicholson has developed a model within the business to leverage the vast data and informational assets about Humana’s membership to drive complexity out of member communications. His team has spent a significant amount of time interviewing and surveying members to learn about how they manage their health and health finances. The result was understandable and actionable communications that are specific to the member. Most importantly the goal of this increased personalization is to improve the consumer experience with a goal of having emotionally engaged consumers. The net result is a new communications strategy for the insurance industry that effectively capitalizes on the getting the right message to the right members at the right time. This strategy allows Humana to drive behavior change and consolidate unnecessary communications to positively grow member knowledge and understanding while at the same time helping retain and grow membership. He has been a proponent for information sharing throughout the industry, understanding consumer needs to, “give our members the tools and information they need so that they can make intelligent decisions about the health.”

Mr. Nicholson has an MBA from the University of Louisville’s top rated Entrepreneurial MBA program and currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky and has been with Humana since 2001.

Ray Rogers
Chief Executive Officer, National Center for Health Care Informatics (NCHCI)

Raymond F. Rogers is the Chief Executive Officer for the National Center for Health Care Informatics (NCHCI) located in Butte, Montana. Mr. Rogers serves as the CEO for the NCHCI, a non-profit corporation dedicated to improving the management of health care data, information, and knowledge. In cooperation with HP and Crossflo Systems, he is leading an effort to demonstrate new technologies for scalable and sustainable health information exchange (HIE). His company was recently named as the first Center of Excellence for the Rocky Mountain Supercomputing Centers where the NCHCI is leading an effort to develop virtual world simulated healthcare training environments. The NCHCI is also addressing national healthcare workforce issues and Mr. Rogers is the current co-chairperson of a national committee addressing health IT workforce issues. Mr. Rogers is currently working with Maternal Life International (MLI) to provide on-line healthcare training for doctors, nurses, and midwives in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, Africa. Through the NCHCI, he has hosted regional conferences to build awareness and encourage the broad adoption of electronic health records, personal health records, and health information exchange.

Mr. Rogers has over 20 years' experience in higher education administration, fundraising, marketing, and business development and nine years experience working in the field of health care informatics. In 2001, he led an effort on behalf of the Montana University System to create the nation’s first undergraduate degree in Health Care Informatics. He holds an undergraduate degree in Engineering and a MS degree in Technical Communications. He has three grown children and enjoys skiing, hiking and fly-fishing.

Dr. Luiz Arnoldo Haertel, MD
Cardiologist, Clinical Director and Head of Clinical Information Technology, Santa Catarina Hospital, Blumenau, Brazil

Dr. Haertel graduated from Santa Catarina Federal University in 1988 with a degree in Medicine, and became a cardiology specialist at São Paulo University in 1992. Since 1993, he has been a physician in cardiology and cardiac arrhythmias department at Santa Catarina Hospital, Blumenau, and in his private consulting office, for 11 years, in a paperless form exclusively. From 1993 to 2001, he was a professor of cardiology at Blumenau University. Since 2001, he has been Head of Clinical IT and, as of January 2009, he has held the position of Clinical Director at Santa Catarina Hospital, Blumenau. He is a member of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology, the Brazilian Medical Association and the Brazilian Society of Health Informatics.

Dr. Haertel has always been active in clinical assistance as a cardiologist, with both in and outpatients. He worked as an intensivist for some years. Dr. Haertel is the person in charge of the development and implementation of the Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) and the complete Electronic Patient Record (EPR) of Santa Catarina Hospital - Blumenau, a private, general and non-teaching hospital, without house staff. He was also the person in charge of the development of an integrated Ambulatory Information System. Today, almost 100% of the records in all the institution are electronic, and there is also a first level of Clinical Decision Support (CDS). In some areas of the institution, there is already Electronic Medication Administration Record (EMAR) available. A unique Hospital Information System is used with modules that encompass all the clinical functions (integrated with radiology – PACS, laboratory and pharmacy) and administrative work (billing, finance, bed planning, etc). This model, which was developed in this hospital, follows national and international patterns, and has already been implemented in several hospitals in the country.

Dr. Haertel has given various national lectures on EPR and he also provides consultancy on this subject. Nowadays, because of the great dependence, the hospital is an IT infrastructure model and it has strong partnerships with national and international companies

Sandy Aronson
Executive Director of Information Technology, Harvard Medical School - Partners HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics

Sandy Aronson is the Executive Director of IT of the Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG). In this position he oversees the development of IT infrastructure to support both the HPCGG's genetic and genomic core facilities and the HPCGG's clinically focused Laboratory for Molecular Medicine. This includes the development of portal, LIMS and repository systems. Mr. Aronson's group has collaborated with other Partners Information Systems groups to integrate these systems with the Partners Electronic Health Record (EHR) and is focused on extending support for genetics aware clinical decision support based on these integrations.

Prior to this position, Mr. Aronson was an IT consultant to the biotechnology industry working for Tribiosys. Mr. Aronson also held several position with Sapient Corporation, was a Strategic Consultant for Monitor Company and founded LearningAction, a web-based training company now part of Best Software. Mr. Aronson holds a Masters in Organizational Behavior and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Stanford University. He also holds a Masters in Biology from Harvard Extension School.

Ted Hagan
Director Service Delivery, Blue Cross And Blue Shield of Florida, Inc.

Ted Hagan has worked at BCBSFL for 24 years with varying responsibility. He is currently providing leadership for the technical infrastructure for the $6 Billion health care company. This includes strategy and architecture, as well as operational management of a multiplatform computing environment, including Network Services, Print/Mail Operations, Systems Management Services and Mainframe, UNIX, Intel and Open Source hardware and system software.

Past responsibilities include leadership for the Application Development portfolio and most recently executive leadership for the design and construction of a Tier III data center.

Mr. Hagan participates in executive direction setting and strategy for BCBSFL and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Professor Harold Thimbleby, PhD, FRSA, FIET
Director of the Future Interaction Technology Lab (FIT Lab), Swansea University, Wales

Harold Thimbleby is Director of the Future Interaction Technology Lab (FIT Lab) at Swansea University, Wales. He wrote Press On (MIT Press, 2007), which was the winner of the American Association of Publishers best book in computer science 2007 award. He is a Royal Society-Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow and emeritus 28th Gresham Professor of Geometry - a chair founded in 1597. Harold has been invited to lecture in 20 different countries.

Linda Creps
Executive Director, MCIT,
University of Michigan Health System

Linda Creps, MSA, RHIA is the Executive Director for the Medical Center Information Technology Department at the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers (UMHHC), an academic health system with 913 licensed beds, 43,000 annual discharges and 1.7 million outpatient visits.

Beyond her 17 years of information technology experience, Ms. Creps has been director of various departments including Utilization Review, Health Information Management and Quality Assurance. She is considered an expert in clinical information systems and has used that knowledge to advance the planning of the electronic patient record at UMHHC. She has extensive leadership experience in all stages of the healthcare technology continuum, including comprehensive systems analysis, application development, technical solutions that support the automation of human intense clinical activities, and advanced project planning that requires mobilization of highly effective cross-functional teams. Ms. Creps also serves as the Information Technology (IT) Executive Director for the new C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital, a 348 bed UMHHC facility under construction. The new hospitals will span 1.1 million sq, ft.; 855,000 sq. ft. of that space will be for inpatient care, while 245,000 sq. ft. will be occupied by clinics and offices. The total cost of this project is estimated at $754 million, representing the largest investment the University has made in its history and will ensure Mott’s and Women's Hospitals ability to care for the infants, children and pregnant women for generations to come.

As the IT Executive Director for the new hospitals, Ms. Creps developed the Digital Hospital Initiative (DHI). The DHI involved hundreds of staff defining a future state for Children’s and Women’s Hospitals. The vision is to provide a technical architecture with convergence of technologies through integration; making intelligent devices and clinical systems interoperable. The architecture will push and allow management of information out of the individual departments, devices, or isolated process control systems to the clinicians and support staff that need information for clinical decision making. With this concept, staff will have the ability to communicate the right information to the right person (clinician, nutritionist, nurse, transporter, etc.) at the right time.

Yuen Chueh Hwang
Director, Information Management Office
Tri-Service General Hospital

At Tri-Service General Hospital, Mr. Jack Huang is the director of Information Management Office. He graduated with a Master's degree and a Bachelor degree from National Defense University. Mr. Huang is also a Lecturer in National Defense Medical Center, the executive committee of Taiwan Association for Medical Informatics and the executive committee of Health Level Seven Taiwan.

Dr. Jack Tuszynski
Allard Research Chair, Division of Experimental Oncology
University of Alberta, Canada

Professor Jack Tuszynski received his M.Sc. with distinction in Physics from the University of Poznan (Poland) in 1980. He received his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Calgary in 1983. He did a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Calgary Chemistry Department in 1983. Dr. Tuszynski was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics of the Memorial University of Newfoundland from 1983 to 1988, and at the University of Alberta Physics Department from 1988 to 1990. He joined the University of Alberta Physics Department in 1993 and the Division of Experimental Oncology within the Cross Cancer Institute as the Allard Chair in 2005. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Physics.

Karl A. Stroetmann, PhD, MBA, FRSM
Senior Associate, Empirica Communication & Technology Research

Dr. Karl A. Stroetmann is Senior Associate with empirica Communication & Technology Research in Bonn, Germany. Empirica has established itself as a European institute with a broad understanding of the policy, political, business and socio-economic issues sur-rounding eHealth research, implementation and validation.

In 1968, Dr. Stroetmann received an M.B.A. from the Free University in Berlin, Germany and in 1974 a Ph.D. in Business Administration and Finance from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He has been a consultant to the European Commission, OECD, national authorities and global industrial players. He was/is project coordinator or principal investigator in Euro-pean studies on eHealth policy and strategies; market research, validation and business devel-opment (various eTEN studies); eHealth good practices and their socio-economic impact as-sessment (eHealth IMPACT and EHR IMPACT projects, each involving 10 detailed eHealth case analyses), and in basic eHealth RTD (patient safety; interoperability; semantics; business case development for patient data mining applications to improve clinical use of antibiotics, as well as of Virtual Physiological Human [VPH] disease simulation applications for osteoporosis diagnosis and treatment). Recent work also concerned a foresight study on scenarios for ICT-enabled new models of healthcare, including their socio-economic benefit/cost assessment, and research on financing models.

In Nov. 2002, Dr. Stroetmann and his wife, Dr. Veli Stroetmann, received an award for: "Telemedicine-Human Applications of IT in Medicine" (Integrata Foundation). They regularly publish in peer-reviewed journals, are invited for keynote lectures, and present at international scientific, pro-fessional and policy conferences, including the European Union High Level Ministerial eHealth conferences, national eHealth symposia, and European and global congresses. Regularly, they prepare and organise high level invitation only expert workshops for the ICT-for-Health Unit of the EC, e.g. at the annual WoHIT conferences, with global experts, healthcare provider and industry participation.

Adam Darkins, MD, MPHM, FRCS
Chief Consultant for Care Coordination, Veterans Health Administration

Adam Darkins leads the National Care Coordination/Telehealth Program within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Care Coordination/Telehealth within VA involves the use of health Informatics, telehealth and disease management technologies to enhance and extend care and case management. Under his leadership, VA has developed the clinical, technology and business underpinnings to successfully implement and sustain enterprise-wide telehealth-based services that improve access to care for patients, reduce utilization of health care resources and are associated with very high levels of patient satisfaction.

The VA is seen as a national/international leader in telehealth with over 200,000 patients receiving care annually. The mission of these programs is to provide the right care, in the right place, at the right time to the appropriate patient. The associated aim is that of providing care for patients in the most convenient setting whenever safe, appropriate, effective and cost-effective. The VA experience shows telehealth can bring about transformative change in the management of high incidence chronic diseases in the population, ones that pose an ever-increasing challenge for all health care systems. Adam Darkins has worked in health services development using new information technologies in the U.S. and UK since 1991 and has a clinical background in neurosurgery.

»

Return to top

Cindy Berry
Chief Healthcare Strategist, SAS

Bob Issenberg
Healthcare Division Manager, Comport Consulting Corp.

Bob Issenberg manages the healthcare division for Comport Consulting Corp. located in Ramsay, N.J. Mr. Issenberg has 30 years of experience providing information technology solutions.
He has a BS in Biology, University of Massachusetts; and MBA, Boston College.

Mark Dente, MD
Vice President of Healthcare Solutions

Dr. Dente started his informatics career over 18 years ago after graduating Boston University School of Medicine, focusing on new approaches to increase patient safety, drive physician adoption of technology, and create new methods to implement evidence-based medicine.

Prior to joining GE Healthcare Dr. Dente served as President of MBS Service Inc, a consulting company providing international executive healthcare management and venture capital services. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Wang Healthcare Information Systems, and led that company’s design of an ambulatory electronic medical record.

As Vice President of Healthcare Solutions for GE Healthcare Information Technology, his responsibilities include Strategic Evaluation of Emerging Technologies and New Venture Business Development for the healthcare portfolio as well as execution of GE’s Knowledge Management / Evidence Based Medicine, Clinical Decision Support and Secondary use of Clinical Data programs.

As a physician executive, Dr. Dente continues to maintain close academic and industry contacts and is passionate about driving GE’s “Early Health – Personalized Medicine” initiative at the national and international level.

Scott Porter
Vice President, DeviceWorks Imaging, Cerner

Scott Porter, Vice President, DeviceWorks Imaging, is responsible for the business of clinical imaging at Cerner, including RadNet (r), CVNet (r), CareAware (tm) Multimedia and other imaging-related solutions. Porter joined Cerner in 1997.

Prior roles include leadership positions in Cerner TechWorks and the Advanced Technology Group. Porter helped double the business of the ATG organization in three years. He also was selected to the Millennium Club in 2007.

Prior to joining Cerner, Mr. Porter served nine years with the U.S. Navy and five years with Andersen Consulting. While with the Navy, Porter was designated as a Naval Flight Officer for P3 Orion aircraft, a certified P3 Orion Tactical Coordinator instructor and certified Aircrew Commander.

Mr. Porter earned a bachelor's degree in operations analysis from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Edmund Billings, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Medsphere Systems Corporation

Edmund Billings is a pioneer in the development of electronic medical records (EMR) and is a seasoned healthcare information technology (IT) entrepreneur. In 2007 he co-founded Open Health Data, an Open Source company formed to leverage the transition of healthcare data from creation and sharing to use and reuse. Several years prior he co-founded Billings Brand Development, a firm focused on improving physician practices through information technology and practice automation solutions. During this period, Dr. Billings developed the Voice of the Physician (tm) methodology, which drives the definition, validation, and adoption of products by networks of physician practices. In 1988 Dr. Billings co-founded Oceania, a company that collaborated with Kaiser Permanente to pioneer electronic medical record (EMR) design and technology. He has also served as Chief Medical Officer for both adam.com and Precurrence, two San Francisco-based development partners focused on the syndication of multimedia health content. Dr. Billings trained in general surgery at the University of California, San Diego, and practiced emergency medicine for several years at Kaiser Permanente. A graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine, he completed postdoctoral fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shriners Burn Institute. He earned his bachelors degree focused on premedical training from Tufts University

Clifford C. Dacso, MD, MPH
Executive Director of the Abramson Center for the Future of Health and the University of Houston and Methodist Hospital Research Institute

Dr. Dacso is the Executive Director of the Abramson Center for the Future of Health ad the University of Houston and Methodist Hospital Research Institute. He is the John S. Dunn Sr. Research Chair in General Internal Medicine and Distinguished Research Professor at Houston. His group focuses on understanding how people acquire, structure and use information to improve their personal health.

John Hatem
Director Oracle Healthcare Strategy

John Hatem is Director, Healthcare Strategy at Oracle. Mr. Hatem is responsible for supporting healthcare industry strategy in Oracle’s Health Sciences Global Business Unit (HSGBU). Prior to joining the strategy team, he served for 4 and one-half years as a Director of Product Management in Oracle’s Healthcare Development organization, with a focus on the Healthcare Transaction Base (HTB). Mr. Hatem serves on the Health Level 7 PharmacyWork Group committee, and is an advocate for nursing informatics education. Mr. Hatem has over 25 years in healthcare experience that spans acute and ambulatory healthcare settings, and healthcare technology companies.

Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Hatem served as the Director of Product Management for several healthcare software companies. The range of healthcare products he worked on included, master person index, general and medication order management systems, clinical results review, clinical problem management, clinical documentation, administrative systems, and secure healthcare communication systems. Mr. Hatem has also served as the Nursing Informatics Director at the University of Colorado Hospital and various clinical positions in critical care practices at The Ohio State University Hospital and University of Colorado Hospital. His focus in the informatics role included a wide range of healthcare technology challenges, including administrative and clinical system implementations, development of training materials, clinical system selection. As a clinician Mr. Hatem provided direct clinical care to critical care patients with a wide variety of medical conditions. In addition to direct care of patients as a clinician his experiences included working with organization wide committees on documentation, process, quality improvement and scheduling activities.

Jessica Sweeney-Platt
Managing Director, The Advisory Board Company

Jessica Sweeney-Platt is a managing director with The Advisory Board Company. In this capacity she is responsible for sharing the company’s research findings with members at annual meetings and on-site. Ms. Sweeney-Platt rejoined the Advisory Board after a 13-year stint at the Corporate Executive Board, a for-profit network of executives at the world’s largest and most progressive organizations. At the Corporate Executive Board, she was the managing director of the HR Executive Forum, a membership program for human resources executives at mid-sized firms, and was a leading expert in the field of HR strategy. She also was responsible for executive education in the company’s Strategy and Innovation practice.

Prior to her work at the Corporate Executive Board, Ms. Sweeney-Platt was a Director with the Health Care Advisory Board’s Educational Services team. There, she delivered the Advisory Board’s research on hospital-physician integration and changes in payor structures.

Ms. Sweeney-Platt earned a B.A in History from Yale University. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts with her husband and three children.

»

Return to top

Lynn Harold Vogel, Ph. D., FHIMSS, FCHIME
CIO, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center

Krishna Sankhavaram
Director, Research Information Systems & Technology Development, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center

Krishna Sankhavaram has over 15 years of experience in building software solutions, delivering IT services to support Basic and Translational research in cancer research environments. He has broad background in many technologies with Solution architecture skills blended with extensive experience in project management. After completing graduate school, he joined St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, as a Scientific programmer in a Molecular biology Lab. He spent more than a decade there, where he helped build the IT infrastructure for research which includes various software systems, high performance computing, visualization etc and eventually became the Assistant Director for Research Computing at the Hartwell center for Bioinformatics and Biotechnology. After a brief time at the Moffitt Cancer Center, Mr. Sankhavaram joined MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2005, to start as the Director of a new department, Research Information systems and Technology Development. His department supports MDACC research community. His team has spearheaded the design and deployment of their very successful and heavily used high performance computing cluster, which is the largest of it kind in the World dedicated exclusively to cancer research. Mr. Sankhavaram's team is currently involved in various Software projects in Basic Sciences and Translational Sciences areas.

Javeed Siddiqui, MD, MPH
Associate Medical Director, Center for Health and Technology
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine, Division of Infectious and Immunologic Diseases

Javeed Siddiqui is the Associate Medical Director at the Center for Health and Technology (CHT)and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious and Immunologic Diseases, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis. At the CHT, Dr. Siddiqui serves as medical director for the telemedicine program and has been actively involved in HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases telemedicine since 2002. In addition, Dr. Siddiqui and the CHT are currently embarking on an in-patient, infectious diseases telemedicine consultation program.

Dr. Siddiqui is a co-investigator in a number of clinical trials primarily in the field of HIV/AIDS. He has written several articles in peer reviewed journals, published manuscripts and presented abstracts at national conferences.

Martin Peuker
Deputy CIO. University Hospital Charité Berlin

Martin Peuker has been working in healthcare for more than 10 years. He is responsible to ensure alignment of new IT strategy as deputy CIO of Charité. Martin Peuker is one of the leading data warehouse experts of the SAP environment. Due to his efforts, a new data warehouse was developed at Charité. His expertise brought six University hospitals as customers. He is also overseeing the development and implementation of the new clinical information system and the rollout of 16,000 PCs within a period of 12 months. Furthermore, he implemented two superdome systems for the new Charité data center. Together with CIO Helmut Greger, Mr. Peuker established the new IT-strategy corresponding to ITIL aspects. This concept serves as a prototype for other large hospitals.

Before joining Charité, Mr. Peuker worked for the consulting company Mummert & Partner as senior consultant. During this period, he implemented new reporting and controlling structures into hospitals. His new approach of activity-based costing and its implementation played a large role in his success in garnering new business.

Martin Peuker is an active member of the consortium, “German Case Record.” He also is a member of the CIO board of healthcare data centers. Last year he was promoted to the Berlin CIO Board.

Martin Züenkeler
Freelance Consultant, University Hospital Charité Berlin

Mr. Züenkeler joined the Charité in 2008, and is responsible for establishing new, centralized structures at the Charité. His first project was to help the comprehensive cancer center become a certified member of the German Cancer Society, and contributed to the application process for the Charite to become a center of excellence in cancer treatment.

Mr. Züenkeler’s focus is to implement Business Process Management and Change Management in hospitals. He also helps Charité to harmonize individual systems for research, clinical trials, and specialized documentation into one leading system. Currently he and his team are replacing 10 existing systems in tumor documentation with a single system.

Prior to joining Charité, Mr. Züenkeler was CEO of a company that developed innovative hospital information system based on a workflow engine. He has more than 12 years of experience in healthcare.

Dr. Nick Beard
Principal, The Wilfred Group, Clinical Assistant Professor,
Oregon Health & Science University

Nick Beard is a physician and healthcare IT specialist with twenty years’ experience in the industry. He has held positions as the CIO of one of the world’s first ‘digital hospitals,’ as VP and Chief Medical Officer of a large healthcare software company, and as a consultant with large management consulting firms. He has extensive international experience, and has engaged in research and teaching at many universities around the world. Dr. Beard currently offers consulting services to clients in the U.S. and internationally, and is Chief Medical Officer and VP of International Markets for the Healthy Communities Institute.

Robert Maguire
Senior Director of Technology and Application Services (TAS), Merck Research Laboratories

Robert Maguire has developed and lead teams and organizations to architect and deliver global solutions in support of research, drug development, and regulatory compliance in the pharmaceutical industry for 20 years. He has developed and managed outsourcing engagements on and off-shore as both a client and a consultant.

Currently, Mr. Maguire is the Senior Director of Technology and Application Services (TAS), a global department that supports Merck Research Laboratories. TAS has IT responsibility for applications development, maintenance & operations, technology innovation, and enterprise architecture. Mr. Maguire rejoined Merck in 2005 as Director, Research Information Systems Architecture and Security. From 2004 – 2005, he was Vice President of Project & Program Management at First Genetic Trust (FGT), a provider of tools for genetic sample and data management. Mr. Maguire managed the development of FGT's products by using a successful outsourcing strategy that included off-shore vendors. From 1998 – 2004, he was a Senior Manager in the pharmaceutical practice at Accenture where he worked with various clients to deliver and support IT capabilities in the regulatory and drug development areas.

Mr. Maguire began his IT career at Merck in 1989 where he worked in pre-clinical and clinical research. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Computing from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Dr. Lily Chiu
Cluster Chief Executive, Kowloon West Cluster,
& Hospital Chief Executive, Princess Margaret Hospital, HK

The Hong Kong Hospital Authority (HA) is a statutory body that was established in late 1991 to manage all public hospital services. It now provides for 95% of all hospital services in HK. Since 2002, all public hospitals are grouped into 7 clusters, each led by a Cluster Chief Executive (CCE). Dr. Lily Chiu is the Cluster Chief Executive of the Kowloon West Cluster (KWC), as well as the Hospital Chief Executive of the Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH). Graduated in 1972 from the Medical School of the University of Hong Kong, Dr Chiu was a Pediatric Neurologist for 18 years until she moved onto Hospital Administration in the early 1990s. In 1999, she became the HCE of PMH – a 1200 beds acute tertiary general hospital. In 2002, she further took up the huge responsibility of being the CCE of KWC, the largest cluster with 7 large hospitals and serving a population of 1.8 million people. It provides a full range of healthcare services, ranging from primary, secondary, tertiary and extended care, to mental health services. During her tenure, Dr. Chiu has introduced many quality improvement initiatives with resultant enhanced efficiency and effectiveness.

Marc Holland
Program Director, Health Provider Research, IDC

Marc Holland has more than 25 years of healthcare and IT research experience and leads Health Industry Insights’ provider research and advisory practice.

Prior to joining Health Industry Insights, Mr. Holland was the Senior Managing Consultant at System Research Services (SRS), a software development and consulting firm specializing in strategic consulting, information system management and operations improvement, primarily for the hospital segment of the health industry. He also served as a hospital system IT Outsourcing Executive for both First Consulting Group (FCG) and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), where he directed an annual $28M outsourcing contract, managed a 200 headcount organization, and was responsible for applications, operations, client relations, regulatory compliance, project management office, financial reporting and service level agreement metrics reporting. He previously served as a senior advisor at Superior Consulting Company (now ACS), focusing on healthcare IT planning and implementation.

In addition, Mr. Holland held the position of Deputy CIO at Montefiore Medical Center, one of the largest (1,322 bed) private, not-for-profit hospitals in the U.S., with responsibility for IT planning, clinical and administrative system selection and integration (including ambulatory), system quality assurance and management reporting. Previously as Director of Management Sciences at Montefiore, he led numerous operations research and process improvement initiatives including revenue cycle, ERP, lab, pharmacy, radiology, and emergency department patient flow redesign.

Mr. Holland is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and served as a contributing author to the HIPAA Security Compliance Guide. He is also quoted by major publications including Investor's Business Daily, Computerworld, InfoWorld, and Federal Computer Week (FCW). Mr. Holland holds a B.S. (Management) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a M.S. from New York University, with an emphasis in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering.

Capt. (Sel) Michael Weiner
Chief Medical Officer, Defense Health Information Management System

Capt. (Sel) Michael Weiner is the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for the Defense Health Information Management System (DHIMS). He advocates for the Military Health System's sustaining base and Theater medical community. He also advises DHIMS senior leadership and drives delivery of usable solutions to equip providers with technology that supports speed, stability and quality applications to meet their business needs.

John-Guy Park
Infrastructure Processes & Tools - Domain Program Leader,
Sanofi-Aventis

After working for Telcoms and Aircrafts at Nortel, EADS & Dassault, John-Guy Park accepted the position of Domain Program Leader in Sanofi-Aventis R&D in 2006, steering the ""ITIL-ization"" of IT. Today, his biggest challenge is to succeed in transforming IT into a Service oriented organization. He graduated from French Ecole Centrale (1999) and Ecole Supérieure des Télécommunications de Paris (2000).

Chris Longhurst, M.D., M.S.
Medical Director, Clinical Informatics, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford School of Medicine

Dr. Chris Longhurst is a board-certified pediatric hospitalist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He also holds an administrative appointment at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital as the Medical Director for Clinical Informatics, where he has spent the last five years helping to lead the organization through the implementation of a comprehensive electronic medical record (EMR). These efforts have recently resulted in national attention as a result of the successful implementation of a vendor-based computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system – a milestone achieved by less than 2% of hospitals nationwide – in the high acuity setting of a tertiary academic children’s hospital.

Dr. Longhurst received his B.S. from the University of California, San Diego in 1996, graduating cum laude with a major in molecular biology and a minor in computer science. He matriculated at the University of California, Davis, receiving his M.S. in medical informatics in 2000 and his M.D. in 2001. Dr. Longhurst completed his pediatric residency training at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in 2004 before joining the faculty. Dr. Longhurst has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and speaks nationally on topics that include evidence-based EMR implementation, clinical transformation, clinical decision support systems, and unintended consequences of healthcare IT projects.

Eric Widen
Clinical Transformation Director at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
Founder and Principal, Widen and Associates

Eric Widen is the founder and principal of Widen and Associates, a San Francisco based health care consulting firm focused on delivering economic, market share, quality, and safety improvements through applied analysis and intelligent information system design. Mr. Widen previously worked for Eclipsys as their western region practice director for clinical transformation consulting services. Prior to that, he spent eight years with APM and CSC Healthcare leading large performance improvement consulting projects.

Mr. Widen holds a Masters of Health Care Administration from the Clark University/University of Massachusetts Medical School joint program and a BS degree in Management Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Greg Feltmate
Chief Information Officer and Vice President
Information Management Information Systems (IMIS)
Vancouver Coastal Health & Providence Health Care

As Chief Information Officer, Mr. Feltmate is responsible for the overall IMIS strategic objectives and operational plans to support Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care. He provides the vision and leadership for the development and implementation of IMIS initiatives, while looking to achieve optimal and cost effective use of available technologies. Mr. Feltmate also monitors changes and trends in IMIS, together with his colleagues at the Provincial CIO Council. He has been part of the IMIS team since December 2003.

Bob Brown
Executive Director, Technology Services
Information Management Information Systems (IMIS)
Vancouver Coastal Health

Bob Brown is the Executive Director, Technology Services at Vancouver Coastal Health and is a member of the IMIS Senior Leadership Team. He brings 35 years of information technology experience, of which 23 years have been in healthcare.

His career encompasses a broad range of perspectives including healthcare provider, management consultant and hardware vendor. Mr. Brown's prior management roles have included systems development, delivery management and technical support as well as leading the information systems functions at Vancouver Hospital & Health Sciences Centre.

As a consultant with Sierra Systems and Peat Marwick, his principle areas of focus included information systems strategy, product selection, project management and technology services.

Michael N. Liebman, PhD
Michael N. Liebman, PhD, President/Managing Director, Strategic Medicine, Inc.

Michael N. Liebman, Ph.D. is the Managing Director of Strategic Medicine, Inc. after serving as the Executive Director of the Windber Research Institute since November, 2003. Previously, he was Director, Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute of the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center since September, 2000. He served as Global Head of Computational Genomics at Roche Pharmaceuticals and Director, Bioinformatics and Pharmacogenomics at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. He was also Director of Genomics for Vysis, Inc and Director of Bioinformatics at the Amoco Technology Company. Dr. Liebman has served on the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Pharmacology and Physiology/Biophysics. He serves on 12 international scientific advisory boards consults for 5 pharma/biotech companies and has been on the economic development programs in the Philadelphia Life Sciences Sector and the State of Illinois Biotechnology Commission. Dr. Liebman is an Invited Professor at the Shanghai Center for Bioinformatics Technology and is currently Chair of the Healthcare Task Force for the SMART program, and on the Human Health and Medicinal Chemistry Commission of the IUPAC. He received his PhD in protein crystallography and theoretical chemistry. His research focuses on computational models of disease progression stressing risk detection, disease process and pathway modeling and analysis of lifestyle interactions and causal biomarker discovery and focuses on moving bedside problems into the research laboratory to improve patient care and their quality of life.

»

Return to top