Speakers
The list of all speakers can be downloaded in pdf form here.
Edward Abrahams, Ph.D.
Dr. Abrahams is the executive director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC). Representing a broad spectrum of academic, industrial, patient, provider and payer communities, PMC seeks to advance the understanding and adoption of personalized medicine concepts and products for the benefit of patients. It has grown from its original 18 founding members in November 2004 to over 160 today.
Previously Dr. Abrahams was Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Association, where he spearheaded the successful effort that led to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s investment of $200 million to commercialize biotechnology in the state. Earlier he had been Assistant Vice President for Federal Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and held a senior administrative position at Brown University.
Dr. Abrahams worked for seven years for the U.S. Congress, including as a legislative assistant to Senator Lloyd Bentsen, an economist for the Joint Economic Committee under the chairmanship of Representative Lee Hamilton, and as a AAAS Congressional Fellow for the House Committee on the Interior.
Kevin E. Bennet, MBA
Mr. Bennet is the Chairman of the Division of Engineering of the Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minnesota. His division, composed of 60 technical staff primarily engineers and programmers, is responsible for the development and application of new technology for clinical practice, research, and infrastructure. Major development efforts include wireless physiological monitoring, minimally invasive surgery and deep brain stimulation.
Mr. Bennet joined the Mayo Clinic in 1990 with current and past appointments as Chair of Strategic Alliances, Vice Chair of Information Technology Standards & Architecture Subcommittee, Clinical Practice Committee Equipment Subcommittee, Information Technology Coordinating Executive Committee, Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, Medical/Industry Relations Committee as well as chair and membership in various workgroups and taskforces. He has also served as a reviewer of Mayo Clinic Proceedings and the NIH Small Business Innovation Research program.
He has over 30 years of experience in technology development with organizations including W.R. Grace & Co., Exxon International and Amoco Chemicals. He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health and served on NIH site visit teams. He holds patents concerning semiconductor and optical technology has founded several technology-based companies.
Mr. Bennet received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.
Elise Berliner, Ph.D.
David Blumenthal, M.D., MPP
Dr. Blumenthal, MD, MPP serves as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Barack Obama. In this role he is charged with building an interoperable, private and secure nationwide health information system and supporting the widespread, meaningful use of health IT.
Dr. Blumenthal received his undergraduate, medical, and public policy degrees from Harvard University and completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to his appointment to the administration, Dr. Blumenthal was a practicing primary care physician; director, Institute for Health Policy; and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System and Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Blumenthal is a renowned health services researcher and national authority on health IT adoption. With his colleagues from Harvard Medical School, he authored the seminal studies on the adoption and use of health information technology in the United States. He is the author of over 200 scholarly publications, including most recently, \"Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office,\" which tells the history of U.S. Presidents’ involvement in health reform, from FDR through George W. Bush.
A member of the Institute of Medicine and a former board member and national correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Blumenthal has held several leadership positions in medicine, government, and academia including Senior Vice President at Boston\'s Brigham and Women\'s Hospital; Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy and Management and Lecturer on Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government; and as a professional staff member on Senator Edward Kennedy\'s Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research.
He was the founding chairman of AcademyHealth and served previously on the boards of the University of Chicago Health System and of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He is recipient of the Distinguished Investigator Award from AcademyHealth, and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Rush University.
Nicolas W. Chbat Ph.D.
Dr. Nicolas W. Chbat is a principal researcher and quality officer at Philips Research North America. He leads efforts in clinical decision support for cardiopulmonary medicine.
Dr. Chbat received his PhD from Columbia University in 1995, when he joined General Electric Global Research Center (GE GRC) for 7 years. In 2000, he won the Dushman Award, GE GRC’s Highest Technical Team Achievement Award. Dr. Chbat then spent four years at the Mayo Clinic, Division of Engineering.
In 2005, he won the Best Teacher of the Year Award from the Mayo Graduate School. Dr. Chbat holds 12 issued and 4 filed patents. He coauthored the book Discrete-Time Control Problems Using MATLAB and a chapter the book Advances in Healthcare Technology – Shaping the Future of Medical Care, and 20 publications.
Many of his projects led to market introductions and design of state-of-the-art intelligent diagnostic algorithms. Dr. Chbat is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, and is AdCom and PubCom member with IEEE-EMBS.
James J. Cimino M.D.
Dr. Cimino is Chief of the Laboratory for Informatics Development at the NIH Clinical Center, where he is directing the creation of an NIH-wide clinical research data repository called the Biomedical Translational Research Information System (BTRIS). He is also on the Internal Medicine Consult Service at the Clinical Center, a senior investigator at the National Library of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.
After obtaining a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a medical degree from New York Medical College, Dr. Cimino completed an internal medicine residency at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in New York City and a medical informatics fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard in Boston. He then accepted dual appointments in the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in Department of Medicine and what grew to become the Department of Biomedical Informatics. While at Columbia, he was promoted to the rank of professor (with tenure) in both departments.
Dr. Cimino has a conducted biomedical informatics research, built clinical information systems, taught informatics and medicine, trained informatics researchers, and cared for patients continuously throughout his career. He is best known for is research on controlled biomedical terminologies and ontologies, and for the creation of “infobuttons”. His research and development work has included information systems for clinicians and patients, including pioneering work in Web-based personal health records and telemedicine systems.
Zohara Cohen, Ph.D.
Dr. Cohen is a program director at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the NIH. Since October 2006, Dr. Cohen has directed NIBIB’s scientific program in biomedical informatics. Her portfolio in this area includes imaging informatics, image analysis, assessment of technology and human observer performance, telehealth, telemedicine and bioengineering informatics. Dr. Cohen is a co-leader of the project team that manages the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC), and serves as a member of several other NIH project teams including the ones that lead the National Centers for Biomedical Computing (NCBC) program, the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF), and PhysioNet. She serves as the program officer for the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC), a national center consisting of an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, software engineers, and medical investigators who develop computational tools for the analysis and visualization of medical image data. Dr. Cohen also participates in trans-NIH working groups dedicated to facilitating the sharing of data and software amongst biomedical researchers.
Dr. Cohen began her time in NIBIB’s Extramural Program office as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in September 2005. Prior to embarking on a career in science policy and research administration, Dr. Cohen conducted research in musculoskeletal biomechanics, with a focus on the knee joint. She used MRI data to investigate subject-specific joint kinematics, simulate orthopaedic procedures, and measure three-dimensional features of articular cartilage. Dr. Cohen performed this research as a graduate student at Columbia University and as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health.
Adam Darkins M.D.
Dr. Darkins leads the National Telehealth Programs for US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Successful implementation of 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 have demonstrably improved access to care for patients, reduced utilization of health care resources and are associated with very high levels of patient satisfaction.
VA’s is seen as a national/international leader in telehealth with over 260,000 patients receiving care annually at more than 600 sites of care. At any given time 40,000 of these patients use home telehealth technologies that enable them to live independently at home. 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 and has implemented enterprise information technology systems in the US and UK since 1991. He has a previous clinical background in neurosurgery.
Piet C. de Groen, M.D.
Dr. de Groen is a Consultant in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Mayo Clinic, Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and former Program Director of the Mayo Clinic/IBM Computational Biology Collaboration. He is an AHRQ- and NIH-funded clinical investigator and international expert in medical informatics, primary liver cancers and colonoscopy.
His endoscopic research is focused on measuring what happens during colonoscopy. Together with collaborators at Iowa State University and the University of North Texas he has created a first-of-a-kind new software system that automatically captures and analyzes “inside-the-patient” video information of medical procedures performed via endoscopy. At present he is studying patient- and endoscopist-specific features, including quality of the colon preparation and effort of the endoscopist to visualize mucosa, remove remaining fecal material and adequately distend the colon. The ultimate goal of his endoscopic research related to colonoscopy is a fully automated quality control system that provides real-time feedback to the endoscopist and insures individualized healthcare by virtually guaranteeing a high quality examination for each patient. Another goal is to extend the technology to other organs examined using endoscopy equipment such as esophagus, stomach, small bowel, bronchi, bladder and joints and combine the information obtained from the optical signal with information derived from molecular tests and other imaging modalities.
Dr. de Groen serves on several external advisory boards including the I2B2 program of Harvard and the Deep Computing Institute of IBM.
Gregory J. Downing, D.O., Ph.D.
Dr. Downing was appointed in March 2006 as Program Director for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) initiative on Personalized Health Care. In this role, he coordinates trans-HHS agency programs for the analysis, planning and implementation of policies and systems to facilitate integration of technologies to advance the quality of health care.
Prior to coming to HHS, Dr. Downing served at the National Institutes of Health since 1993 in research, policy, and program management roles. Dr. Downing earned his medical degree from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Kansas. He completed his residency in pediatrics and fellowship in neonatology before joining the faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Neonatology at The Children’s Mercy Hospital. Dr. Downing is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in pediatrics and neonatology — perinatal medicine.
William Feero, M.D. Ph.D.
Dr. Feero obtained his M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine with a Ph.D. in Human Genetics. He then completed his residency in Family Medicine at the Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency Program in Augusta, Maine.
After five years in practice in Maine, Dr. Feero accepted a position at the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, where he is a Special Advisor to the Director for Genomic Medicine. Dr. Feero sees patients at Maine – Dartmouth Family Practice Residency Program, a residency site where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Feero is board certified in family medicine and holds licenses in Maine and West Virginia. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed and invited publications.
Felix W. Frueh, Ph.D.
Dr. Frueh is a Vice President of Medco Health Solutions (NJ, USA) where he leads Medco’s personalized medicine research and development organization. In this function, Dr Frueh manages Medco’s expanding research efforts in personalized medicine. He is also responsible for the development of Medco’s Personalized Medicine Research Center which is under construction in Whitestown (IN, USA).
Prior to joining Medco, Dr Frueh was an Associate Director for Genomics at the US FDA, where he built up and led the core genomics review team in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and chaired the first FDA-wide, interdisciplinary pharmacogenomics review group. Prior to the FDA, he was a managing partner at Stepoutside Consulting, LLC (MD, USA) and held senior positions at Transgenomic (NE, USA) and Protogene Laboratories (CA, USA). Dr Frueh’s academic career includes a faculty appointment at the Departments of Pharmacology and Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington DC, USA, and postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University (CA, USA) as well as the University of Basel, Switzerland, where he also received his PhD in biochemistry. Dr Frueh lives in Maryland, USA, with his wife and two sons.
Matthew Hein
Mr. Hein is an International Trade Specialist in the Office of Health and Consumer Goods, part of the Manufacturing and Services division of the International Trade Administration (ITA). Since September 2005, he has followed medical device issues in Southeast Asian countries (excluding China and Japan), and has also tracked developments in the Health Information Technology (HIT) sector. In January 2010, Matt picked up coverage of pharmaceuticals for India. He also followed Korea pharmaceutical and medical device issues from 2005-2008, and recently completed a four-month developmental assignment as Acting Korea and Taiwan Team Leader in ITA’s Market Access and Compliance division.
Prior to joining the Office of Health and Consumer Goods, Mr. Hein worked for two trade associations as a statistician/economist, the Beer Institute (1994-2004) and the National Automobile Dealers Association (2004-2005). He also worked in the Office of Textiles and Apparel at the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1991-1994, as well as in the Producer Price Index program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Hein received his MBA from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1988.
Katherine Johansen, Ph.D.
Dr. Katherine (Katie) Johansen is a Senior Scientist at the American Medical Association. She leads the AMA’s Program in Genetics and Molecular Medicine, which focuses on educating physicians about the clinical implementation of genetics and on identifying emerging genetic policy issues affecting health care providers. She also advises the AMA Board of Trustees and the House of Delegates on genetics issues such as the oversight of genetic testing, stem cell research, and newborn screening. Dr. Johansen has held a position on the Board of the National Coalition for Health Professional Education in Genetics since 2006, serving on past Project Evaluation, Nomination, and Program Committees. She also serves as staff liaison for the AMA appointment to the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Genomics, and has served as an Advisory Board member for Genetic Services Policy Project and as an advisor for the Illinois Humanities Council’s community genetics education program Future Perfect. Dr. Johansen earned her PhD in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and conducted post-doctoral research at the USDA. She has held teaching appointments at UCLA, California State Polytechnic University, and University of Idaho, and currently holds an adjunct faculty position at Columbia College Chicago.
David Kibbe, M.D., M.B.A.
Dr. Kibbe is well known and highly respected as an innovator and independent thought leader in the fields of primary care EHR technology and consumer health IT in the United States. A co-developer of the ASTM Continuity of Care Record standard, or CCR, that utilizes XML for computable health information exchange, he is an experienced clinician who practiced medicine in private and academic settings for more than 15 years. Dr. Kibbe has taught informatics at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and founded two health care IT companies. From 2002 until 2006, Dr. Kibbe was the founding Director of the Center for Health Information Technology for the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the membership organization that represents over 95,000 U.S. family doctors. The Center is now the locus of the AAFP’s technical expertise, advocacy, research and member services associated with health IT, and a leading international resource on information and communications technology for physicians in primary care. Kibbe maintains his relationship on a part time basis with the AAFP as Senior Advisor, is an active blogger on health IT policy, and provides strategic, policy, and IT consulting to a wide variety of firms and institutions. He is a frequent speaker on health IT trends and innovations, especially on the topics of patient engagement and physician-patient information sharing.
Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D
Dr. Kvedar is the Founder and Director of the Center for Connected Health, applying communications technology and online resources to increase access and improve the delivery of quality medical services and patient care outside of the traditional medical setting. The term “connected health” reflects the range of opportunities for technology-enabled care programs and the potential for new strategies in healthcare delivery. In his role with the Center for Connected Health, Dr. Kvedar launched the first physician-to-physician online consultation service in an academic setting. He is also leading important research in the use of a combination of remote-monitoring technology, sensors, and online communications and intelligence to improve patient adherence, engagement and clinical outcomes. Dr. Kvedar is internationally recognized for his leadership and vision in the field of connected health and the application of communications technologies to improve healthcare to patients. Dr. Kvedar is co-editor of the book, Home Telehealth: Connecting Care within the Community, the first book to report on the applications of technology to deliver quality healthcare in the home, published by RSM Press, London. He is a frequent lecturer and has authored over 60 publications on connected health. Dr. Kvedar has been honored by the New England Business and Technology Association for his extraordinary leadership in the field. In 2009, Mass High Tech, The Journal of New England Technology, named Dr. Kvedar an All-Star in the field of healthcare. Dr. Kvedar is a past President and board member of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) and is also Immediate Past Chair of the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Task Force on Telemedicine. In 2009, Dr. Kvedar was honored by the ATA with its Individual Leadership Award, recognizing his significant contributions to connected health and telemedicine. A division of Partners HealthCare, the Center for Connected Health works with Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospitals, including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals. Dr. Kvedar is also a board-certified dermatologist and Associate Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School.
William Maisel M.D.
Dr. Maisel is Founder and Director of the Medical Device Safety Institute (www.medicaldevicesafety.org), a non-profit, industry-independent organization dedicated to improving the safety of medical devices. He is also a practicing cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, MA. He has served as a consultant to the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health since 2003 and has previously chaired the FDA’s Post Market and Heart Device Advisory Panels. Dr. Maisel is also a member of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services Coverage Advisory Committee and a member of the National Quality Forum Patient Safety Advisory Committee. Dr. Maisel’s research interests involve the safe and effective use of medical devices and he has published extensively on medical device safety, consumer protection, and medical device innovation.
Bernard Merkel, PhD
Dr. Merkel is British. He is the Head of the Food Safety, Health and Consumer Affairs section of the Delegation of the European Union (EU) in Washington. His previous post was Head of the Health Strategy and Health Systems Unit in the Health and Consumers Directorate General of the European Commission.
In this position he lead the work to produce the EU’s first overall health strategy, “Together for Health”, which was published in 2007, as well as developing a series of policy initiatives in relation to healthcare in the EU. These included a directive on patient rights in cross-border healthcare, currently under discussion by the EU Member States, as well as policy proposals for improving patient safety, the quality of healthcare, strengthening the European health workforce, and improving the effectiveness of health investment.
Before joining the Commission he worked in the UK Department of Health and Social Security, on health policy issues, such as AIDS, child health and reform of the National Health Service, as well as social security programmes on poverty and disability. He was also for a time private secretary to the Health and Social Security Secretary. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE Health) and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Eurohealth and author of a number of articles on health policy. His training is mainly in the social sciences, where he has a doctorate in political theory.
Jan Oldenburg
Ms. Oldenburg\'s background includes 25 years of progressive management with a focus on the intersection of health care and the Internet. Ms Oldenburg joined Kaiser Permanente in 2005 to work with Kaiser\'s Northern California region to deploy their initial My Health Manager capabilities. She is currently a Senior Practice Leader, in the Health Portfolio of the Internet Services Group. In this role, she is responsible for Personal Health Record strategy with a focus on interoperability, member-entered data, and capabilities for members who see network providers. She also has accountability for member guides, directories and languages on kp.org. Prior to joining Kaiser, Ms. Oldenburg was the principal in several consulting companies specializing in strategies for using the Internet effectively in healthcare. Clients included UnitedHealthCare, Medica Health Plan, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross - Blue Shield of Minnesota, and Medtronic. In the mid-1990\'s she was the Senior Director for Electronic Commerce at HealthPartners, a Minnesota HMO, where she developed a secure Internet transactional system for contracted providers. Ms Oldenburg received her BA degree in English and Philosophy from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and all but thesis coursework for a PhD in English. Ms. Oldenburg has been a Northern California HIMSS Associate Board member since 2003. She has been responsible for several programs on emerging technologies and Personal Health Records. She is a frequent speaker on Kaiser Permanente\'s personal health record, My Health Manager.
Jay H. Sanders M.D.
Dr. Sanders is President and CEO of The Global Telemedicine Group, Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins (Adjunct), and Founding Board Member of the American Telemedicine Association where he serves as President Emeritus. He has served as a healthcare consultant to NASA, DoD, HHS, the FCC, the Southern Governors’ Association, WHO, the Russian Telemedicine Foundation, Fortune 500 companies, Academia, Venture Capital firms, and represented the United States to the G8 Nations on Telemedicine during the Clinton Administration. He was formerly Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami, where he was Chief of Medicine at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Professor of Medicine and Surgery and Director of the Telemedicine Program at the Medical College of Georgia, where he held the Eminent Scholar Chair, and Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Sanders is a member of the Board of Directors of the FCC Universal Service Administrative Corporation, and is Chairman of its Rural Health Care Committee. He served as a member of the National Library of Medicine’s Long Range Planning Committee, is President of the Friends of the NLM, and served on the IOM Telemedicine Evaluation Committee. Dr. Sanders earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, Magna Cum Laude, and was a member of AOA. He did his residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital where he became Chief Resident in Medicine, and did a research fellowship in Immunology at NIH. He is recognized as having developed the first Division of General Medicine, the first Statewide Telemedicine Program, and in partnership with Georgia Tech, creating the first telehomecare technology called “The Electronic Housecall”. He has spent over 40 years in the development and implementation of communication and information technologies as a means of addressing the problems relating to quality, cost and access to care that now plague our health care system.
Roy Schoenberg M.D., MPH
Dr. Schoenberg is the CEO of American Well Systems and is the inventor of the American Well concept. He directs the company’s product development, as well as its operational divisions. Prior to founding American Well, Roy was the inventor and founder of CareKey Inc., a software vendor offering electronic health management systems. Roy led CareKey through product development, market introduction, and the adoption of its Web-based health management solutions by more than 35 million users. Roy continued to serve as Senior Vice President and Chief Internet Solutions Officer at The TriZetto Group (NASDAQ:TZIX) following its acquisition of CareKey in December 2005. Roy is a frequent speaker and author of numerous publications and book chapters in the area of medical informatics, many of which he published during his work at the Center for Clinical Computing at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. Roy holds an MD from the Hebrew University Medical School and an MPH in Healthcare Management from Harvard University.
Adam Seiver, M.D. Ph.D.
Dr. Seiver serves as Senior Director, Clinical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer for the Hospital Respiratory Care Business Unit of Philips North America. Additionally, he practices critical care telemedicine and serves as Medical Director for the 161-bed eICU program (VISICU/Philips) of the Sutter Health System, Sacramento, California. He holds an appointment as Consulting Associate Professor of Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to joining Respironics, he practiced surgical intensive care and trauma surgery at Stanford for 20 years. His academic research focused on computer applications to critical care and emphasized modeling and decision support. He holds an MD and PhD from Stanford University, with an MBA from Duke University. He completed his Surgery Residency at Stanford University Hospital and is a Fellow of both the American College of Surgery and the American College of Critical Care Medicine. He is a member of the Medical Advisory Board for IMS, Inc., a start-up originally funded by DARPA that offers the ICU-in-a-stretcher now used by the US and NATO forces—the LSTAT (Life Support for Trauma and Transport).
Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D.
Dr. Stephan is a widely recognized visionary in the field of molecular medicine and currently serves as the President and CEO of the Ignite Institute. He founded the Institute in 2009 in his quest to change the medical paradigm from reactive and generalized to proactive and personalized through the implementation of molecularly informed, tactical solutions.
Dr. Stephen is a pioneer in personalized medicine working for over a decade to develop early diagnostic tests and knowledge-based therapies for the many different subtypes of common human diseases. He has worked on the interface between academia and industry where translational medicine occurs.
Dr. Stephan has founded a number of companies, including Navigenics, Amnestix and Aeuon, Inc. Prior to this, Dr. Stephan served as a Senior Investigator and founding Chairman of the Department of Neurogenomics at the non-profit Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona and later moved into the role of Deputy Director of Discovery Research for the Institute. Dr. Stephan and his colleagues were among the first to use the latest genome scanning technologies to identify genetic links for over two dozen diseases, including autism, ALS, SIDS and Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Stephan has held faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and the University of Arizona. He is the author of over 140 scientific publications and has been highlighted twice on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for his contributions to the field of medicine.
Dr. Stephan received a B.S. in Biology/Biochemistry from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Human Molecular Genetics from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 1996. He completed a fellowship at the National Human Genome Research Institute in 1999.
Walter G. Suarez, M.D., MPH
Dr. Suarez is a physician and a public health and medical information systems specialist, and the Director of Health IT Strategy for Kaiser Permanente. Before joining Kaiser, Dr. Suarez was the President and CEO of the Institute for HIPAA/HIT Education and Research. Prior to this he was the CEO of the Midwest Center for HIPAA Education and before that the Executive Director and CEO of the Minnesota Health Data Institute. He also worked for the Minnesota Department of Health in various senior policy positions.
Dr. Suarez has provided project management, technical and policy consulting services and project/program evaluation services to health care provider organizations, health plans, Medicaid and Medicare programs, Public Health agencies and vendors in the areas of Health IT/HIE, public health data standards, health disparities, quality measurement, health information privacy and security standards, and HIPAA standards including Transactions and Code Sets (TCS) and the National Provider Identifier (NPI).
More recently, Dr. Suarez was a lead consultant to national and regional projects such as the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration – HISPC (ONC-AHRQ), Technical Assistance to Medicaid and CHIP Agencies on Health IT and HIE (AHRQ) and Development of Statewide Uniform Companion Guides for HIPAA Transactions (Minnesota).
Dr. Suarez was appointed in 2008 by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the prestigious National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS). Last year the Secretary also appointed him to the HIT Standards Committee of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. He is also an active member of several national organizations, including: Member of the Board of Directors of the Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HISTP) where he co-chairs the Security, Privacy and Infrastructure Technical Committee, the Clinical Research Tiger Team and the HITSP Education, Communications and Outreach Committee; Co-Chair of the Privacy and Compliance Workgroup of the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT); Founding President of the Public Health Data Standards Consortium (PHDSC); Member of the Executive Board of the Joint Public Health Informatics Task Force (JPHITF); Member of the National Uniform Claims Committee (NUCC).
Dr. Suarez has been the recipient of numerous regional and national awards, including the Minnesota Physician’s “Most Influential Health Care Leaders” in 1997 and 1998, the WEDI 2004, 2006 and 2007 Distinguished Service Award and the first recipient of WEDI’s prestigious “Andrew H. Melczer” Excellence in Volunteerism Award, in 2005.
John R. Zaleski Ph.D, CPHIMS
Dr. Zaleski is Vice President of Clinical Applications and CTO at Nuvon. A renowned leader in the biomedical informatics and health care technology industries, Dr. Zaleski brings more than 23 years of experience in researching and bringing to market devices and products to improve health care. Dr. Zaleski has a particular expertise in designing, developing, and implementing clinical and non-clinical point-of-care applications for hospital enterprises.
*Dr. Zaleski holds four issued patents related to medical device interoperability, as well as more than 50 patent disclosures applied for and/or pending. He is the author of numerous articles on information technology and medical devices, and wrote the first book published on integrating medical device data into electronic health records.
Dr. Zaleski holds a PhD in Biomedical Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Boston University. He is certified through the Health Information Management Systems Society (CPHIMS). He has a Quality and Regulatory Training Certificate and a Clinical Workflow Training Certification from Siemens Medical Solutions USA. He also holds Data Warehousing and Design Certification from the Data Warehousing Institute. Additionally, Dr. Zaleski is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).
Prior to joining Nuvon, Dr. Zaleski most recently served as senior director and research department head of Biomedical Informatics for Philips Research North America. In this role, he oversaw more than 20 researchers and clinicians to manage the company’s global research portfolio in biomedical informatics. He also had responsibility for a $6+ million project portfolio and departmental budget focused primarily upon acute care patient monitoring informatics, oncology informatics, imaging informatics and womenÆs health, and genomics and biomarkers.
Dr. Zaleski’s role at Philips Research was that of a visionary, establishing new methodologies and creating integrated laboratory and test environments to validate and address hazards associated with the use of new technologies for major product release.
Previously, at Siemens Health Services USA, where he held several titles over an eight year period, Dr. Zaleski brought medical device information technology products from concept to general commercial availability in the medical/surgical space. He also developed and managed new product lines from concept through FDA approval and market realization, including Siemens Health Services’s first class-2 medical device for bedside vitals collection in medical surgical wards. Additionally, he managed the critical care product line with budgets and product sales of more than $10 million. While with Siemens, he was one of two employees named Principal Expert out of an organization of more than 3,000 employees, and was awarded Innovator of the Year three times in the seven years the program existed.
Before joining Siemens, Dr. Zaleski spent 10 years with Lockheed Martin, where he directed a team of more than 20 research and development and performance engineering personnel. As Chief Architect, he coordinated information mining and research development activities. There, Dr. Zaleski was instrumental in raising customer confidence and ensuring two major customer contract wins totaling more than $100 million.
Dr. Zaleski began a career in medical device connectivity while earning his PhD in Biomedical Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. Through conducting clinical trials at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, he developed a post-operative decision support method for weaning coronary artery bypass graft patients from mechanical ventilation.
Prior to his career in health care technology, Dr. Zaleski worked as member of the technical staff for Nichols Research Corporation, as the key technical contact for airborne electro optical sensor systems.
Yuan-ting Zhang, Ph.D.
Dr. Zhang is head of the Division of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Joint Research Center for Biomedical Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. He also currently serves as the Director of Key Laboratory for Biomedical Informatics and Health Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Director of the SIAT Institute of Biomedical and Health Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was a Research Associate and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, from 1989 to 1994. He chaired the Biomedical Division of Hong Kong Institution of Engineers in 1996/1997 and 2000/2001. His current research interests include neural engineering, T-Hz imaging, and wearable medical devices and body sensor networks particularly for mobile health. He has published more than 300 scientific articles in the area of biomedical engineering.
Dr. Zhang was the Technical Program Chair of the 20th Annual Int’l Conference in 1998 and the General Conference Chair of the 27th Annual Int’l Conference in 2005. He served the TPC Chair of IEEE-EMBS Summer School and Symposium on Medical Devices and Biosensors (ISSS-MDBS) in 2006 and 2007. He was also the General Conference Chair of The 5th International Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN) and The 5th International Summer School and Symposium on Medical Devices and Biosensors (ISSS-MDBS) in 2008. He was elected as an IEEE-EMBS AdCom member in 1999 and served as Vice-President (Conferences) in 2000. He served as Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Engineering and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He was also the Guest Editor of IEEE Communication Magazine and IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, Associate Editor of The International Journal of Telemedicine and also the Journal of Neuro-engineering and Rehabilitation. He is also on a number of Editorial Boards, the Book Series of Biomedical Engineering published by the IEEE press and the IEEE-EMBS Technical Committee of Wearable Systems and Sensors. He is an honorary advisor of Hong Kong Medical and Healthcare Device Manufacture Association.