Speakers - Nashville

Conference Co-Chairs
Chief Medical Information Officer
Whittier IPA, Inc
 
Founder and Principal
Pearson Health Tech Insights, LLC (PHTI)

Featured Speakers

Mark Hagland
Editor-in-Chief
Healthcare Informatics
David Kaelber,
MD, PhD, MPH
,
Internist and Pediatrician, Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Vice-President of Health Informatics,
MetroHealth System

 
Ryan Edwards,
Security Solutions
Architect – Healthcare,
Fortinet
Patricia A. Lavely, MBA, FACHE, CHCIO,
Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Gwinnett Medical Center
Steven J. Stack, MD, Immediate Past President, American Medical Association
Deb Bass,
Chief Executive Officer, Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NeHII)
Hayward Zwerling, MD, FACP, FACE,
Owner,
The Lowell Diabetes & Endocrine Center
Paul Smith,
National Practice Leader - Healthcare Insurance, NetApp
Lance Black, MD,
Medical Affairs Manager, Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI)
Edward McKinney, CISSP, Information Security Officer, Information Technology, Floyd Medical Center
Roy Wyman,
Partner,
Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP
Arun Mohan, MD, MBA, SFHM,
President and Chief Medical Officer, Hospital Medicine and Population Health, ApolloMD
Ed Cantwell,
Executive Director,
Center for Medical Interoperability
Margaret Wagner-Dahl, Associate Vice President, Health Information Technology Extension Services, Interoperability Integration Innovation Lab, Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology

 
Ann Meehan, RHIA, Director,
Information Governance,
AHIMA IGAdvisors
Mark C. Ray,
Director,
Cyber Investigations and Breach Response,
PwC
Alejandro Reti, MD,
Chief Medical Officer, Optum Analytics
William Fleming,
Director ITS Operations/Technical Services Department, Gwinnett Medical Center
John Roberts,
Director, Interoperability and Standards, Tennessee Department of Health
Deb Bass, Chief Executive Officer, Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NeHII)

Ms. Deborah Bass serves as the Chief Executive Officer and active board member of the Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NeHII).  NeHII, Inc. is the statewide health information exchange in the State of Nebraska.   Ms. Bass directed the creation of this 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation and currently oversees and manages the continued efforts in the development of Nebraska’s statewide Health Information Exchange (HIE).  She is a regular public speaker for national conferences on a number of topics surrounding the development and future of HIE.
Lance Black, MD, Medical Affairs Manager, Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI)
 
Lance Black is a family medicine physician who served seven years in the U.S. Air Force as a family and flight medicine clinician. His undergraduate degree in biological engineering and experience in the military inspired him to pursue medical device design upon completion of his commitment to the Air Force. Dr. Black brings a unique perspective to the medical device industry, having experienced firsthand design-related problems as a physician. Dr. Black recently completed a Masters in Biomedical Innovation and Development at Georgia Tech, as well as a preliminary year in the Masters of Industrial Design program there.​
 
Ed Cantwell, Executive Director, Center for Medical Interoperability
 
Ed Cantwell is Executive Director of the Center for Medical Interoperability, providing membership recruitment and strategic and tactical leadership. Cantwell previously led wireless programs at the West Health Institute. Before joining the Institute, Cantwell served as director of 3M Corporation’s Wireless Business Unit and as chairman, president, and chief executive officer of InnerWireless, which he founded in 2000. Cantwell’s wireless experience began while working for Texas Instruments, where he led a number of high technology businesses and successfully obtained spectrum allocations from the FCC. This started as an incubator project then became SpectraPoint Wireless, where Cantwell was president and CEO. Before founding SpectraPoint, Cantwell held several positions within Texas Instrument’s Defense Systems and Electronics Group, where he helped to develop a variety of communications systems. He also served as an Air Force fighter pilot for 12 years. Cantwell graduated from the University of Michigan’s executive training program and is a graduate of the Air Force’s fighter weapons school. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University.
Ryan Edwards, Security Solutions Architect – Healthcare, Fortinet
Ryan Edwards has over 20 years experience in the design, integration and management of storage, security, virtualization and cloud solutions within the healthcare, financial and government verticals.  In his current role as Security Solutions Architect at Fortinet, Ryan works with a wide variety of customers and partners to raise security awareness and help foster better security solutions to a patient centric community.  Prior to Fortinet, Ryan served as a Sr. Project Engineer with Fuji Medical systems for nearly ten years. His work focused within the DoD to help integrate PACS and RIS systems in most major Naval, Air Force, and Army hospital systems, including coordinating efforts with DISA to build solutions that drove tighter security standards within the Fuji products.  Ryan has also worked for Rolta|AdvizeX with a focus on building distributed enterprise solutions and spent nearly five years as a Network Operations Supervisor at Aspen Valley Hospital.   Ryan earned a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and a Master of Science in Information Technology Management from Colorado Technical University.
William Fleming, Director ITS Operations/Technical Services Department, Gwinnett Medical Center
 
Bill, Director of Information Services for Gwinnett Health Systems, has served 30 + years in technology and operational infrastructure in the Information Technology arena.  Receiving his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Information Systems from Robert Morris University, Bill began his career with IBM as Director of Distributed Systems, and received a Master of Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University. Bill later joined Equifax and was Assistant Vice President of Technical Support. After joining Gwinnett in 2006 his focus now includes all aspects of technology services: Networks, Security and Customer Services. As his experience in healthcare technology has grown so has his involvement in HIMSS and CHIME.

Mark Hagland, Editor-in-Chief, Healthcare Informatics

Mark Hagland has been Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare Informatics (www.healthcare-informatics.com) since January 2010. Prior to that, he was Contributing Editor and then Senior Contributing Editor to the magazine, for over ten years. He has spent a quarter century in the health care publishing field, as a writer, editor, public speaker, and author. He has won numerous national and regional journalism awards, and is the author of two books on healthcare quality and efficiency: Paradox and Imperatives in Health Care (2008, with Jeffrey C. Bauer, Ph.D.) and Transformative Quality: The Emerging Revolution in Health Care Performance (2009). He holds a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
 
Joe Heyman, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Whittier IPA, Inc
 
Joe Heyman, MD is the founder, former president and, currently, the chief medical information officer of the Whittier IPA, Inc., a non-profit organization of physicians in the Merrimack Valley of northeastern Massachusetts that owns and operates the Wellport Health Information Exchange. He practiced Obstetrics and Gynecology in both a group and solo practice for 41 years, having retired from clinical practice in March 2014.  Joe is chair of the associate membership of the World Medical Association, a former chair of the American Medical Association Board of Trustees, former president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and former Chair of the National Physician Advisory Board of Optum, Inc.  He served on the Board of Commissioners of the Joint Commission and the Board of Directors of Joint Commission Resources/International.  He serves on the Bryan University Advisory Board and the advisory board of Digital Collaboration Solutions. He served on three subcommittees for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 
David Kaelber, MD, PhD, MPH, Internist and Pediatrician, Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Vice-President of Health Informatics, MetroHealth System

Dr. David Kaelber is a practicing internist and pediatrician and the Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Vice-President of Health Informatics for the MetroHealth System.  He is board certified in Clinical Informatics.  Dr. Kaelber and his team have placed the MetroHealth System in the top 1% of all healthcare systems in the US in terms of clinical information system implementation, use, and effectiveness based on achieving HIMSS electronic medical record adoption model (EMRAM) Stage 7 in 2014 for both its hospital and ambulatory clinics and a HIMSS Enterprise Davies award in 2015.
 
Dr. Kaelber received his MD and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.  He completed a 2-year National Library of Medicine Clinical Informatics fellowship at Partners Healthcare in Boston while completing his MPH at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
 
 
Patricia A. Lavely, MBA, FACHE, CHCIO, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Gwinnett Medical Center
 
Patty, Sr. Vice President and CIO for Gwinnett Health System is a leader in healthcare information technology with more than 25 years of experience in the industry.  She has served as Chief Information Officer for several regional health systems in Georgia and as an interim in New Jersey, developing each organization’s IT strategy and implementing operational improvements and technology-related regulatory compliance policies.   Her experience includes, but is not limited to, developing IT governance, implementing EMRs, relocating data centers, major system selections and implementations and long-range planning.

Patty has participated in the planning and development of both statewide and local health information exchanges, serving as Chair of both the Georgia Health Information Technology and Transparency Advisory Board and the Chatham County Safety Net Planning Council’s IT Consortium.  She has maintained memberships and industry involvement in national organizations, such as VHA, HIMSS, ACHE and CHIME.  Patty holds an MBA from Florida State University, is a Fellow with the American College of Healthcare Executives and is a CHIME Certified Healthcare Chief Information Officer.
Edward McKinney, CISSP, Information Security Officer, Information Technology, Floyd Medical Center

Edward McKinney is the Information Security Officer for Floyd Medical Center. He is responsible for overseeing the cybersecurity practices across the enterprise at the strategic and operational levels. He has served in both government and industry in senior cybersecurity roles. At the National Security Agency, he served as a Senior System Security Engineer and as the Branch Chief of System Security Engineering, with the mission of supporting national security and the warfighter.  He has confronted a wide range of security challenges and has an extensive record of success.
Ann Meehan, RHIA, Director, Information Governance, AHIMA IGAdvisors
Ann Meehan, RHIA  is Director, Information Governance, for the American Health Information Management Association, where she has been an active member for over 30 years.  Ann’s background extends across operational leadership and consulting, focusing on health information management, coding, clinical documentation improvement, regulatory, and decision support.  She has extensive public speaking and teaching experience and is published on topics of global solutions, electronic health record implementation, and information governance.  Ann implemented an information governance program at one healthcare system in 2013 and chaired the IG Steering Committee until her departure in 2015.
Arun Mohan, MD, MBA, SFHM, President and Chief Medical Officer, Hospital Medicine and Population Health, ApolloMD
 
A practicing internal medicine physician, Dr. Mohan serves as President and Chief Medical Officer of Hospital Medicine and Population Health for ApolloMD, a leading, physician-owned multi-specialty provider group.  ApolloMD partners with nearly 3,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, working in more than 150 hospitals and post-acute care facilities around the country.
 
Previously, Dr. Mohan was Medical Director of Care Coordination at Emory University Hospital and Associate Vice-Chair for IT in the Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. A believer that technology can improve care delivery,  Dr. Mohan works with several health technology companies.  He is currently Chairman at Radix Health and serves as an advisor to Aidin, TowerView Health, and Bioscape Digital. He co-founded PictureRx to improve medication management in patients with limited health literacy. The company was acquired by Bioscape Digital in 2014.
 
Dr. Mohan received his BA from Swarthmore College and MD and MBA from Emory University. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School.
 
Glenn E. Pearson, FACHE, Founder and Principal, Pearson Health Tech Insights, LLC (PHTI)
 
Glenn E. Pearson, FACHE is founder and Principal of Pearson Health Tech Insights, LLC (PHTI).   PHTI assists both product developers in their design phases and investors in their due diligence processes determine if a product or service is likely to be embraced by its target market.  PHTI also helps emerging and established healthcare products companies fine-tune their marketing approaches to see if there are opportunities to enhance their effectiveness. 
 
Glenn has over 30 years of experience in the hospital field.  He served for 19+ years as Executive Vice President at Georgia Hospital Association in Marietta, Georgia where he provided leadership in the following areas:
 
  • Financial Services (Medicare, Medicaid, commercial payers, etc.)
  • mHealth/Digital Health and Emerging Technologies
  • Georgia Hospital Health Systems, Inc. (For-profit entrepreneurial subsidiary)
  • Public Relations and Communications
  • Data Services
  • GHA’s Information Technology infrastructure
Mark C. Ray, Director, Cyber Investigations and Breach Response, PwC
 
Mark is a Director in PwC’s Cyber Investigations and Breach Response practice.  With over 18 years of experience, Mark leads PwC’s Incident Response teams and is focused on delivering world-class cybercrime investigations and cyber defense preparation services.  He combines front-line cybercrime and crisis management expertise to help clients remediate data breaches, as well as develop strategies to defend against advanced cyber threats.  
 
Prior to joining PwC, Mark was a Special Agent with the FBI’s Cyber Division, where he conceived, built, and led some of the FBI’s most preeminent criminal and national security cyber investigations.  These investigations resulted in the dismantlement of several major international cybercrime organizations, as well as the remediation of several high-profile data breaches across the financial, healthcare, and energy sectors. Mark also served overseas as the FBI’s cyber liaison officer to the Netherlands and Bulgaria.
 
Mark has a BS in Management Information Systems from Purdue University, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He advises the boards of several cybersecurity organizations and has lectured around the world on cybercrime and cybersecurity.
Alejandro Reti, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Optum Analytics
With responsibility for the Office of the CMO, Alejandro is accountable for the clinical integrity and relevance of Optum Analytics’ Provider Solutions and contributes to leadership and clinical product innovation for the organization.

Alejandro came to Optum from Premier where he served as Vice President, Population Health Products with General Management responsibility for Premier’s organically developed Population Health Suite. Prior to Premier, Alejandro served as Senior Vice President, Clinical Informatics at Verisk Health, where he led development of a Provider Analytics Solution that achieved top 4 in market share nationally. Previously, Alejandro held positions of increasing responsibility at Avalere Health and The Advisory Board Company.
 
Alejandro received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Amherst College, Magna cum laude and his MD and MBA degrees from Yale University.
 
Steven J. Stack, MD, Immediate Past President, American Medical Association
 
Steven J. Stack, MD, an emergency physician residing in Lexington, Ky., became the 170th president of the American Medical Association in June 2015. Board-certified in emergency medicine, Dr. Stack currently practices in Lexington and surrounding central Kentucky. He was the youngest AMA president since 1854. Dr. Stack has served as medical director of multiple emergency departments, including St. Joseph East (Lexington), St. Joseph Mt. Sterling (rural eastern Kentucky) and Baptist Memorial Hospital (Memphis, Tenn.). He is the first emergency medicine boardcertified physician to serve on the AMA Board of Trustees (BOT).
Dr. Stack has special expertise in health information technology (IT) and has led multiple AMA efforts in this area. He has been a member of numerous federal advisory committees for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), including the Health IT Safety Center Task Force, the Health IT Implementation, Usability and Safety workgroup, the Information Exchange workgroup, the PCAST Report workgroup, and the Strategic Plan workgroup. A member of its board of directors since 2011, Dr. Stack has also served the past three years as the secretary of eHealth Initiative, a non-profit association committed to improving health care through the advancement of health IT.
 
Additionally, Dr. Stack has made notable contributions to the areas of physician licensure, regulation and assessment. He has served as chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) Maintenance of Licensure (MOL) Implementation Group and as a member of its predecessor, the MOL Advisory Group. He has also contributed in 2014 as a member of the FSMB Special Committee on Strategic Positioning; a role similar to his prior participation on FSMB’s 2008–2009 Strategic Repositioning Task Force. For two decades, Dr. Stack has demonstrated his professional commitment as an elected leader within numerous specialty and geographic medical professional associations at both the national and state level in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. During his AMA-BOT tenure he has served as board chair in 2012–2013 as well as chair of the Compensation Committee, the Communications Strategies Committee, and the Awards and Nominations Committee.
 
Born and raised in Cleveland, Dr. Stack graduated magna cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., where he was a Henry Bean Scholar for classical studies. He then returned to Ohio, where he completed his medical school and emergency medicine residency training at the Ohio State University before moving to Memphis to begin his clinical practice. In June 2006 Dr. Stack and his family relocated to Lexington to be closer to their families in Ohio.
 
Dr. Stack is married and the proud father of an 11-year-old daughter. His wife, Tracie, is an MD, PhD, practicing board-certified specialist in allergy/ asthma/immunology and fellow AMA member. In his leisure time, Dr. Stack enjoys the study of classical Greek and Roman history, United States presidential history, photography, and traveling with his wife and daughter.
Paul Smith, National Practice Leader - Healthcare Insurance, NetApp
 
Paul Smith has a blue-chip background representing over 35 years in high technology and healthcare IT sales and business development.  Paul’s career began with IBM, and has included the sale of hardware, software, consulting, and implementation services.  Healthcare became a major focus for Paul during his nine-year tenure with Oracle Corporation.  In the role of Executive Director of Strategic Healthcare Accounts, Paul’s charter was to grow large healthcare insurer relationships.  Following his role at Oracle, Paul became the Vice President of National Accounts for Matria Healthcare, a leading disease management and wellness program provider, now known as Alere.  Later, Paul was the Vice President of U.S. Healthcare for Voxiva, a boutique software-as-a-service provider, with a specialty in the delivery of mobile healthcare solutions.  In his roles at both Matria and Voxiva, Paul continued his dedication to the large healthcare insurer market.  Paul has worked with some of the largest accounts in the space including; Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth and several major Blue Cross plans, including HCSC, Highmark and WellPoint as well as many of the influential ISVs.   Paul is a regular participant in the annual meetings of HIMSS, the World Healthcare Congress, AHIP - America’s Healthcare Insurance Plans, and is an active member of Nashville’s Leadership Healthcare Council.  Paul joined NetApp in the fall of 2010 and regularly gives talks on the impact of the Affordable Care Act and The Individual Mandate and how each drives new instances of BIG DATA in the healthcare insurance market.
 
Margaret Wagner-Dahl, Associate Vice President, Health Information Technology Extension Services, Interoperability Integration Innovation Lab, Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology
 
Margaret Wagner Dahl is Associate Vice President for Health IT at the Georgia Institute of Technology Enterprise Innovation Institute where she leads a team devoted to the challenges of interoperability and integration in eHealth. Her previous positions include those with multinational pharmaceutical companies Pharmacia and Organon Teknika. She also co-founded two successful startup companies (Video Electronics Ltd., MediScope Ltd.) in Dublin, Ireland. She subsequently moved to academia focusing on technology commercialization in leadership roles at the University of Washington, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Georgia in Athens.  Ms. Dahl serves as a board member for the WellStar Health Network Accountable Care Organization in Marietta, Georgia. She previously served as board chair for the Athens Regional Medical Center and the Georgia Hospital Association. She is currently the chair of the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Committee on Governance and a member of the AHA’s Leadership Development Council. She also serves on the board of Project Safe, a nonprofit organization combating domestic violence in Athens, Georgia.  Her degree is in geography and sociology from  Maynooth University, Co. Kildare, Ireland.
Roy Wyman, Partner, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP
 
Roy Wyman is a partner in the Nashville office of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP and is a member of the Healthcare Regulatory and Transactional Team. Roy's practice focuses on the privacy, security and regulatory concerns of small to large clients including issues such as HIPAA, IT and data management and compliance as well as broader regulatory concerns. He represents a wide variety of health-related and other entities including IT companies, durable medical equipment providers, telehealth providers, retail clinics, hospitals and health systems, payors, physicians and physician networks, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, and healthcare service providers.
 
Roy was the previously the Chief Privacy Officer and Associate General Counsel handling regulatory concerns for TEAMHealth Inc., the largest physician staffing company in the U.S., where he created and oversaw its HIPAA Privacy compliance program and also handled privacy and security breach investigations. He was also the primary counsel addressing IT and data management agreements and strategies.
 
Prior to TeamHealth, Roy was Senior Legal Counsel to CVS Caremark Corp. where he served as the primary counsel for MinuteClinic and primary counsel for the disease management and medical/pharmacy software and claims management subsidiaries of CVS.
 
Roy is a frequent speaker and author on a variety of topics involving healthcare, IT and data management.
Hayward Zwerling, MD, FACP, FACE, Owner, The Lowell Diabetes & Endocrine Center
 
Hayward Zwerling, M.D., FACP, FACE has run a solo, private endocrinology practice since 1991.  At the beginning of his career he began creating ComChart EMR, which was sold to small practices across the US from 2000 through 2015. ComChart EMR had receive critical acclaim from its small user base and had among the highest KLAS ratings in the Small Ambulatory Care Group from 2004-2012. ComChart EMR was certified by the ONC for Stage 1 Meaningful Use. As a result of changes in market conditions, ComChart EMR was withdrawn from the market in 2015. Dr. Zwerling has developed a unique perspective about the potential and pitfalls of HIT as a result of his experiences creating (coding) ComChart EMR and taking ComChart EMR through the ONC’s Certification program. He currently serves as Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Committee on Information Technology. He also blogs about HIT issues, predominantly at The Health Care Blog.
 
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