Speakers - San Diego
Featured Speakers
Kevin Baldwin is the Informatics Portfolio Manager for UCLA Health, an integrated healthcare system in Los Angeles County. In this role, he orchestrates a suite of clinical informatics programs and projects. Kevin is also responsible for preparing and engaging stakeholders in technology adoption and acceptance activities.
A strategic health services leader, Kevin has broad experience in people development, process improvement, strategic planning, service and quality, and operational management. Outside of his health IT roles, his previous clinical experiences range from clinical research to ambulatory administration. In addition to over 10 years of professional healthcare experience, Kevin holds a BS in Psychobiology from the University of California, Los Angeles, a post-baccalaureate certificate in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University in the City of New York, and an MPH in Health Policy & Management from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Sriram Bharadwaj (Sri) is Director, Information Systems, University of California, Irvine, Healthcare (UCI Health) and has over 25 years of Information Management Systems experience in multiple industries including healthcare. Sri has held many leadership positions in health plans and prior to his current work at UCI Sri consulted with Integrated Delivery Network (IDNs) around ACO, HIE and Clinical integration. Sri has expertise in Applications Development, Enterprise-wide IT Infrastructure and Operations. Sri is well known for his process knowledge delivering performance improvements in multiple industries during his long tenure with Deloitte in various parts of the Americas, Asia Pacific and EMEA region. Sri also has expertise building products for customers through his earlier involvement with SAP AG (an ERP vendor). Sri is a CPHIMS, PMP, CISSP, Chartered Global Management Accountant (FCGMA)(U.K), Professional, Academy of Healthcare Management (PAHM), and a Six Sigma Black Belt (ASQ). Sri is past committee member for the CIO Healthcare Summits and has delivered many presentations on Healthcare regulations and compliance at various conferences. Sri currently serves as Chair, Privacy and Security Committee, National HIMSS. Sri has been on the Southern California HIMSS Board for many years and also is involved with the HIMSS Interoperability and Standards Workgroup, Patient Engagement Workgroup providing thought leadership and opinion on various matters around patient engagement, interoperability, healthcare legislation, privacy and security.
Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) John Caruthers began his career with the FBI in 1992 as a computer specialist at FBI Headquarters supporting numerous cases, including the Whitewater investigation in Little Rock, Ark. In 1999, SSA Caruthers became an FBI Special Agent (SA) investigating a variety of criminal activity, including white-collar crime, the Arellano-Felix cartel in Tijuana, Mexico, computer intrusions and child exploitation. Following the events of 9/11, SSA Caruthers worked extensively on terrorism-related matters for more than a year. In 2003, SA Caruthers became the coordinator for the FBI's "Innocent Images" program and worked several successful cases over the course of many years, to include the nationally celebrated indictment of seven members of NAMBLA's core membership in a multi-state undercover operation. SSA Caruthers has taught cybercrime courses at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, served special assignments in Moscow and Kyiv, and was recently embedded with the Dutch National Police's High Tech Crime Unit for a year. From 2011 thru 2013, SSA Caruthers was responsible for the FBI's Industrial Control Systems and SCADA program. In January of 2014, he was promoted to his current position as SSA of the FBI's National Security Cyber Squad in San Diego.
John's current role is to secure, educate, and advise the San Diego AOR partners in securing their networks and data. Additionally, his goal is to further the FBI's mission of identifying, pursuing, and ultimately defeating the nation's cyber adversaries.
Daniel J. Chavez joined San Diego Beacon HIE as Executive Director in March 2013 with more than 30 years of health care information technology experience. He has an extensive track record of cultivating startups, business development and product marketing. Previously, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Independa, a San Diego-based innovator that provides solutions to help the elderly remain independent. In his previous positions, Chavez was Executive Vice President at Payformance Corporation, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the medical division of Immersion Corporation, and Senior Vice President at Availity. His prior experience includes IBM, GTE, SAIC, Stellcom Technologies and CSC. He holds a BA from San Jose State University and an MBA from Stanford University.
Dr. Friedman is the associate dean for clinical affairs. In this role he is responsible for the management oversight of ambulatory quality, safety and primary care, managed care, occupational medicine and telemedicine. He is also the founder of the UC San Diego Clinical Telemedicine Program which provides specialty consultation statewide and internationally. In recent years, Dr. Friedman has been co-chair of the University HealthSystem Consortium Ambulatory Care steering committee; served as a member of the Pay for Performance Implementation Advisory Task Force at the National Quality Forum; and is currently a member of the Agency for Health Care Research Study Section on Health Care Technology and Decision Science.
Dr. Friedman has authored over fifty publications including original research, book chapters, review articles, monographs, and medical society position statements. He is currently a reviewer for several peer-reviewed medical journals.
Dr. Friedman completed his residency and fellowship training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. He earned his medical degree at Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is board-certified in internal medicine.
Mark Hagland, Editor-in-Chief, Healthcare Informatics
John brings more than 25 years of Healthcare experienced to Geisinger Health System. He is the newly appointed Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Geisinger Health System responsible for I.T. strategy, growth as well as Geisinger’s advanced analytics platforms, including two Big Data platforms to support the Integrated Delivery Network. In addition John is responsible for the regional health information exchange, KeyHIE, which currently connects organizations throughout Pennsylvania. John has been involved with the Care Connectivity Consortium, a group of healthcare providers which consists of Geisinger, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente and Mayo Clinic who are developing tools to support the Nationwide Health Information Exchange.
Prior to joining Geisinger, John was VP/CIO for Good Shepherd Rehab Network located in Allentown, Pa. While at Good Shepherd he had the technology responsibility for Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a post-acute hospital and ambulatory clinic network through a joint venture with the University of Pennsylvania Health System located in downtown Philadelphia.
He is a member of the College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME), Health Information Management System Society (HIMSS), and American Telemedicine Association (ATA), as well as serving on the Central Pennsylvania HIMSS Chapter Board, KINBER Board, which provides fiber optic connectivity throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
As Chief Information Officer (CIO) for UCSD Health Sciences, Dr. Christopher Longhurst is responsible for the implementation and optimization of a comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) system. Together with colleagues, his applied informatics research is focused on rigorously evaluating the best ways to implement and optimize health information technology to benefit the patients and staff they serve.
Prior to his role at UCSD, Dr. Longhurst served as the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) for Stanford Children’s Health. In 2010, he published the first study showing a correlation between the implementation of computerized physician order entry and a drop in hospital-wide mortality rates. He is also a co-author of the first published use of aggregated EHR data to influence a patient care decision in real time.
Prior to joining Sharp HealthCare, Kara was VP, CIO at Methodist Hospital, where she provided vision and leadership on I.T., Informatics and telecommunications to the organization. She was a change agent for H.I.T. transformation for eight plus years. Previous to that Kara worked as a senior consultant with several consulting firms including IBM and First Consulting Group where she had the opportunity to engage with many leading health care organizations across the country to contribute to their strategic goals. Additionally, Kara has experience working with a major pharmaceutical vendor, and a global health care IT software vendor. This work has exposed her to healthcare venues across the country. Kara has held many different roles during her time with the aforementioned organizations which further expanded her unique background of clinical practice, consulting & software implementation.
Kara is a Registered Nurse, holds a Masters Degree in Healthcare Sciences from the New School of Social Research, in NY and is a Fellow with HIMSS and ACHE. As a RN Kara spent many years providing patient care in the ambulatory and acute care setting in the Upstate New York area. During this time she also held management positions establishing new service offerings to the community.
Kara is actively involved in many industry organizations including HIMSS, CHIME, HFMA and ACHE. She frequently speaks at National Industry Conferences and is published in several trade journals. Kara has participated on several Advisory Boards including KLAS Research and Quest Diagnostics. Additionally, Kara has participated in the Cal State Fullerton Advisory Board for HIT and has instructed at USC, Price School of Public Policy.
Charles Podesta has over 30 years of experience in Information Technology for Healthcare, the last eighteen years of which he has spent as a Chief Information Office. Mr. Podesta has worked for Academic Medical Centers, Health Systems and Community Hospitals. He is currently the CIO for University of California Irvine Health. Previous to this engagement Mr. Podesta was SVP & CIO of Fletcher Allen Healthcare, a large academic medical center and health system in Burlington, VT.
Other positions included SVP & CIO at Caritas Christi Health Care, now Steward Health in eastern MA, CIO at Berkshire Health Systems, Pittsfield, MA, Director of IS and Interim CIO for Baystate Health Systems in Springfield, MA. And prior to that, leadership positions at St Vincent Hospital, Worcester, MA; UMASS/Memorial, Worcester, MA and Magee- Women’s Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA.
Over the years Mr. Podesta has made numerous presentations at national conferences and is quoted widely in healthcare publications on a variety of IT topics including Epic’s Community Connect Program.
Rob Rice is an innovative technologist and global IT executive leader with a comprehensive approach to establishing business aligned and value added IT strategies. Rob is an industry recognized executive with a proven approach to measurably optimize and mature operational effectiveness. As the Vice President of Infrastructure and IT Operations at St. Joseph Health, Rob is responsible for IT infrastructure, ITIL/ITSM processes, and application operations. In his time at St. Joseph Health, Rob has implemented a demand management model to manage IT project and operational support demand / capacity.
Rob has also proven an effective leader in developing teams and organizational structure to adapt and implement new ways of achieving the highest quality technology and solution outcomes, while exceeding financial and effectiveness performance measurements. Rob touts years of multi-disciplinary experience across industries having held security leadership positions with Disney, YellowPages, Transamerica, and a number of other global enterprises.
Amy M. Sitapati, MD, provides primary care for adults, including preventive care and diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic diseases. Dr. Sitapati believes that the best health is achieved through life balance, patient empowerment, a good physician relationship, and integrated care.
Dr. Sitapati is nationally recognized for her work in primary care. She has more than ten years of experience providing high-quality, patient-centered care in ambulatory settings, and strives to build multidisciplinary teams that effectively work together to improve patient care coordination. In support of patient participation in chronic disease management, Dr. Sitapati combines evidence based medicine with patient empowerment, prevention methods, and alternative medicine (e.g., Kelee meditation) to help patients achieve their best health.
Dr. Sitapati first joined UC San Diego Health System in 2001 following completion of her residency. In 2005, she established the Center for Infectious Disease Management and Research (CIDMAR) at Howard University, a center dedicated to providing culturally competent, state-of-the-art HIV medical care to its 225 patients. In 2007, she met with First Lady, Mrs. Laura Bush, to discuss the first hospital-wide, routine HIV screening program to be implemented in the nation. Dr. Sitapati returned to UC San Diego in 2007, and began leading a patient centered medical home initiative at the Owen Clinic. In 2015, Dr. Sitapati assumed the role of medical director of internal medicine in La Jolla. She also leads a population health team that focuses on using computer systems to improve the quality of care.
As a clinical professor of medicine her clinical research has been related to patient centered care, quality improvement, and meditation. Dr. Sitapati serves as an instructor for medical students and residents.
She completed her medical residency training at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and earned her medical degree from Case Western Reserve University, School of Medicine, in Cleveland, OH. Dr. Sitapati is board certified in internal medicine and clinical informatics.
Mr. VonderHaar is certified by Harvard Law School PIL Mediation Program and attended Pepperdine Law Alternative Dispute Resolution Lawyers Program. He is one of the two lead partners in the Risk Management & Insurance Law Practice Group and the Construction Defect Practice Group. He concentrates his practice in complex legal issues, including analysis of insurance coverage issues, providing opinion letters, drafting of insurance endorsements, representation of insureds and insurance companies in insurance coverage litigation, representation of insurance companies in first and third-party extra-contractual litigation, and training of claims departments on insurance coverage issues. He also has experience in the defense of professional malpractice actions and malicious prosecution claims.
Mr. VonderHaar’s experience includes:
- pursued trials to verdict and arbitrations in numerous complex legal malpractice, insurance and construction related cases
- served as settlement counsel for several major insurers over the past 10 years
- successfully developed and implemented resolution strategies in several hundred cases
- lectured at Mealy’s and Southern California Defense Lawyer educational programs
- maintains an interactive data base for implementation of resolution and insurance coverage for construction defect cases in Southern California since 1996
Mr. VonderHaar received his B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1984, where he was a Williams Scholar. He received his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1988. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of California, the San Diego Bar Association and the Lawyer's Club of San Diego.
