Our speakers are an essential element to what makes our conference special. We seek out the widest range of experts to ensure a broad spectrum of discussion. This year, we are honored to present the following group of speakers.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Taha Kass-Hout, MD

Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, is a trained cardiologist (Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and biostatistician (University of Texas Health Sciences) with a successful track record in health care and life sciences, digital health, big data, open science, precision medicine, crowdsourcing, and cloud. He was the first Chief Health Informatics Officer for the FDA (2013-2016) where he created openFDA and precisionFDA. OpenFDA enabled researchers and the public to search and analyze adverse event data and other records held by the agency and precisionFDA established a collaborative and open approach to genomic testing references. Across the initiatives, FDA sought to move faster than in the past and empower third parties to improve access to knowledge about regulated products. PrecisionFDA was part of President Obama's 2015 Precision Medicine Initiative, and was awarded the top prize at the 2016 Bio-IT World Best Practices.

Both initiatives were referenced in the 2015 White House updated Strategy for American Innovation. Additionally, he has spearheaded innovations previously at the CDC for electronic disease surveillance and early disease detection (2009-2013), and at InSTEDD (founded by Google in 2006) for automated early warning and response for natural disasters and pandemics (2006-2009). On Jan 17 2010, the Thomson Reuters Foundation used InSTEDD's platform to launch a first-of-its kind, free disaster-information service for the people of Port Au Prince, Haiti. Dr. Kass-Hout currently serves as a strategic advisor to the American Heart Association where he led the development of AHA's Precision Medicine platform launched on Nov 13, 2016.

Elizabeth Baca
California Governor's Office

Dr. Elizabeth Baca is passionate about innovations to foster total health and well-being. She currently serves as the Senior Health Advisor in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR). She is engaged in innovation in the public sector to foster health through multiple projects including precision health and medicine, healthy planning, healthy food systems, big data, and public-private partnerships.

Dr. Baca serves as a lead for the Governor’s Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine. Through her role in OPR, she is an advisor for Urban Land Institute’s Health Leaders and FS6, a Food System Accelerator. Dr. Baca also served on the National Academy of Sciences Consensus Committee for Community Based Solutions to Promote Health Equity.

Lawrence Gostin
Georgetown University Law Center

Lawrence O. Gostin is University Professor and Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law. He directs the World Health Organization Center on National and Global Health Law. Gostin is Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University and Professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Gostin served on two global commissions on the 2015 Ebola epidemic. He was senior advisor to the UN Secretary General’s post-Ebola Commission and served on the drafting committee for the G-7 Summit agenda in Tokyo 2016 on global health security and Universal Health Coverage. He is an elected lifetime Member of the National Academy of Medicine, and currently serves on the Academy’s Global Health Board. The National Academy, American Public Health Association, and New York Bar Association have all awarded Gostin their Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Awards. Prof. Gostin’s book Global Health Law (Harvard University Press) is read throughout the world – translated into simplified and traditional Chinese, and into Spanish.

Jianying Hu
IBM Research

Jianying Hu is an IBM Fellow; Global Science Leader, AI for Healthcare; and Program Director of the Center for Computational Health at IBM Research. Dr. Hu has conducted and led extensive research with applications to healthcare analytics and medical informatics, business analytics, and multimedia content analysis. Her recent focus has been on leading research efforts to develop advanced machine learning, data mining and visual analytics methodologies for deriving data-driven insights from real world healthcare data to facilitate learning health systems. Dr. Hu served as Chair of the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDDM) Working Group of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). She has published over 120 peer reviewed scientific papers and holds 31 patents. Dr Hu currently serves on the Editorial Board of the journal JAMIA Open, Advisory Board of the Journal of Healthcare Informatics Research, the Computational Science and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Dr. Hu is a fellow of IEEE, a fellow of the International Association of Pattern Recognition, and an overseas fellow of Royal Society of Medicine. She received the 2013 Asian American Engineer of the Year Award.

John Mattison
Kaiser Permanente

John Mattison is the Chief Medical Information Officer and Assistant Medical Director for Kaiser Permanente. He focuses on transforming care delivery with information technology, through convergence of exponential technologies and data liquidity. He led the design and implementation of the largest integrated electronic health record in the US, and leads various national programs including virtual care. He has sponsored or led numerous digital innovations, and mentors many digital health startups. He chairs the eHealth Workgroup of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), and is a board member of Open mHealth, advisory board member of the NIH funded Policy and Ethics in Precision Medicine, teaches at multiple Universities including Singularity University. He has published in Nature, JAMIA, JAMA, WSJ, Forbes, and has authored chapters for various books. He is the founder of the international XML standard for health record interoperability known as CDA, CCD and CCDA, and is an active participant on several global initiatives to bring internet services to underserved communities providing access to both jobs and healthcare.

Lucila Ohno-Machado
University of California, San Diego

Lucila Ohno-Machado received her medical degree from the University of São Paulo and her doctoral degree in medical information sciences and computer science from Stanford. She is Associate Dean for Informatics and Technology, and the founding chair of the Health System Department of Biomedical Informatics at UCSD. Also, she is the PI for the California Precision Medicine Consortium for the NIH All of Us Research Program. Prior to her current position, she was faculty at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and at the MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Dr. Ohno-Machado is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. She was one of the founders of UC-Research eXchange, a clinical data research network that connected the data warehouses of the five University of California medical centers. She was the director of the NIH-funded National Center for Biomedical Computing iDASH (integrating Data for Analysis, ‘anonymization,’ and Sharing) based at UCSD with collaborators in multiple institutions.

J. Marc Overhage
Cerner Corporation

As the Vice President for Population Health Intelligence Strategy, Dr. Marc Overhage focuses on developing, deploying and evaluating clinical information systems with emphasis on clinical decision support and regional health information exchange. Marc joined Cerner in 2015 as a Chief Medical Informatics Officer and has over 25 years developing and implementing clinical and scientific systems and evaluating their value. At the Regenstrief Institute, Marc created a community wide electronic medical record (called the Indiana Network for Patient Care) containing data from many sources including laboratories, pharmacies and hospitals in central Indiana. Marc is a graduate of Wabash College and the Indiana University School of Medicine where he earned both his PhD in Biophysics and MD. He completed his residency and fellowships at the Indiana University. Dr. Overhage is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, a Master of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine.

Michael Wilkening
California Health & Human Services Agency

Michael Wilkening was appointed Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency by Governor Jerry Brown in 2018. He leads the 12 state departments within the Agency including over 30,000 employees with an annual budget of approximately $150 billion. Mr. Wilkening has led efforts to improve how government operates, to better utilize data to improve the delivery of services to clients, and to make programs more client-centered by fostering stronger partnerships across government, academics and the non-profit sector. Under his leadership, CHHS became the first California Agency to establish an Open Data Portal – changing how state agencies interact with the public. Wilkening led a new agile procurement process of the Child Welfare System that has become a model for other state departments. He created an Agency Governance Council and Office of Innovation to accelerate the adoption of alternative ways of solving governmental problems and to foster Agencywide buy-in to these efforts. Wilkening received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of California, Davis.

Discovery Session Leaders

Discovery Sessions are a highlight of our conference. Always our most interactive segment, these two hour events position 5 – 6 Discovery Leads around a sizeable ballroom, give them access to a dedicated flat panel display for visual reference, and allow them to hold court along with the other leads in the room while wine and appetizers are served. We're excited to present this year's Discovery Session Leaders.

Rachael A. Callcut UCSF
Dr. Callcut is the Director of Data Science and Advanced Analytics for the UCSF Center for Digital Health. She is double board certified in General Surgery and Critical Care and is an Associate Professor of Surgery at UCSF. Dr. Callcut maintains an active clinical practice as an ICU Intensivist and Trauma/General Surgeon. Her efforts with the Center for Digital Health Innovation are focused on leading a multi-disciplinary team working at the intersection of artificial intelligence to drive change in the delivery of healthcare for both patients and providers. Dr. Callcut also directs a multidisciplinary NIH and DOD funded research lab focused on integration of data science into critical care for improved clinical decision support.

Ritika Chaturvedi RAND Corporation
Ritika Chaturvedi is an engineer at the RAND Corporation. Dr. Chaturvedi has a diverse background in biomedical engineering, science and technology policy analysis, asset valuation, strategic consulting, and translational biomedical research. Her research focus involves understanding the implications of emerging disruptive technologies in health care (Precision Medicine, AI, CRISPR, etc.) on society across a wide spectrum of perspectives. Prior to joining RAND, she worked in the commercial life sciences sector, applying systems-engineering methods to strategize optimal market penetration of biotechnological assets. Chaturvedi earned a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the Tissue Microfabrication Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania.

Robert M. Cothren A Cunning Plan
Dr. Cothren is a leader in developing and implementing strategies for health information sharing and interoperability. He serves as the Executive Director for the California Association of Health Information Exchanges, where he leads a diverse group of providers, payors, public health agencies, and state agencies. He also serves as the CTO for the National Association for Trusted Exchange, where he promotes consumer engagement and sharing of electronic health information with consumers. As a consultant, Dr. Cothren aids federal and state government and private organizations in advancing their health IT systems through implementation of organizational policies, data governance, effective workflow, and emerging technologies.

Ana Paula De Oliveira Sales LLNL
Ana Paula De Oliveira Sales is a data scientist in the Applied Statistics Group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Her expertise lies in the cross section of the disciplines of statistical science, machine learning, experimental biology, and computational biology with a special focus on developing statistical models for biomedical applications. She is the LLNL lead for a project in partnership with the National Cancer Institute and four Department of Energy national laboratories, analyzing cancer patients’ medical records to better understand treatment outcomes on a large scale. Ana Paula received her PhD in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from Duke University.

Michael Kellen Sage Bionetworks
Michael Kellen is the CTO at Sage Bionetworks, a not-for-profit biomedical research institute dedicated to pioneering new ways to gather, store and use health data. At Sage, Michael has built out a cross-functional technology platform team of software engineers, designers, product managers, and IT professionals that develop the systems that power Sage’s research program. Michael leads the development of Sage’s technology strategy, and develops multidisciplinary research collaborations with a range of leading academic, industry partners. He earned his PhD in bioengineering at the University of Washington with a focus in computational biology.

Joe Kimura Atrius Health
Joe Kimura is Chief Medical Officer of Atrius Health and an internist at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. Dr. Kimura has held multiple positions within Atrius Health including Medical Director for Analytics and Reporting Systems and Medical Director for Quality Measurement. Since 2014, he has served as co-chair of the ONC HIT federal advisory workgroup on Advanced Health Models and Meaningful Use. Dr. Kimura has been nationally recognized as a Top 25 Clinical Informaticists by Modern Healthcare. He was an undergraduate at Stanford University, received his medical degree from Washington University, and his public health degree from Harvard University.

Mai Pham Anthem
Mai is responsible for developing and refining Anthem’s provider payment models and overseeing Anthem’s Enhanced Personal Health Care initiative. Prior to joining Anthem, Mai was a founding official at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), where she served as Chief Innovation Officer. Mai has published extensively on payment policy issues including care fragmentation and coordination, and also practiced for several years at safety net clinics in the Washington D.C. area. Mai received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, her MD from Temple University, and her MPH degree from Johns Hopkins, where she was also a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar.

Mahek Shah Harvard Business School
Dr. Mahek A. Shah leads and directs the Value Measurement for Health Care practice at Harvard Business School. As the Senior Researcher and Senior Project Director, he implements time-driven activity-based costing globally to understand real and actual costs of care delivery. He’s also Associate Faculty at Ariadne Labs, led by Atul Gawande. Dr. Shah is the co-author of Harvard Business School (HBS) case studies. Dr. Shah’s research has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), World Health Organization (WHO), the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Forbes. He delivered a TED talk at Harvard: Bringing Patient-centered Design to Healthcare.

Nigam Shah Stanford University
Dr. Nigam Shah is associate professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics) at Stanford University, and an executive member of the Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program. Dr. Shah's research focuses on combining machine learning and prior knowledge in medical ontologies to enable the learning health system.

Dr. Shah was elected into the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) in 2015 and is inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2016. He holds an MBBS from Baroda Medical College, India, a PhD from Penn State University and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University.

Georgia Tourassi ORNL
Georgia Tourassi is the founding Director of the Health Data Sciences Institute and Group Leader of Biomedical Sciences, Engineering and Computing at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Concurrently, she holds appointments as an adjunct Professor of Radiology at Duke University and the University of Tennessee and as a joint UT-ORNL Professor of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Her research interests include medical imaging, biomedical informatics, clinical decision support systems and data-driven biomedical discovery. She serves on the FDA Advisory Committee and Review Panel on Computer-Aided Diagnosis Devices and she has been appointed Charter member of two NIH Study sections.

Upkar Varshney Georgia State University
Upkar Varshney is Associate Professor of CIS at Georgia State University, Atlanta. He has authored numerous papers in mobile health, pervasive computing, mobile commerce and wireless networks. He is the author of Pervasive Healthcare Computing (2009, 2010, and 2011) book from Springer. He has received grants from funding agencies including the National Science Foundation. Upkar has won multiple college and department level teaching awards at GSU. He is the founding co-chair of International Pervasive Health Conference. He has served or is serving as an editor for several journals including Decision Support Systems (DSS), ACM/Springer Mobile Networks (MONET), IEEE Transactions on IT in Biomedicine, IEEE Computer, and Communications of the AIS (CAIS).