H.I.T. MEN & WOMEN 2014 Nominees

The 2014 H.I.T. MEN & WOMEN Awards

The annual H.I.T. MEN & WOMEN awards honor the game changers and trailblazers in healthcare IT – the people who through their vision, talent and perseverance are advancing the adoption of technology to improve the effectiveness of healthcare. Healthcare IT News readers will choose nine winners from three categories (three from each category) – Enhancing Patient Care Through IT; Shapers and Influencers; and Innovators, Up and Coming. The winners, among the most influential people in the industry, will be recognized at the H.I.T. MEN & WOMEN Awards Reception at the HIMSS14 Annual Conference & Exhibition, Feb. 24, 2014, in Orlando, Fla.

  1. Enhancing Patient Care Through IT
  2. Shapers and Influencers
  3. Innovators, Up and Coming

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See below for the biographies of our nominees:

Enhancing Patient Care through IT

Julie Vilardi, RN
Executive Director, Strategic Projects
Kaiser Permanente

Julie Vilardi, executive director, strategic projects and clinical informatics at Kaiser Permanente, has oversight of the IT side of meaningful use and other innovative projects that cross the IT and clinical areas of all Kaiser Permanente hospitals. Vilardi was involved in the organizational change management efforts that preceded the implementation of Kaiser Permanente's EMR, KP HealthConnect. She has been instrumental in all Kaiser hospitals achieving Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics EMRAM scale.

Sumit Nagpal
President & CEO
Alere Accountable Care Solutions

Sumit Nagpal, president and CEO, Alere Accountable Care Solutions, has been focused on using technology to improve the clinical outcomes of patients for more than 20 years. As one of the first people in the industry to realize the need for a true HIE – aggregating patient data across a community – he has revolutionized entire healthcare organizations: delivering clinical decision support and population analytics to healthcare providers and decision makers, enabling patients to take their own care into their own hands, improving outcomes and decreasing costs.

Jessica Grosset
Vice Chair, IT Operations and Infrastructure
Mayo Clinic

Jessica Grosset is the vice chair for IT operations and infrastructure, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Under Grosset’s leadership, Mayo Clinic went chartless in 2005 and filmless a year later. Mayo Clinic has seen savings of $40 million from automation of basic EHR functions. Grosset and her team’s efforts earned the clinic Stage 7 HIMSS EMRAM status.

Patricia Skarulis
VP/CIO
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Patricia Skarulis, vice president and CIO of the 470-bed Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, was named the 2008 HIMSS CIO of the Year, and she and her team oversee one of the nation's largest Web-based data warehouses, containing the clinical records of more than 1.25 million patients. Under Skarulis' leadership, the center was listed among the ‘Most Wired’ hospitals in the country.

Aurelia Boyer
Senior VP and CIO
New York Presbyterian Hospital

Aurelia Boyer, senior vice president and CIO at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, improved NYP’s existing patient portal using an agile development model that resulted in rapid deployment and measurably increased patient engagement and satisfaction. The collaborative project led to a 42 percent increase of appointments scheduled using myNYP.org, and lowered the no-show rate from 20 percent to 12 percent over a period of six months.

Daniel Barchi
SVP and CIO
Yale - New Haven Health System

Daniel Barchi, SVP and CIO at Yale-New Haven Health System, leads IT for the $3-billion, 2,100-bed, 19,000-employee Yale School of Medicine and the Yale-New Haven Health System. He leads a team of 500 informatics and technology specialists and has implemented a $300 million electronic medical record project.

Bill Bria
CMIO
Shriners Hospital for Children

William Bria, MD, is the chief medical information officer at Shriners Hospital for Children. Bria directs the medical informatics plan for the 22-hospital SHC system across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. He is also co-founder of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems, and he served as president of the Medical Information Systems Physicians Association. In 2010, he was presented with the Physician IT Leadership Award from HIMSS.

Michael Warden
Senior VP of IT and CIO
Banner Health
Michael Warden, former senior vice president information technology and CIO at Banner Health, co-led the health system's system-wide health information exchange initiative across all 23 Banner hospitals. All Banner Health hospitals have achieved Stage 7 status under Warden.He retired fall of 2013. 
 
Martha Thorne
VP and GM, Performance and Care Logistics
Allscripts

Martha Thorne has worked for the company for 17 years- beginning as part of the original leadership team that successfully guided the company through an IPO in 1999 and has continued to take on additional leadership responsibilities as the company has grown and diversified the portfolio. Martha has worked with some of the top leaders in the industry both on the provider side and payer side as well as with technology partners who are bringing innovations to care delivery to solve some of our biggest challenges. 
 

Shapers and Influencers

Regina Holiday
Founder
Medical Advocacy Mural Project

Regina Holiday is an art teacher, artist, muralist, patient-rights arts advocate and founder of the Walking Gallery and the Medical Advocacy Mural Project. After losing her husband to cancer in 2009 – and struggling during his illness to get access to his medical records – she became an arts advocate for all patients’ rights to their own medical data. She regularly stands before officials and practitioners demanding a thoughtful dialog on the role patients play in their own healthcare.

Dave deBronkart
e-patient Dave

Dave deBronkart, or e-patient Dave, beat cancer and is actively engaged in opening healthcare information directly to patients on an unprecedented level, thus creating a new dynamic in how information is delivered, accessed and used by the patient.

Lindy Benton
CEO
Medical Electronic Attachment

Lindy Benton, CEO of National Electronic Attachment and Medical Electronic Attachment, has championed the overhaul and modernization of the company’s software and drove the product redesign of a web-delivered architecture for the secure exchange of clinical documentation -- essentially electronically connecting providers and payers through a secure vendor agnostic bi-directional communications platform that facilitates health information exchange. Lindy is committed to removing administrative waste by streamlining the bi-directional exchange of clinical information.

Rob McCray
President and CEO
Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance

Rob McCray is the president and chief executive officer of the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance, a San Diego-based organization focused on accelerating the adoption of wireless technology in healthcare. The WLSA's annual summits are among the most entertaining and informative in this space, advancing and highlighting the newest and most creative innovations in the industry.

Andrew Watson
Medical Director
UPMC's Center for Connected Medicine

Andrew Watson, MD, is a practicing surgeon and medical director of UPMC's Center for Connected Medicine and vice president of UPMC's telemedicine program. A 4th-generation surgeon and the seventh in his family, Andrew is one of the leading forces in the advancement of mHealth in the clinical setting, and is a much sought-after speaker and panelist at mHealth conferences throughout the world.

Leslie Saxon
Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine
USC

Leslie Saxon is chief of the division of cardiovascular medicine at USC and a professor of medicine and clinical scholar at USC's Keck School of Medicine and executive director of the USC Center for Body Computing. Leslie's USC Center of Body Computing is one of the leading centers in the study and design of wearable and remote sensors. She's also a frequent speaker on issues of wearable technology and patient engagement.

Patty Mechael
Executive director
mHealth Alliance

Patty Mechael, executive director of the mHealth Alliance, is a leader in the international world of mHealth and telehealth, having been actively involved in the field for more than 15 years and in more than 30 countries. She's a champion of bringing innovative mHealth solutions to life in developing nations and advancing the cause in places where these technologies often mean the difference between life and death.

Joseph Kvedar, MD
Director
Partners Healthcare's Center for Connected Health

Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of Partners HealthCare's Center for Connected Health, is an internationally recognized blogger and leading figure in the effort to improve healthcare delivery through the integration of remote health monitoring and wireless technology. He is also a strong voice in the effort to promote patient engagement in mHealth, and his annual Connected Health Symposia are among the best conferences in the industry.

Cynthia Nustad
CIO
HMS Holding

Cynthia Nustad, CIO, HMS Holding, been named CIO of the year top 500 by information Week two years in a row and drove the processes for HMS to win multiple awards in IT security, an area critical to healthcare. She has enabled HMS client data by an effective roll-out of enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence tools and achieved rapid speed to value.

Innovators, Up and Coming

Molly Coye, MD
Chief innovation officer
UCLA Health

Molly Coye, MD, chief innovation officer UCLA Health, oversees the UCLA Institute for Innovation in Health. She has worked toward telemedicine initiatives to reduce ER visits and hospital stays. She founded and served as CEO of the Health Technology Center, a nonprofit education and research organization. She co-founded and served as chair of the board of directors and CEO of CalRHIO, California's first statewide health information exchange organization.

Yan Chow, MD
Director Innovation & Advanced Technology Group
Kaiser Permanente Information Technology

Yan Chow, MD is director innovation & advanced technology group, Kaiser Permanente Information Technology. IAT identifies, assesses, and makes internal recommendations on new and emerging clinical information technologies that will impact healthcare in the next two to five years. He was also involved in regional IT management, overseeing a number of operational systems for 60,000 providers at 60 sites. He also led experimental projects such as KP’s first PC interface for mainframes and created KP’s first networking forum for physicians.

Pamela Peele
Chief Analytics Officer
UPMC Health Plan

Pamela Peele is chief analytics officer for UPMC Health Plan. She brings 13 years of patient care experience along with 12 years of academic research experience to her position as the leader of healthcare analytics at the health plan. She is responsible for data analytic activities, economic modeling, predictive modeling, and statistical analysis. Dr. Peele has a BA in economics from Roanoke College in Salem, Va., and a MA and a PhD in economics from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

Bryan Sivak
CTO
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Byran Sivak is entrepreneur-in-residence at HHS, as well as the department’s CTO. As CTO, he is responsible for helping HHS leadership harness the power of data, technology, and innovation to improve the health and welfare of the nation.

Justin Kahn
CEO
TruClinic

Justin Kahn is founder and CEO of TruClinic, a Salt Lake City-based developer of mHealth and telehealth solutions. His work so far has focused primarily (though not entirely) on connecting university students and Native American communities in Utah and surrounding states to much-needed healthcare resources.

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