30 rising stars in healthcare IT

30 rising stars in healthcare IT

A new wave of younger healthcare IT executives are rising up to take on leadership roles in the industry. Here’s a glimpse of some of the new rising stars in healthcare information technology who are likely to guide the industry over the next 10 to 20 years.

Tarik Alkasab, MD

Title: Assistant Professor of Radiology
Organization: Massachusetts General Hospital

Alkasab recently was a lead author of a study in the Journal of the American College of Radiology that advocated an open authorizing system for point of care decision support tools. He and his colleagues contend that decreasing unnecessary variation in radiology reporting is a key to success in value-based payment models and also is good for patient care. The goal is to represent radiology clinical guidelines as structured and machine-readable Extensible Markup Language documents. Also advocated is development of new tools that voice recognition vendors can use to extend the commercial tools currently in use.

Michael Archuleta

Title: Chief Information Officer
Organization: Mt. San Rafael Hospital

Archuleta bills himself as a data visionary, promoted to the top IT role at Mt. San Rafael Hospital in Trinidad, Colo., after serving as its director of IT. It’s part of BridgeCare Health Network, a partnership comprising five hospitals in the state. Archuleta is responsible for directing all information technology services efforts in the organization, including all electronic medical record systems, clinical informatics, cybersecurity, all supporting technology and support for those systems.

Micah Beavers

Title: Information Security Engineer
Organization: UAB Health System

Beavers has 10 years’ experience in security surrounding healthcare information systems. Before joining UAB Health System in April 2016, he was a security engineering analyst for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, where he managed security technology to protect the insurer’s healthcare information, created roadmaps, workflows and procedures, and led other compliance efforts for the payer. Now, as an enterprise security engineer, he’s tightening the lid on data for UAB, a system led by the UAB Hospital, an academic medical center in Birmingham.

Mike Biselli

Title: President and founder
Organization: Catalyst Health-Tech Innovation

Biselli and his team have created Catalyst Health-Tech Innovation, a 180,000 square foot, first-of-its-kind industry integrator, in Denver’s River North District that houses 50-plus health technology startups and large companies in the effort to fix American healthcare. In addition to his realized vision for Catalyst HTI, Mike is also a Managing Partner at Firepoint Studios, where he and his team work to partner with healthcare organizations to identify and engineer innovative processes and solutions to some of the industry’s toughest problems.

John Brownstein

Title: Chief innovation officer
Organization: Boston Children’s Hospital

John Brownstein was trained as an epidemiologist at Yale University. His research interests are in the development of methods and data sources in public health informatics, focusing on two major areas—first, the design, evaluation and implementation of public health surveillance systems, and secondly, statistical modeling of public health surveillance data to improve prevention and control activities. This research has focused on a variety of infectious disease systems. His research also includes the development of novel surveillance methods and informatics approaches for the post-marketing surveillance of therapeutics.

Maj. Yuri Campbell

Title: Capability Development Manager
Organization: U.S. Army

Campbell is an active duty military officer and has moved out of day-to-day health IT operations, and into the forward-looking arena of futuristic health systems to improve the health and survivability of soldiers on the battlefield. His work in the military should have multiple opportunities to benefit the civilian healthcare structure and processes especially in the areas of trauma care, rural and population health. Top priorities right now include virtual health technologies, artificial intelligence applications in healthcare, robotics, and autonomous systems. Campbell is active in CHIME and HIMSS.

Tessa Cook, MD

Title: Assistant professor of radiology Perelman School of Medicine
Organization: Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Tessa Cook, MD, is an assistant professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in imaging informatics, workflow optimization, radiation exposure monitoring, advanced image processing, radiology education and patient-centered imaging informatics. She also serves at the Philadelphia Veteran Affairs Medical Center. She is the principal developer of RADIANCE, a free, open-source dose monitoring software for CT. She is the fellowship director for the Penn Radiology Informatics Fellowship, which enables fourth-year residents to complete specialized training in imaging informatics. She is also the director for the Center for Translational Imaging Informatics within the Department of Radiology at Penn. Cook is a thought leader and visionary on future uses of IT in imaging and radiological education.

Lieutenant Colonel Chani Cordero

Title: Chief information officer
Organization: Darnall Army Medical Center

Cordero was recently appointed as the top IT officer at the Darnall Army Medical Center. She has served as director of the Information Management Division (IMD), Medical Education Training Campus (METC). All Department of Defense enlisted medical personnel train at METC, and as the CIO for METC, she provides IT support for the 49 training programs, 1,200 faculty and staff that teach 24,000 students annually.

Erik Decker

Title: Chief information security and privacy officer
Organization: University of Chicago Medical Center

In his role at the University of Chicago Medicine, Decker is responsible for its cybersecurity, identity and access management, and HIPAA privacy programs. Decker is the current Chair of the Association for Executives in Healthcare Information Security (AEHIS) Board. He is currently co-leading a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) task group of more than 150 industry experts across the country for implementing the CISA 405D legislation within the healthcare sector. He is also a leader of the HHS Joint Cybersecurity Work Group, which is a public-private workgroup formed under the National Infrastructure Protection Plan.

Tina Esposito

Title: Vice President, Information and Technology Innovation
Organization: Advocate Health Care

Esposito created a big data technical and analytics platform that interfaces with more than 50 data sources at Advocate Health Care; developed and implemented an enterprise master patient identifier strategy. Esposito is advancing the use of analytics and serving as executive leader over the Advocate Cerner Collaborative, which supports the study of the shift to accountable care.

Christopher Frenz

Title: Director of infrastructure
Organization: Interfaith Medical Center

Frenz is the AVP of information security for Interfaith Medical Center, where he worked to develop the hospital’s information security program and infrastructure. Under his leadership the hospital has been one of the first in the country to embrace a zero trust model for network security. Frenz has also played a role in pushing for the adoption of improved security standards within hospitals and is the author of the OWASP Secure Medical Device Deployment Standard as well as the OWASP Anti-Ransomware Guide. He is also the author of the computer programming books “Pro Perl Parsing” and “Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET for Scientists and Engineers.” He is also responsible for managing the technical and data center operations of a multisite environment that contains more than 2,500 PCs and 250 servers.

Amanda Garlock

Title: Diagnostic imaging supervisor of quality, training and safety
Organization: Providence Regional Medical Center

In addition to her role at Providence Regional Medical Center, she has served in many roles for the American Society of Radiologic Technologists, including its president. She is now chairman of the national group’s board. At Providence, she is a staff technologist serving diagnostic X-ray, fluoroscopy and MR, and supply management.

Christopher Gaskin, MD

Title: Professor and vice chair of operations and informatics
Organization: University of Virginia Health System

Gaskin specializes in musculoskeletal imaging and intervention at the University of Virginia Health System, where he has been involved in helping radiologists improve turnaround times on radiology reports. He additionally is working with his organization to help radiologists maximize their efficiency in reading imaging studies and reporting on results, as well as better interfacing with electronic health records.

Shlomit Goldberg-Stein, MD

Title: Musculoskeletal radiologist and director of imaging report quality
Organization: Montefiore Medical Center

Goldberg-Stein is a musculoskeletal radiologist and director of imaging report quality at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. She also serves as an assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Goldberg-Stein recently was a leader in a Montefiore project to implement a structured reporting program. Out of the process, which included radiologists, technical staff, departmental coders and information technologists came 10 lessons for overhauling traditional reporting practices. In the end, the project produced and implemented reporting templates for 95 percent of departmental computed tomography, magnetic resonance and ultrasound examinations.

Maia Hightower

Title: Chief Medical Information Officer
Organization: University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC)

Hightower has been in the CMIO role for about two years at University of Iowa Health Care. There, she’s leading EMR upgrades, optimization and support, including development of a physician informatics officer team to provide peer support to clinicians to increase EMR proficiency and adoption. Before UIHC, she worked as associate medical director at Stanford Health Care, University HealthCare Alliance.

Jigar Kadakia

Title: Chief information security and privacy officer
Organization: Partners HealthCare

Kadakia is filling a crucial role at Partners HealthCare, heading the system’s security efforts. He’s been at the Boston-based integrated delivery system since 2014. He’s also a member of the board of directors for the National Health Care ISAC. Before coming to Partners, he worked for nearly a decade at Deloitte, handling security and privacy services.

Rebecca Kaul

Title: Vice president and chief innovation officer
Organization: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

MD Anderson hired Kaul to develop the institution’s new Innovation Center. She is responsible for leading organizational strategy to accelerate research, improve patient care and find new revenue streams by harnessing institutional data and expertise. Kaul also collaborates with innovators within MD Anderson to develop strategies for commercializing new ideas and is working to establish relationships with startup companies and other industry partners. Previously, she was at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where she was chief innovation officer and president of UPMC’s Technology Development Center, now known as UPMC Enterprises. She created several joint ventures and spinoffs for UPMC.

Josh Kohrumel

Title: Chief data officer
Organization: Rady Children’s Hospital

Kohrumel has filled a variety of positions at Rady Children’s over his career there. In his current position, he is responsible for the oversight of data services (data administration, reporting, interfaces and integration, and services. In addition, he handles business applications, information security, project services, testing management, and more.

Dave Lehr

Title: Chief information officer
Organization: Anne Arundel Medical Center

Lehr has ascended into the top IT position at this Anapolis, Md.-based healthcare organization. Before becoming CIO, he was director of analytics and data strategy—in that role, he founded a new organizational analytics department. He leads the vision for integrating and analyzing data about the patient population. He is also participating on CHIME’s opioid task force.

Josh Mandel

Title: Lead architect for healthcare
Organization: Microsoft

Mandel moved to Microsoft this year to lead that company’s open cloud architecture. For several years, he worked on the computational health informatics program at Boston Children’s Hospital. There, he was research faculty member and lead architect for SMART Health IT.

Maj. William Marsh

Title: Inpatient nursing information officer
Organization: Madigan Army Medical Center

Maj. is a 17-year veteran of the United States Army, currently stationed at Madigan Army Medical Center, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington State. A certified emergency nurse, he attended the National Defense University, Washington, D.C., earning a Cyber Leadership degree in 2015. Marsh then supported multiple cybersecurity and healthcare IT integration efforts while assigned to the Pentagon’s Program Executive Office for the Electronic Health Record Modernization effort. He was a contributing author for the Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Task Force report to Congress and participates with the follow-on working groups to enact the recommendations. At Madigan, he focuses his attention on the inpatient integration of healthcare IT and the implementation of MHS GENESIS at the Army’s first major medical center implementing the modernized EHR.

Natalie Pageler, MD

Title: Chief medical information officer
Organization; Stanford Children’s Hospital

Pageler holds a number of positions at Stanford Children’s Hospital. She became CMIO in the last two years. She also is a clinical associate professor of pediatrics for critical care, as well as clinical associate professor of medicine in biomedical informatics research. She also was the physician lead for the Epic EMR implementation at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital before coming to her current facility. Also at Lucile Packard, she was director of clinical informatics.

Thad Phillips

Title: Chief information security officer
Organization: Baptist Health Care

Phillips ascended to the new role at Baptist Health Care this past year. Previously, he was director of clinical information systems and HIPAA security at the University of South Alabama Health, where he was responsible for overseeing HIPAA security for the system, which operates two hospitals and more than 100 physicians in 22 physical clinic locations, as well as a cancer institute.

Rasu Shrestha, MD

Title; Chief innovation officer
Organization: UPMC

Shrestha, trained as a radiologist, has been a key architect of an innovative unified approach to image viewing across 20 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospitals and 30 imaging centers. He also serves as the executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises, the innovation and commercialization arm of UPMC, and leads a team of more than 200 technology professionals. UPMC Enterprises funds incubators and leads efforts to commercialize technology products and services developed at UPMC. Shrestha says UPMC is looking for ways to commercialize its data governance best practices and information management models.

John Showalter, MD

Title: Chief product officer
Organization: Jvion

Showalter has been in his role at Jvion for about 18 months now. Previously, he was chief health information officer at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Before being named as CHIO, Showalter served as the organization’s CMIO. Showalter led work to adopt clinical predictive analytics that churn through standardized and dirty EHR data to provide real-time predictions on heart attack risks for UMMC’s patient population.

Sasha TerMaat

Title: Director
Organization: Epic

TerMaat leads Epic users in government advocacy, and leads staff responsible for supporting regulatory initiatives, educating users on programs and their impact. She also has served in board positions on the Electronic Health Records Association (EHRA); Meaningful Use Workgroup Chair, Electronic Health Records Association (2011 to 2016). At EHRA, she has led in engaging EHR developers and other stakeholders in accelerating health IT adoption, advancing interoperability and improving the quality and efficiency of care through technology.

Amanda Tibbits

Title: Information security analyst/information services
Organization: Salina Regional Health Center

Tibbits has been with her current organization for about three years, where she has taken several steps to improve its security posture. Her role involves directing, planning and implementing controls and security measures to protect information technology systems, networks and data from cyberattacks. She also plays a role as interoperability core team leader and an integration analyst.

Ali Torkamani

Title: Director of genomics and genome informatics
Organization: Scripps Research Translational Institute

Torkamani’s overall vision is to decipher the biological code to understand and predict healthcare interventions. His research covers a broad range of areas centered on the use of genomic technologies to identify the genetic etiology and underlying mechanisms of human disease to define precision therapies for diseased individuals. Major focus areas include human genome interpretation and genetic dissection of novel rare diseases, individualized prediction and prevention of disease risk through combined genetic and clinical risk factors, and sequencing-based assays as biomarkers of disease.

Anna Turman

Title: CEO/CIO
Organization: Chadron Community Hospital and Health Services

Turman now leads the healthcare organization, which operates a hospital and provides healthcare services in a large rural area in western Nebraska. For years, she had led IT services as CIO at the organization. She’s active within several national professional IT organizations and state panels in Nebraska.

Julie Yoo

Title: Chief Product Officer
Organization: Kyruus

Yoo is a co-founder of Kyruus and her eight years in healthcare IT, she has developed products to solve patient access issues, as well as working on solutions that will help with patient-provider mismatches and poor patient experiences. Yoo is seeking to develop solutions that aim to solve gaps in healthcare. Kyruus is extending this effort by working with large healthcare systems across the country, including Banner Health, Piecmont Healthcare, Partners HealthCare and Providence St. Joseph Health, among others.