Infrastructure: Health IT

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March 31, 2022

Virtual event

Health IT advances are improving both patient care and the management of public health. Plus, IT modernization initiatives across government are leading to improvement in the delivery of services for remote access, medical devices, EHRs, telehealth and more. All these innovations begin with a solid infrastructure for interoperability, data management, cloud computing and more. Health-focused agency leaders discuss the progress to modernize their systems and the programs they are implementing to respond to public health needs.

Date

March 31, 2022

Time

11:00 am

Where

Virtual event

Watch Video

Session Recordings

Fireside Chat: Data and Digitalization for Future Health

Data, digital services and other emerging technologies are rising as key tools across the health care and research space. Opening the program, we’ll look widely at how health agencies are harnessing data and digitalization to drive mission and improved health services for patients, providers, researchers and more.

Susan Gregurick, Associate Director for Data Science and Director of the Office of Data Science Strategy, NIH
Moderator: Amy Kluber, Editor-in-Chief, GovCIO Media & Research

Panel: Digital Solutions for Better Benefits and Claims Processes

Improved digital services have the potential to increase different federal agencies’ engagement with the public. As health agencies look to make health care easier to access, we’ll look at how digitalization, online portals, and smart CX design are playing a role in the benefits and claims processes.

Ben Cushing, Chief Architect, Federal Health, Red Hat
Dr. Mary Greene, Director, Office of Burden Reduction & Health Informatics, CMS
Misu Tasnim, Executive Director of Digital Service at CMS, U.S. Digital Service
…

Panel: Health CIO Roundtable

Health agencies have both individual missions and shared priorities. We gather CIOs from across the federal health space to examine IT priorities in health care, public health, research and more.

Jonathan Alboum, Federal CTO and Principal Digital Strategist, ServiceNow
La'Tanya Burton, CIO, NIAMS
Mike Tartakovsky, CIO, NIAID
Moderator: Melissa Harris, Senior Researcher, GovCIO Media & Research

Related Coverage

Flywheel Fridays - Federal Health IT Infrastructure Takeaways

Join our senior researchers for key highlights on health tech infrastructure innovations and modernization.

CMS Making Strides on Mission-Driven Modernization

The agency plans to modernize its major business processes, such as the claims payment system.

Katherine MacPhail

NIH Gears Up for Data Sharing Policy, Modernized Biomedical Data Ecosystem

Data leader Susan Gregurick discusses how the agency is improving data sharing and usability for biomedical research.

Sarah Sybert

Health Agencies Eye Collaboration in Adopting New Technology

Internal consultation on use cases, integration within existing services allows agencies to best position new capacities to modernize their organization.

Adam Patterson

Agenda

11:00 am

11:05 am

Welcome Remarks

Amy Kluber, Editor-in-Chief, GovCIO Media & Research

11:05 am

11:25 am

Fireside Chat: Data and Digitalization for Future Health

Susan Gregurick, Associate Director for Data Science and Director of the Office of Data Science Strategy, NIH
Moderator: Amy Kluber, Editor-in-Chief, GovCIO Media & Research

11:25 am

11:55 am

Panel: Digital Solutions for Better Benefits and Claims Processes

Ben Cushing, Chief Architect, Federal Health, Red Hat
Dr. Mary Greene, Director, Office of Burden Reduction & Health Informatics, CMS
Misu Tasnim, Executive Director of Digital Service at CMS, U.S. Digital Service
Moderator: Katherine MacPhail, Staff Writer/Researcher, GovCIO Media & Research

11:55 am

12:25 pm

Panel: Health CIO Roundtable

Health agencies have both individual missions and shared priorities. We gather CIOs from across the federal health space to examine IT priorities in health care, public health, research and more.

Jonathan Alboum, Federal CTO and Principal Digital Strategist, ServiceNow
La'Tanya Burton, CIO, NIAMS
Mike Tartakovsky, CIO, NIAID
Moderator: Melissa Harris, Senior Researcher, GovCIO Media & Research

12:25 pm

12:30 pm

Closing Remarks

Amy Kluber, Editor-in-Chief, GovCIO Media & Research

Featuring

Jonathan Alboum is the CTO and Principal Digital Strategist for the Federal Government at ServiceNow. In this role, Jonathan works with federal agencies to deliver digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity.

Before joining ServiceNow, Jonathan was the Public Sector CTO for Veritas Technologies. In addition, Jonathan has held a variety of senior executive positions in the federal government. His Federal government tenure includes serving as the Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he led the development of USDA’s IT Modernization strategy, including Cloud computing, network modernization, and enhanced information security protections for a $3 billion annual technology spend. In addition, he served as a leader in USDA’s Acquisition community, supporting the oversight, assessment, and strategic planning of an acquisition portfolio of more than 70,000 awards, worth $6 billion annually. Jonathan also worked at GSA as the Associate CIO for Enterprise Governance and Planning and led the creation of GSA's consolidated IT organization. He began his federal career at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), where he served as Deputy CIO and CIO. Before government, Jonathan worked as a management consultant for both PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ventera Corporation.

Jonathan earned a MS in the Management of Information Technology from the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce and a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Jonathan lives in Arlington, VA with his wife and three children. He enjoys practicing yoga, watching the Yankees, and listening to Bruce Springsteen.

Jonathan Alboum

Federal CTO and Principal Digital Strategist, ServiceNow

Ms. La'Tanya Burton is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in the Scientific Information Technology Branch, a position she has held since June 2012. As CIO, she provides strategic advice about information technology (IT) to the senior leadership of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). She plays a key role in establishing IT investment priorities for NIAMS and effectively managing a multimillion-dollar budget. She oversees a team of 15 federal employees and 25 contractors. She also collaborates with other technology experts at the NIH and across the federal government to ensure timely, relevant, and innovative solutions to IT challenges.

Between 1999 – 2010, Ms. Burton worked in several roles in the NIH’s Office of the Director. Most recently, she was the IT service manager at the Office of Research Services and the Office of Research Facilities. In that role, she was responsible for the IT service desk supporting over 2,500 end-users and 80 systems applications.

In addition to her extensive experience at the NIH, Ms. Burton worked at the National Weather Service’s Telecommunications Operations Center. She served as a Branch Chief for IT business coordination, acquisitions, and project management. Her duties included the transfer of large data sets between multiple federal agencies and several countries within the World Meteorological Organization.

In 2009, Ms. Burton retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Chief Warrant Officer 3 after serving 23 years, which included two tours of duty in the Middle East for Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

La'Tanya Burton

CIO, NIAMS, NIH

For two decades, Ben Cushing has been a leader in emerging technology solutions across multiple industries and is committed to radical innovation in healthcare. Before joining Red Hat, he served as the Chief Technology Officer for MDLogix, a behavioral health IT firm supporting Johns Hopkins Medicine. There he architected and brought to market a behavioral health cloud platform for use with employer, healthcare, and education markets.

In addition to supporting analytics and operations at the National Institutes of Health for 6 years, Cushing had the opportunity to practice a scaled agile framework with Accenture where he led the technical architecture and design for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Electronic Health Management Platform, an industry leading Health Management and Care Coordination platform serving 9 million patients.

His tenure at Accenture began with the acquisition of Agilex, where he designed LSI solutions, developed systems to automate the Post-9/11 GI bill, and supported in-theater data collection and analytics tools. While at Agilex, Ben architected and led the development of a mobile Software Development Kit, still in use today by the VA to produce more than 60 applications.

Ben Cushing

Chief Architect, Federal Health, Red Hat

Dr. Mary G. Greene is the Director of the Office of Burden Reduction & Health Informatics. She is responsible for unifying CMS's efforts to reduce regulatory and administrative burden for beneficiaries and the medical community, enabling the health system to focus on providing higher quality care at lower cost and to foster innovation in health care delivery. She oversees initiatives to modernize regulations, drive interoperability, and improve the adoption and enforcement of HIPAA Administrative Simplification national standards and operating rules, and engages external stakeholders through listening sessions and onsite observational visits.

Previously, Dr. Greene served as senior advisor to the CMS Office of the Administrator leading and supporting CMS's burden reduction initiatives. Prior to that, Dr. Greene was the Director of the Governance Management Group in the CMS Center for Program Integrity (CPI), where she led CPI's vulnerability management, program risk assessment, regulation development, strategy development, and performance oversight functions.

Before joining CMS, Dr. Greene led strategy and operational support projects to stand up new programs, improve operational efficiencies, build collaborations, and foster professional development. Dr. Greene, a pediatrician and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, completed her medical education at the Yale School of Medicine, clinical training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Masters in Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health, and Masters in Business Administration at Loyola College in Maryland.

Dr. Mary Greene

Director, Office of Burden Reduction & Health Informatics, CMS

Susan K. Gregurick, Ph.D., was appointed Associate Director for Data Science and Director of the Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) at the National Institutes of Health on Sept. 16, 2019. Under Dr. Gregurick’s leadership, the ODSS leads the implementation of the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science through scientific, technical, and operational collaboration with the institutes, centers, and offices that comprise NIH. Dr. Gregurick was instrumental in the creation of the ODSS in 2018 and served as a senior advisor to the office until being named to her current position.

Dr. Gregurick was previously the Division Director for Biophysics, Biomedical Technology, and Computational Biosciences at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Prior to joining the NIH in 2013, Dr. Gregurick was a program director in the Office of Biological and Environmental Research at the Department of Energy.

Before beginning a career of government service, Dr. Gregurick was a professor of computational chemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research interests included dynamics of large biological macromolecules, and her areas of expertise are computational biology, high performance computing, neutron scattering and bioinformatics.

Dr. Gregurick received her undergraduate degree in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Maryland.

Susan Gregurick

Associate Director for Data Science and Director of the Office of Data Science Strategy, NIH

Mike Tartakovsky

CIO, NIAID

Misu Tasnim is the Executive Director of the Digital Service at CMS. In this role she is responsible for leading digital modernization efforts at CMS which promote interoperability and public access to health data. Most recently she has been leading efforts to modernize the Medicare payment system. Misu has worked with CMS since 2013 and is passionate about using technology to improve healthcare.

Prior to CMS, Misu served as an engineer at NASA and the IRS, on flight software, security engineering, and systems architecture. She then turned her focus to small businesses and startups, lending to a breadth of experience in government procurement, building effective teams, and scaling modern software development practices. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Misu Tasnim

Executive Director of Digital Service at CMS, U.S. Digital Service

Agenda

11:00 am

11:05 am

Welcome Remarks

Amy Kluber, Editor-in-Chief, GovCIO Media & Research

11:05 am

11:25 am

Fireside Chat: Data and Digitalization for Future Health

Susan Gregurick, Associate Director for Data Science and Director of the Office of Data Science Strategy, NIH
Moderator: Amy Kluber, Editor-in-Chief, GovCIO Media & Research

11:25 am

11:55 am

Panel: Digital Solutions for Better Benefits and Claims Processes

Ben Cushing, Chief Architect, Federal Health, Red Hat
Dr. Mary Greene, Director, Office of Burden Reduction & Health Informatics, CMS
Misu Tasnim, Executive Director of Digital Service at CMS, U.S. Digital Service
Moderator: Katherine MacPhail, Staff Writer/Researcher, GovCIO Media & Research

11:55 am

12:25 pm

Panel: Health CIO Roundtable

Health agencies have both individual missions and shared priorities. We gather CIOs from across the federal health space to examine IT priorities in health care, public health, research and more.