Innovator of the Year
Certain Innovations change healthcare. This can be an invention, or an individual who is dedicated to the possibilities in healthcare. Innovator of the year should be for something created or brought to market in 2022. Solutions for longstanding health outcomes disparities and healthcare access are considered. Pioneers for system transformation are needed.
Dr. Karen Murphy is executive vice president, chief innovation officer and founding director of the Steele Institute for Health Innovation at Geisinger. Dr. Murphy has worked to improve and transform healthcare delivery throughout her career in both the public and private sectors. Before joining Geisinger, she served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health addressing the most significant health issues facing the state, including the opioid epidemic. Prior to her role as secretary, Dr. Murphy served as director of the State Innovation Models Initiative at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services leading a $990 million CMS investment designed to accelerate health care innovation across the United States. She previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Moses Taylor Health Care System in Scranton, and as founder and chief executive officer of Physicians Health Alliance, Inc., an integrated medical group practice within Moses Taylor. An author and national speaker on health policy and innovation, Dr. Murphy also serves as a clinical faculty member at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.
John Brownstein, MD PhD, is the Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is a global leader in HCIT and, in particular, the emerging fields of informatics and big data analytics. He runs a 50-person multi-disciplinary team focused on digital innovations that span clinicians and consumers. His group is supported by a multi-million dollar budget including grants from NIH, USAID, DoD, IARPA, CDC, Google, Skoll and Gates Foundation. His work has pioneered ‘digital epidemiology’- utilizing diverse digital data sources to understand population health. His work is published in over 150 peer-reviewed papers, all focused on new methods and applications in digital health. This work was recognized by the White House with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He also leads the development of several novel patient facing public health systems, including HealthMap, Vaccine Finder and MedWatcher. The systems are considered premier global public health tools in use by millions of patients each year and endorsed by numerous public health agencies including CDC, WHO, DHS, DOD, HHS, and EU, and has been recognized by the National Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. In addition to research achievements, this translational impact comes from playing an advisory role to numerous agencies on real-time public health surveillance including HHS, DHS, CDC, IOM, WHO and the White House. Dr. Brownstein is a successful entrepreneur having developed new technologies, started multiple companies and out licensed technologies. John has extensive experience establishing industry/academic partnerships, including work with Google, Twitter and Uber.
Sumit is a serial entrepreneur focused on digital health innovation at scale. He has co–founded and grown five companies over the past two and a half decades that have tackled progressively bolder challenges facing our healthcare economies. All his work features common themes — big, bold ideas that help us imagine a better world; moonshot technology innovation that disrupts when, where, how, and who delivers care; complex processes rethought into simple user experiences that blend into our daily lives; and business models that make such change practical — themes he has honed since the time Sumit worked with Steve Jobs and NeXT in the early 1990s. Sumit also seems to have a keen sense of what’s next and the technical and business skill to then address such needs. He developed an electronic medical records system with a major Boston-based teaching hospital in the early-1990s, well before the industry began large-scale adoption more than a decade later; He designed and developed a satellite-based teleconsultation and second opinion management system for the Mayo Clinic in the mid-1990s, well before the internet and ubiquitous telehealth two decades later. He designed and implemented semantic-based health information exchanges and supported interoperability standards efforts in the early 2000s, well before such data exchange was mandated into everyday use. He was again ahead of the curve in the mid-2010s as he led a team to develop care pathways, payment models, and technology to support the migration of care from expensive acute care settings into the home. All of this happened across four companies that Sumit founded or co-founded, most with very strong exits and one IPO. Sumit is now the Chairman, CEO, and founder of Cherish. Cherish develops advanced radar–based sensors and artificial intelligence, combined with medical evidence and human touch, and serves people aging or living with health challenges — our grandparents, parents, children, and many of us. Cherish solutions help them live their best lives with independence, dignity, and joy for as long as possible. Sumit also serves on the HIMSS board and is Chair of the HIMSS Nominating Committee.
Angela Yochem is executive vice president and chief transformation and digital officer for Novant Health. She also serves as chief operating officer and general manager of Novant Health Enterprises. She served as the health system’s executive vice president and chief digital and technology officer from 2017 to 2020. Yochem leads Novant Health’s digital products and services, as well as transformational growth initiatives for the system, which includes accelerating cross-functional initiatives and exploring new opportunities and new potential lines of business. She also supports cultural and process changes required to achieve and sustain Novant Health’s transformational objectives. Yochem previously served as chief information officer and executive vice president for a multi-billion dollar retail organization with more than 4,000 locations, where she created new digital retail channels and transformed the tech capability. Yochem has also served as chief information officer, digital product line executive and executive team member of a multi-billion dollar global logistics company spanning 140 countries, global chief technology officer for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies and a senior executive for one of the world’s largest technology companies, where she built revenue-generating technology services. Yochem received her master’s degree in computer science at the University of Tennessee, where she is an advisory board member. She has served on several company boards, from SEC-registrants to venture-backed start-ups, focusing on growth, enterprise risk, audit and governance. Yochem remains an entrepreneur in residence and a mentor/advisor for international and domestic venture firms and serves as a board member for a Charlotte-based non-profit focused on promoting literacy in the community. Yochem holds three US Patents and is a published author with Addison-Wesley and Prentice-Hall.
Loren Academic Services, Inc. (LAS) is an educational services company that specializes in Coaching, Curriculum Development, and Consulting for students, residents, faculty, and medical centers. The LAS Method is a learning approach that combines principles of clinical social work and education theory into practice. Examples include differentiated teaching, research-based strategies, and self-reflective practices LAS is committed to uphold diversity and inclusion in medical and general education and remove barriers and obstacles that prevent representation. LAS supports individual well-being and strives to eliminate the culture of silence and stigma often associated with academic challenges and psychological disturbances. Our mission is to ensure that ALL students learn, achieve, and succeed by ensuring that ALL students have access to education and opportunities for recruitment, retention, and promotion. LAS has worked tirelessly since 2010 to support doctors and medical students manage wellness while learning and practicing in medicine.
Sara Vaezy is the Chief Digital Officer for Providence where she is responsible for digital strategy, product innovation, marketing, digital experience, and commercialization for the integrated delivery network (IDN) which includes 52 hospitals and 1,085 clinics and serves over 5 million unique patients. Sara is the architect of the Providence digital innovation model upon with the Digital Innovation Group (DIG) was founded, resulting in company partnerships and incubation of technologies that deliver value for Providence as well as other health systems. The model has resulted in the commercialization of three incubated technologies into independent companies from within DIG— all of which are supporting Providence in delivering on its mission and vision of health for a better world.
In 2015, Will Patterson worked as a trauma RN in San Francisco and experienced first-hand how staffing shortages and low nurse-to-patient ratios negatively impacted his ability to provide the best care for his patients. As he struggled to pay his student loans, he searched unsuccessfully for local per diem shifts. That's when he saw the bigger problem - hospitals were always looking for more staff, but nurses had no efficient, easy way to discover and fill open shifts. That’s when the idea for CareRev — the labor marketplace app that connects healthcare facilities and local, flexible, pre-qualified professionals — was born. Today, CareRev is a rapidly growing team of nursing leaders, engineers, customer advocates, talent managers, and designers working toward a single goal: create a more flexible and efficient workforce in healthcare. Every day, we provide facilities and clinicians with staffing solutions that help them adapt to constantly changing demands while providing the best care for their patients.
Dr. López currently serves as Healthcare and Life Sciences Market Lead for the Americas at Google Cloud, with multinational executive responsibility for strategy, thought leadership and solutions development focused on the markets of North and Latin America. He previously served as Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Strategy and Innovation for Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), the fourth largest health insurer in the U.S. and the nation's largest member-owned health insurance company. Prior to this position, he was President of the Southwest Texas Region for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, as well as Chief Medical Officer, where he had oversight responsibility for sales, network, medical and community affairs for a 1.8-million-member business. At Google he helps healthcare companies find tangible clinical and business solutions through digital transformation delivering on Alphabet's promise to organize the world's data. In addition to his responsibilities at Google, Dr. López serves on the Board of Directors of Addus Homecare and Axonics, both publicly traded companies on the NASDAQ exchange.
