Attila Farkas

Canada Health Infoway, Senior Director, Solution Management and Advisory Services

A seasoned HIT professional with decades of experience in design and development of state of the art solutions for the healthcare industry, from MRI and CT diagnostic imaging acquisition consoles to surgical navigation systems assisting deep brain stimulation, Attila held technical leadership positions throughout the industry. After joining Canada Health Infoway, Attila worked tirelessly to improve distribution and access to digital health standards and shape the interoperability landscape in Canada.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 12:15 PM - 12:50 PM (EST)
Overview of the Shared pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap

Anu Kuga

Smile Digital Health, UX Lead

Anu has worked with a diverse array of organizations - from promising startups to well-established enterprises. She leads the design of a white label product at Smile Digital Health, where she made a meaningful impact by implementing UX best practices and fostering a culture of design excellence within the organization.

Anu believes that equitable access to information and technology represents a fundamental cornerstone of a more just and inclusive world. Driven by an insatiable curiosity she leds in-depth user research and brainstorm innovative solutions that truly resonate with the needs and desires of users. My passion for collaboration and teamwork is what truly fuels my creative drive.

Session Details

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 11:55 AM - 12:30 PM (EST) 

Communicating Complex Technical Functionality Using a UI

Alan Lau

Canada Health Infoway, Director, Portfolio Strategy Architecture

Alan Lau is the Director, Strategy for Canada Health Infoway’s Digital Health Interoperability Program. Alan was one of the lead authors of the shared pan-Canadian interoperability roadmap and will oversee the execution of the roadmap to achieve national, jurisdictional and program goals. Previously, Alan was part of Infoway’s Account Management team serving as a Regional Account Director for the Ontario jurisdiction where he helped align Infoway’s business priorities with those of Ontario. He was instrumental in helping PrescribeIT expand into the acute care sector and helped establish various strategic investment projects aligned to Infoway’s Driving Access to Care mandate.
Prior to Infoway, Alan spent a number of years in management consulting where he was a trusted advisor to many hospital and health system executives on corporate and digital strategy and operational excellence, as well as working in the acute care sector.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 12:15 PM - 12:50 PM (EST)

Overview of the Shared pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap

Andrew Zylla

EDI & Interoperability, Director, IT Service Operations

Andrew is the Sr Director of Interoperability & EDI at Magellan Health. He oversees the business technology strategy development, solution discovery and budgeting for the various Federal and State Interoperability Mandates for Magellan Health. Andrew has worked in the technology industry for over 17 years, spending the past 12 years of his career focusing on the Healthcare domain. He has been with Magellan Health since 2015. Prior to joining Magellan, Andrew was Head of U.S. IT Operations for a global medical device manufacturer.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 11:30 AM - 12:05 AM (EST)

Streamlined Data Ingestion and HIE Integration

Ben Cushing 

RedHat, Chief Architect, Healthcare & Lifesciences

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 behavioural 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.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 3:25pm - 4:10pm (EST)

Day 1 Closing Keynote - Safely caring for those in need; building Ontario’s Learning Health System

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 11:55 AM - 12:30 PM (EST)

Suicide Early Warning System

Bryn Rhodes

Smile Digital Health, Director of Standards Strategy

Bryn Rhodes is an editor of the Clinical Quality Language specification and a key contributor and maintainer of the Clinical Quality Framework initiative and related open source tooling to support authoring and evaluation of CQL.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 12:15 PM - 12:50 PM (EST)

CQL Deep Dive

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 3:25 PM - 4:10 PM (EST)

Closing Keynote - Safely caring for those in need; building Ontario’s Learning Health System 

Bryan Tripp

University of Waterloo, Associate Professor

Dr. Tripp is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo. He teaches courses in biomedical engineering and deep learning. His research lab applies deep learning to medical information processing and developing functional brain models.

Session Details

Tuesday, May 16 2023 | 9:00 AM - 9:45 AM (EST)

Day 2 Opening Keynote - Large Language Models in Healthcare

Chris Stoten

Smile Digital Health, Director, Enterprise Architecture

Chris is Smile Digital Health's Director of Enterprise Architecture and has been in the technology sector for over 20 years, the last 16 within healthcare. He's thrilled to be part of the Smile Digital Health team, and to help organizations liberate their healthcare data.

Session Details
Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 1:30 PM - 2:05 PM (EST)

The Virtuous Cycle - Using AI, ML and other Tools to Improve your Data over Time

Duncan Weatherston

Smile Digital Health, CEO

Duncan Weatherston has been an IT professional and entrepreneur for 30 years, with a multidisciplinary background in business development, systems integration and support. As Smile Digital Health's CEO, he is responsible for overseeing the senior team and providing leadership and vision for the company. Working with his co-founder, who is co-chair of the FHIR committee at HL7 and the maintainer of HAPI—the premier open source FHIR library in Java, Duncan has built an international business with clients in Australia and Europe, as well as North and South America.

His extensive career includes technical service leadership and implementation that have informed many parts of Ontario's Health system.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 9:00 AM - 9:45 AM (EST)

Day 1 Opening Keynote - Better Global Health

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM (EST)

Day 2 Closing Keynote - Beyond data collection, Scaling the Internet of Health

Elden Jahnke

AWS, Solutions Architect

Elden Jahnke is a healthcare solutions architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS). He enjoys working with customers to solve complex integration and interoperability issues. He co-leads the global interoperability community of practice at AWS responsible for dictating interoperability strategies and adoption of standards across the whole healthcare vertical. Previously, he was responsible for RIS and PACS provincial deployments in Alberta and Manitoba at AGFA Healthcare, followed by 10 years of patient and provider identity management across North America. He holds an Engineering Degree in Computer Science, and today he is going to talk to us about Amazon HealthLake and how to enable analytics on health data.

Session Details

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 1:30 PM - 2:05 PM (EST) 

Amazon HealthLake: Enabling analytics on your health data

Evan Moir

Smile Digital Health, Senior UX Designer

Evan is a UX Designer with 15 years of varied experience in digital product design/development, and a love of collaborative, research-driven design. At Smile, he focuses on designing interfaces that help our customers understand and leverage the complex capabilities offered by our products, as well as bringing a cohesive look and feel to the Smile product line. Evan holds a Masters of Information from the University of Toronto.

Session Details

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 11:55 AM - 12:30 PM (EST) 

Communicating complex technical functionality using a UI

Gavin Tong

Senior Principal, Accenture

Gavin is an industry thought leader in Health Informatics. He has spoken at numerous conferences and has published dozens of articles in industry journals, trade magazines, and newsletters. Gavin is passionate about the creation of interoperable systems that provide the information needed to achieve the triple of aim care – improving the patient experience of care, improving the health of populations, and lowering the per capita costs of care.  Gavin holds a Masters of Business Administration from York University.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 2:35pm - 3:10pm (EST)

Intelligent Health Care On FHIR

James Agnew

Smile Digital Health, CTO

James Agnew is the Chief Technology Officer for Smile Digital Health. With more than 15 years of healthcare technology development and health informatics experience, he has built a reputation for being one of the top industry thought leaders. Over his career, he has built enterprise medical communication systems, integration platforms and mobile health apps that reduce barriers between information and care outcomes. As an expert open-source advocate, and project lead for The HAPI Project, James has overseen the implementation of HL7 standards that are used in projects around the world. He is also co-chair with HL7. Through his career, James has managed software teams, architected several seamless solutions that evolved patient care delivery and has led specification design for interoperability at regional health information exchanges.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 1:50 PM - 2:25 PM (EST)

International Patient Summary: Current state and API

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 9:00 AM - 9:45 AM (EST)

Opening Keynote - Large Language Models in Healthcare

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 10:40 AM - 11:45 AM (EST)

May Quarterly Product Release

Dr. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver

Inflect Health and Vituity, Vice President of Innovation

Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, MD, PhD, FACEP is Vice President of Innovation at Vituity, overseeing the innovation efforts that leverage technology through strategic partnership, investment, or internal incubation. He has developed a deep understanding of the problem spaces in healthcare through (1) extensive clinical practice as an emergency physician, (2) as a physician executive at a national physician staffing company by managing a wide range of providers, (3) as a technology executive leader providing software, technology, and analytical solutions to over 100 hospitals, and (4) as an executive leading the product development, testing, deployment, go-to-market strategy, and scaling of multiple technology solutions in the healthcare ecosystem. In addition to being the VP of Innovation, he works as a staff physician in the Emergency Department at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, California, where he is the past Department Vice-Chair and Director of Quality Improvement.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 11:30 AM - 12:05 PM (EST)

Getting Real Change from Artificial Intelligence

Karina Guy

Managing Director, Data and Analytics, Health Care & Life Sciences, Accenture

Karina leads the Health Care and Life Sciences Data & Analytics practice for Accenture Canada, in addition to the Data Science practice across all industries. She has over 25 years of experience in the design and implementation of innovative health care technologies to improve health outcomes and patient/provider experience. Karina’s areas of specialization include applied health informatics; interoperability; advanced health analytics; data engineering; data science; and client/patient-centric service design. She has worked across acute, ambulatory, community and primary care; in addition to emergency health services. Karina holds a Masters from the iSchool at UBC and a Post-Masters in Applied Health Informatics from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Nursing. Karina is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/C); a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP); and a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA).

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 9:00am - 9:45am (EST)

Day 1 Opening Keynote - Better Global Health 

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 2:35pm - 3:10pm (EST)

Intelligent Health Care On FHIR

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 9:00am - 9:45am (EST)

Day 2 Opening Keynote - Large Language Models in Healthcare

Keith Kranz

South Australia Pathology, Manager ICTS

Keith is passionate about how digital transformation can drive the delivery of healthcare and contribute to greater patient involvement. Over his career, he has worked in several public and private healthcare roles, was a founding member of the Federal Government's National Electronic Health Records Taskforce, developed a Seamless Healthcare Strategy for Microsoft and was awarded an Order of Australia (OAM) for services to the community and Alzheimer's. He has a pivotal role in delivering Digital Transformation to the business that included transition of LIMS to the cloud.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 2:35 PM - 3:10 PM (EST)

Pathology and Digital Transformation

Ken Stevens

Smile Digital Health, Managing Director, Technology (a.k.a Code Monk)

Ken Stevens is a Code Monk at Smile Digital Health and leads the core product development team.  He leads the design and implementation of a number of core features in the Smile product, including MDM, Kafka integration, and CDS Hooks.
After completing a PhD in Mathematics at the University of Toronto, Ken joined the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, and wrote the code to put the newspaper on the internet for the first time. He also worked on a pharmacy management system for Canada's national pharmacy.

One of his key contributions to the Canadian Healthcare Industry was to lead the publication of an industry position paper promoting the adoption of FHIR as the new healthcare interoperability standard for Canada.

This work led Ken to Smile, where he found a team committed to a vision of healthcare interoperability built on FHIR. Smile's runaway success is a testimony for how clearly this vision has resonated with the international healthcare IT community.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 1:50 PM - 2:25 PM (EST)

Utilizing Smile MDM

Lanne Relland

Deloitte Canada, Interoperability Enterprise Architect

 Lanne Relland has over 20 years of I.T. experience and a specialized focus in healthcare with over 16 years of experience ranging from biomedical engineering of medical devices and imaging systems to key architecture and management positions across large-scale projects across Canada, USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand healthcare systems. Lanne is a talented and expert IT consultant with a specialization on architecture and team leadership, and his range of experience allows him to quickly assess and augment team efforts across the most complex of projects and across all team sizes. Lanne also has a strong business background, having founded a successful consulting firm, and served in chief executive positions for Australasia’s leading Radiology Information Systems vendor.  Lanne has implemented dozens of health IT solutions over the past 16 years, including state level, regional level, and hospital level integration solutions. Lanne has experience and expert knowledge with the industry’s leading HIE and ESB vendors. Lanne also participates actively in standards development for key clients, across all HL7, DICOM, and Terminology standards.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 9:55 AM - 10:30 AM (EST)

Next Generation HIE

Dr. Leslie Lenert

Medical University of South Carolina, VP for Data Science and Informatics

Dr. Lenert is the Associate Vice President for Data Science and Informatics and the Chief Research Information Officer for the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). He is also Distinguished Professor of Internal Medicine, and Smart State Chair in Healthcare Quality. In these roles, he leads work on the development of Learning Health System infrastructure for the MUSC Enterprise, with his latest efforts being focused on MUSC’s 100,000 person gene sequencing initiative, In Our DNA SC. Dr. Lenert is a primary care physician with a 30-year history of research in biomedical informatics. He has published more than 200 papers in peer reviewed journals. His work spans many areas: the 1990’s, he was a pioneer in the use of data science methods in clinical medicine. In response to 2001 9-11 attacks, Dr. Lenert led a team of engineers and computer scientists at UCSD that developed a wireless “location aware” intelligent EHR system for first responders. In 2007, Dr. Lenert became the founding Director of the National Center for Public Health Informatics at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he managed national biodefense computer systems. Since coming to MUSC 2013, in addition to his work on translational infrastructure, Dr. Lenert leads NIH funded research decision support for T3–T4 translation. Dr. Lenert is also an active contributor in the informatics health policy space. He was a member of HHS/ONC’s Health Information Technology Advisor Committee from 2017-22 and continues to publish articles on how health policies can promote interoperability. Dr. Lenert is an Associate Editor of JAMIA, a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and American College of Physicians and has won awards for his research work from the American Federation for Clinical Research and the American Medical Informatics Association.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 9:55 AM - 10:30 AM (EST)

Translational Challenges in the Implementation of an Enterprise-Wide Precision Medicine Initiative

Mario Hyland

AEGIS.net, Senior Vice President

Mario Hyland, Senior Vice President and Founder of AEGIS, has more than 30 years supporting IT, holding a variety of roles and responsibilities. Mr. Hyland has seen AEGIS engage with MCI/WorldCom, US Army AKO and the Department of Veterans Affairs' My HealtheVet program. Throughout his career, Mr. Hyland advanced the concept of standards based development to align with cloud testing services with the Developers Integration Lab (DIL). Through the DIL, more than 500 Organizations including vendors, implementers, and exchange participants were able to self-service and test conformance 24x7x365 to ensure continuous interoperability. Mr. Hyland was recently recognized as a Federal Health IT Top 100 Executive for 2022, an award issued in collaboration with HHS, the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. He continues to speak about the benefits of standards based approaches to Interoperability, including leveraging HL7 Standards such as FHIR and numerous Implementation Guides (IG's). Mr. Hyland supports a number of US Federal Agencies, Administrations and Departments on strategy approaches such as integrated ecosystems which focus on demonstrating version awareness through rigorous testing.

Session Details

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 9:55 AM - 10:30 AM (EST)

National Compliance & FHIR Conformance

Nitin Thakkar

Magellan Health, Sr Director Interoperability

Nitin is the Sr Director for Interoperability and Integration at Magellan Health. He leads the team of Interoperability experts implementing the various CMS mandates for Magellan Health. He is HL7 FHIR Certified and has a diploma in Advanced Data Analytics from Wharton. He has worked in the Healthcare data domain for over 20 years and is a proven SME for various Healthcare initiatives for Magellan Health.

Session Details

Monday, May 15 2023 | 11:30 AM - 12:05 PM (EST)

Streamlined Data Ingestion and HIE Integration

Mike Morrison

Interoperability Lead, Deloitte Canada

Mike Morrison is a Senior Manager and leader in Deloitte’s Digital Care practice. For 20+ years Mike has worked with healthcare organizations to address the challenges of Health Interoperability. His background offers a unique combination of consulting and clinical practice. As an experienced clinician, Mike can bring the clinical context and the technical capabilities together to solve these challenges. With extensive experience in the Health Interoperability space, Mike understands the niches involved in establishing a modernized Health Information Exchange.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 9:55 AM - 10:30 AM (EST)

Next Generation HIE

Muhammad Noman

Smile Digital Health, Managing Director, Technology

Muhammad is a Managing Director at Smile CDR, with over 20 years of experience in software development. His extensive 14-year background in the financial sector while working at CI Investments has honed his expertise in technical leadership roles. He has successfully led teams in developing and delivering large, high-quality enterprise applications, and is skilled in software development, architecture, UI/UX, project management, and Agile methodologies. Muhammad's passion for innovation and his hands-on leadership style have been instrumental in driving growth and success at Smile CDR over the past three years. He is a respected industry leader who constantly strives for excellence and brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to any organization he works with.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 10:40am - 11:15am (EST)

Electronic Prior Authorization: Da Vinci Burden Reduction Implementation Guide

Robyn Berridge

Smile Digital Health, Manager, SmileInside Growth Engine

Robyn is a Program Manager at Smile Digital Health. She has a background in Health Information Management and Engineering. Robyn has worked in healthcare as a Project Manager and Innovation Program Manager. At Smile she focuses on helping shape customer engagements that deliver successful outcomes.

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 3:25 PM -4:10 PM (EST)

Day 1 Closing Keynote - Safely caring for those in need; building Ontario’s Learning Health System

Dr. Rob Hausam

Hausam Consulting LLC, Consultant

Rob Hausam, MD, is a consultant in clinical informatics with a background in computer engineering and as a physician in Family Medicine with substantial medical practice experience. His current work focuses on clinical terminology, data modeling and healthcare data standards development. He is actively working on the development of the FHIR standard including terminology services and on FHIR implementation guides including International Patient Summary (IPS). He also works with other standards development organizations including SNOMED International and Regenstrief (LOINC), and he currently serves as a Co-Chair of the HL7 Vocabulary and the Orders and Observations (OO) Work Groups.

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 1:50 PM - 2:25 PM (EST)

International Patient Summary: Current state and API

Dr. Ryan Vega

Vantiq, Chief Health Officer

Dr. Ryan Vega serves as the Chief Health Officer for Vantiq and is the former Chief Innovation Officer for the Veterans Health Administration where he led enterprise innovation efforts across the largest integrated health system in the United States. His work has spanned large-scale digital modernization efforts, design and deployment of innovative care and payment models, and early design and development of healthcare software focused on improving health care delivery and experience for patients and providers. Dr. Vega also currently sits as the Physician in Resident for the Digital Medicine Society and holds academic appointments as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Administration at Georgetown University as well as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at George Washington University. He is the recipient of many awards for his work in healthcare innovation and has published numerous articles on the topic.

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 3:25pm - 4:10pm (EST)

Day 1 Closing Keynote - Safely caring for those in need; building Ontario’s Learning Health System 

Sam Schifman

Availity, Chief Architect for Clinical Solutions

Sam Schifman is the Chief Architect for Availity Clinical Solution (formerly, Diameter Health). He has been working as a software developer and architect for over 25 years, in a number of different industries. These include Finance, HR, Education, back to Finance, and some years doing No-code Development Platforms. At Availity, he helps design the next generation architecture to raise awareness about the product capabilities. Sam is interested in the impact of Home Hospital and Wearables on the future of healthcare. All this leads to his passionate around the Internet of Health: building an effective, responsible partnership between patients, providers, payers, and loved ones.

Session Details

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 9:55 AM - 10:30 AM (EST)

Wearables on FHIR: How best to represent time-series data in the FHIR standard

Sime Pavlovic

Government & Public Sector Trusted Digital Identity Leader, Deloitte Canada

Sime is an experienced Chief Information Officer (CIO) with a demonstrated history of working in the hospital & health care industry. With over 20 years of experience and specializing in digital transformations in the healthcare sector, Sime has extensive knowledge and experience with hospital information systems, operations, and the integration of digital systems across the continuum of care.

Prior to Deloitte, Sime was the Global Lead and VP for CGI’s Health and Life Sciences Program. He also served as CIO for Niagara Health and VP for eHealth Ontario with a focus on Strategic Sourcing, Vendor Management & Human Resources and Cornerstone Information Systems.

Session Details

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 2:15pm - 3:15pm (EST)

Closing Keynote - Beyond data collection, Scaling the Internet of Health

Stoyan Halkaliev

NursIT Institute, CEO and Co-Founder

Stoyan Halkaliev, Dipl.-Inf., studied computer science and economics at the University of Hamburg (Germany) and has completed successfully the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at the Harvard Business Scholl (Boston, US). In 2002 he co-founded the MEDNOVO Medical Software solutions and was its CEO until 2015. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field of healthcare software and IT and is an expert in this specific market. Since 2015 he is a co-founder and CEO of the NursIT Institute GmbH, an early adopter of FHIR technologies, a company offering software solutions to optimize the nursing process in hospitals. 

Session Details

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 10:40 AM - 11:15 AM (EST)

Low-code Development with Smile Digital Health

Minister Sylvia Jones

Ministry of Health, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health

Sylvia Jones serves as the Member of Provincial Parliament for Dufferin-Caledon.

As Ontario's current Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, Minister Jones has worked with healthcare partners from across Ontario to:

Introduce A Plan to Stay Open, Ontario’s five-point plan to strengthen the health care workforce and stabilize the health system by providing faster access to care and more options for care in the community.
 
Make it easier and faster for health care workers trained in Ontario, other provinces, and internationally to register and practise in Ontario.
 
Expand pharmacist scope of practice to prescribe and treat 13 common ailments, such as rashes, pink eye, and sprains.
 
Fund annual operating for 27 new MRI machines in hospitals across Ontario, to reduce wait times and increase access.
 
Advance 50 hospital redevelopment projects that will create more than 3,000 new hospital beds within the next 10 years.

Minister Jones previously served as Solicitor General from 2019-2022, where she championed public safety initiatives, including leading the country with a $307 million anti-human trafficking strategy and legislation, and passing Canada’s toughest animal protection legislation.

Session Details

Monday, May 16, 2023 | 9:00 AM - 9:45 AM (EST)

Day 1 Opening Keynote - Better Global Health

Dr. Shane McNamee

Smile Digital Health, SVP, Strategic Growth

Clinical Solution Architect, Patient, Doctor, and Payer who is passionately dedicated to designing, building & integrating highly usable, information technology tools that actually improve healthcare quality, efficiency & costs for all key all healthcare participants using an open standards and open source health IT ethos.

Monday, May 15, 2023 | 3:25 PM -4:10 PM (EST)

Day 1 Closing Keynote - Safely caring for those in need; building Ontario’s Learning Health System