Virtual-First Care East Summit

Dr. Adam Myers is senior vice president and chief clinical transformation officer (CCTO) for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), a national federation
of 34 independent, community-based and locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) companies. Today, one in three Americans is covered by the Blue System.

As BCBSA’s CCTO, Myers drives clinical transformation across the BCBS System through national networks,
health analytics, quality initiatives, and policy and advocacy positions. In his role, he collaborates with the chief medical officers across the 34 BCBS companies and leads the Office of Clinical Affairs (OCA) and the BCBS
Institute. Additionally, Myers serves as chief medical officer of the Blues’ Federal Employee Program (FEP), which covers more than 5.4 million members across all 50 states and abroad. A longtime advocate for
community health and health equity, Myers helps set the vision for the Blues’ efforts to create a more equitable healthcare system.

Prior to joining the Association in September 2021, Myers served as the Cleveland Clinic’s chief of population health and director of the Cleveland Clinic Community Care program, where he provided leadership to a wide variety of clinical and residency programs, as well as the center for value-based research. In addition, he led the clinic’s care model redesign strategy, the community and public health strategy, and the Diversity Inclusion
and Racial Equity Council.

Previously, he served in senior clinical and operational leadership roles at several large health systems, including Texas Health Resources, Southwestern Health Resources and Methodist
Health System.

A New York City native, Myers is board-certified in family medicine and was in private practice in Oklahoma for more than 10 years. He served on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma obstetrics and gynecology department teaching obstetrics and has earned the status of Fellow with the American College of Healthcare Executives, The American Institute of Healthcare Quality and the American Association of Family Physicians. He holds additional board certification in healthcare quality management and patient safety and is a certified professional in healthcare risk management. He is past chair of the American Hospital Association board-level Committee for Clinical Leadership and has held board positions with both the Health Care Transformation Task
Force and The Joint Commission.

Myers received his undergraduate degree from Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport, where he graduated from Louisiana State University Medical Center. He completed his residency with In His Image Family Practice Residency at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Okla., and has completed fellowship work at the University of Oklahoma obstetrics and gynecology department. He also completed a master’s in healthcare management from Harvard University.

Lucia Savage is a nationally-recognized expert on health care regulation, digital health and health information privacy. Using strategic advice to advance digital technology to deliver health care, she drives the Omada Health’s privacy, regulatory and public policy strategies. Founded in 2011, Omada Health is one of the oldest virtual-first digital healthcare providers in the U.S. and has provided well-established cardio-metabolic and physical therapy protocols via a virtual-first approach to over 500,000 individuals.

Ms. Savage also is:

• An Advisor to Evidation Health, a digital health research platform that measures health in everyday life and enables anyone to participate in ground-breaking research and health programs,
• A member of the Board of Directors of Tidepool, a 501(c)(3) that is developing an open-source, fully interoperable closed-loop insulin pump (clearance pending at FDA) that allows people with diabetes to see and understand their own data; and
• A member of the Board of Directors of Academy Health, where she is chair of its Committee on Advocacy and Public Policy.

Lucia is Rock Health’s 2021 “Top 50 in Digital Health” for her policy acumen and digital health advocacy, is a contributing author to Amazon bestseller “Mobile Medicine: Overcoming People, Culture and Governance,” and has testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on health information interoperability and digital health.

Prior to joining Omada, she served the Obama Administration as Chief Privacy Officer at the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Lucia has a B.A. with Honor from Mills College and received her Juris Doctor summa cum laude from New York University School of Law.

Twitter: @savagelucia

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucia-savage-686470/

Dr. Todd Thames is a Board Certified Family Physician with 30 years of clinical practice experience based in San Antonio, Texas. He has been with Included Health since August 2016 and currently serves as Vice President for Clinical Market Initiatives. Dr. Thames completed a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy and a Doctor of Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He also holds a Masters of Healthcare Administration from Trinity University in San Antonio and a Graduate Certificate in Bioethics and Health Policy from Loyola University, Chicago.

Throughout his three decades of experience Dr. Thames has practiced full spectrum Family Medicine, taught in undergraduate and graduate medical education programs, served as residency program director and executive administrator in both clinic and hospital settings. Additionally, Dr. Thames served 10 years on active duty in the US Air Force during which he was stationed in the continental US, overseas, and in a number of deployed locations. Closer to home in San Antonio, he maintains a faculty appointment at Trinity University where he teaches in the graduate program of health care administration and is a member of the Humanities Collective Advisory Board. He also enjoys serving on the Board of Directors for Project QUEST San Antonio, an economic and educational empowerment foundation, and is a member of the Full Circle Society at the San Antonio Food Bank. Dr. Thames is a Fellow in the American Academy of Family Physicians.

As the cofounder and CEO of Oshi Health, Sam is combining his passion for redesigning healthcare around the needs of patients with a mission to increase access to the high quality, whole-person care that two of his family members have needed to manage their digestive conditions. He has held leadership roles across healthcare technology and tech-enabled services companies focused on improving population health. These include scaling a tech-enabled diabetes management company, a data-driven health system patient acquisition platform and population health tools for a leading electronic medical record (EMR) company. Sam lives in New York City with his family and enjoys meeting other innovators in healthcare, deepening his knowledge of how our bodies and brains work and cheering on Philadelphia sports teams and NYCFC.

Erica Jain is the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Healthie, where she empowers health and wellness organizations to launch & scale their businesses and build long-term relationships with their clients as a means to deliver personalized, preventative care to improve health outcomes. She works closely with healthcare startups, grocery stores, health systems, corporate wellness programs, medical clinics and other leading institutions to design solutions that deliver comprehensive and effective modern healthcare solutions.

Previously, she was a Healthcare Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group and an Analyst at the Clinton Health Access Initiative. She is a graduate of Duke University with an BA in International Health Disparities and Infectious Diseases and attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, as part of the Health Care Management Program.

Dr. Jamie Feusner is Chief Medical Officer at NOCD, Inc., a digital behavioural
telehealth company where he designed the treatment protocols for delivering
evidence-based exposure and response prevention treatment, virtually, for adults and
children with OCD. He is also Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto,
Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Division of Neurosciences & Clinical Translation, is a
Clinician Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He also has
appointments as Adjunct Professor at the Karolinska Institute, Dept. of Women’s and
Children’s Health, and as a Visiting Researcher at UCLA. Dr. Feusner was previously
the Director of the UCLA OCD Intensive Treatment Program for 15 years, from
2006-2021.
Dr. Feusner’s groundbreaking clinical neuroscience research in OCD and related
disorders, over the past 18 years, includes the first functional brain imaging studies in
body dysmorphic disorder, and studies of accurate predictive modeling of treatment
outcomes using neuroimaging, clinical data, and machine learning. Through his work
with NOCD, he recently published the largest study of clinical treatment in OCD to-date,
demonstrating that virtual exposure and response prevention is an efficacious and
efficient treatment.
Dr. Feusner is a member of the Board of Directors of the International College of
Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders, and a member of the International OCD
Foundation Clinical and Scientific Advisory Board. He has published over 125
peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and he lectures nationally & internationally on
the topics of OCD, body dysmorphic disorder, and eating disorders.

Dr. Joe Kvedar has been driving innovation, creating the market, and gaining acceptance for connected health for nearly three decades. He is now applying his expertise, insights, and influence to advancing adoption of telehealth and virtual care technologies at the national level. Dr. Kvedar continues to guide the transformation of healthcare delivery as a respected thought leader, author, and convener.

Dr. Kvedar is Immediate Past Chair of the Board of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). As Editor-in-Chief of npj Digital Medicine, a Nature Research journal, he is working to establish the evidence base needed to guide innovation and the implementation of virtual care.

He is co-chair the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Digital Medicine Payment Advisory Group (DMPAG), which works to ensure widespread coverage of telehealth and remote patient monitoring, and successfully established several new provider codes for telehealth reimbursement through the CPT process. Dr. Kvedar is also a member of the AAMC’s (Association of American Medical Colleges) telehealth committee, creating tools that will enable medical schools and residency programs to integrate telehealth into the training of future practitioners.

Dr. Kvedar is the author of two books: The Internet of Healthy Things and The New Mobile Age: How Technology Will Extend the Healthspan and Optimize the Lifespan. The cHealth Blog provides his insights and vision for connected health.

Dr. Kvedar is a Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Maulik Majmudar is a cardiologist and co-founder and Chief Medical Officer at Biofourmis. Prior to joining Biofourmis, Dr. Majmudar was the Medical Officer for Amazon Halo and led the development and launch of Amazon’s first health membership service. Prior to Amazon, he was Associate Director of the Healthcare Transformation Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, where he was responsible for the identification, validation, and implementation of digital health solutions to improve care delivery as well as the patient and provider experience. While at MGH, he was awarded an education grant from the Aetna Foundation to launch a new Fellowship in Healthcare Innovation, aimed at fostering the next generation of clinician innovators.

Dr. Majmudar was also a founding member and chief clinical officer of Quanttus, Inc. a venture-backed medical wearables startup that was developing a novel wrist-based device for continuous cuffless blood pressure monitoring.

Dr. Majmudar attended Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and then completed residency training in Internal Medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, followed by a cardiovascular medicine fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also holds two patents and has had several publications in high-impact journals, such as Nature, Circulation, JAMA, and Journal of Healthcare Delivery and Implementation Science.

Jared S. Taylor is the Founder of Slice of Healthcare and an SVP of Licensing & Credentialing at SteadyMD. Previously, he was the Founder & CEO at BlocHealth, which was acquired by SteadyMD in June 2022. In 2022, Jared was named to the Florida Business Observer’s 40 Under 40 list. Jared hosts multiple podcast shows via Slice of Healthcare and can be found playing tennis when he is not working.

Shriya Palekar is a healthcare leader focused on bringing solutions to market that improve people’s lives. As AVP of Health Plan Solutions at TytoCare, Shriya leads partnerships with health plans and value-based organizations to develop programs that navigate members to the right care.  She was previously in the healthcare practice at McKinsey & Co., led Medicare strategic initiatives at EmblemHealth, and worked in global public health, co-founding a microinsurance initiative to expand care to bottom-of-the-pyramid populations.  She holds a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Prior to joining Flare Capital, Ian served as a Senior Vice President and a founding member of CareAllies, Cigna’s family of multi-payer provider services, population health management, and home-based care businesses. In that capacity, he was responsible for developing new technology-enabled services, evolving existing solutions and service lines, and providing ongoing product management across CareAllies’ businesses. In addition, he was also responsible for developing inorganic strategies for CareAllies since its inception. Before launching CareAllies, Ian held a leadership position with Cigna’s US Strategic Operations team.

Ian was a cofounder of several start-ups, including XcelDx, which ultimately partnered with Scanwell Health, a smartphone-enabled diagnostics company backed by Y-Combinator, Founders Fund, DCM, Version One, and Mayfield. He focused his efforts on product development and serve as an advisor to the company. He also worked for Becton, Dickinson & Company, where he led new product innovation and development. He continues to actively advise and mentor a number of innovative healthcare start-ups.

He started his career at McKinsey & Company and spent five years advising healthcare clients globally.

Ian serves as an advisor and board member of various organizations. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors at Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association. He also serves as the 2021 Annual Conference Co-Chair. Additionally, Ian serves as an Industry Advisor at Cornell Tech’s The Precision Behavioral Health Initiative.

Ian has a Bachelor of Science degree in biological engineering from Cornell University, where he graduated with honors and was a Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Kendra Ripp is the Vice President of Clinical Services at Nice Healthcare, a
technology-enabled integrated primary care clinic. Prior to her role at Nice, Dr. Ripp worked at
Anthem, Inc. in various roles, including as a program director for a cancer navigation program.
She currently serves as chair for the American Nurses Association Innovation Advisory New
Models of Care committee and she is also on the Health and Equity Advisory Council for Bright
Health Group. Her leadership experience spans roles in healthcare quality, process
improvement, program design, nursing education, and health equity consulting.
Dr. Ripp holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice in Health Innovation and Leadership with a
certificate in Design from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelors in Nursing with a
certificate in Population Health from Georgetown University. She is also a Certified Professional
in Healthcare Quality.

Karen Silgen is General Manager and Vice President of Virtual Care at UnitedHealthcare, where she focuses on developing the commercial strategy and virtual care programs for 25+ million consumers and hundreds of thousands of large and small businesses. In her role, Karen helps simplify members’ health care experience including the ability to connect with a provider with the click of a button and to help improve access to quality care – no matter where people are.  Prior to this role, Karen led the telehealth evolution for COVID-19 in UnitedHealthcare’s provider networks by helping providers through best practices in telehealth billing, clinical scenarios, workflow management, technology procurement, digital security and more.

Karen has also served as a Vice President at Optum, where she developed programs that helped consumers with complex conditions such as end stage renal disease, sickle cell disease and infertility. Karen has a long and diverse history with UnitedHealth Group since 2005, and her career spans more than twenty years serving in leadership positions within product development and management, provider networks and marketing.

Recognized for her leadership and forward thinking, UnitedHealth Group awarded Karen the Innovation Leadership Shadow Award which is bestowed upon select leaders who make innovation a priority while demonstrating the company’s values.  Karen was also selected by UnitedHealth Group executives to attend the Executive Development Program at Stanford in addition to numerous other innovation awards.

Karen earned a BA and MBA from the University of St. Thomas and is a certified Executive Coach through the Hudson Institute and the International Coaching Federation.  Karen currently serves as a Board Member for the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota, serves as a mentor for executives at Menttium, and as a mentor to students from her alma mater. 

Swapnil Prabha is a leading thinker in the insurance industry whose work is helping to shape the digital future of employee benefits. She joined Unum in March 2020 as Vice President of Workforce Wellness Solutions. In this role, she has helped to develop solutions such as Unum Behavioral Health, which addresses the full continuum of mental health for employees from baseline measurement to a complete range of easily accessible resources and therapeutic interventions. She also leads strategic direction and capability priorities for Unum Leave Logic.

Prior to Unum, Swapnil spent more than seven years as an Associate Partner with McKinsey & Company. Here she was a leader in the insurance practice, focused on digital services across all lines of business and employee benefits specifically. She led process redesign and distribution-focused operational strategy for employee benefits carriers – and helped to run various women’s leadership projects. Prabha is a graduate of Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN, and earned her MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is currently based in Maine, where she volunteers on the board of Maine Behavioral Healthcare.

Vijay Patel is partner and co-founder of CVS Health® Ventures and Vice President of enterprise business development for CVS Health.

In his role, he is responsible for proactively identifying and executing opportunities across the enterprise through strategic partnerships and investments.

Patel joined the company’s Boston Digital Innovation Lab in 2015 where he led the company’s efforts to develop strategic partnerships with and investments in digital health and technology companies. Patel structured the first set of connected health and price transparency partnerships for CVS Health. He also founded the CVS® Digital Leadership Program to attract and retain early career talent.

Patel earned his bachelor’s degree from the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Previous to CVS Health, he worked as an investment professional at H.I.G. Growth Partners and Bain Capital.

Lisa LaCarrubba is the Medical Director for CloseKnit Health, a new Virtual forward primary care practice, and a board-certified family physician.  Prior to joining CloseKnit, Dr. LaCarrubba was the Medical Director for Clinical Reengineering at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield New Jersey, responsible for the clinical aspects of value-based programs including practice transformation, quality, attribution, employer group activation and implementation of new models of care and collaboration. Additional health plan experience includes overseeing quality, wellness, credentialing, appeals and case and utilization management.  Dr. LaCarrubba practiced with North Country Health System in Newport Vermont where she served as chief of staff, medical director for Derby Green Long Term Care Facility, chair of the Pharmacy and Therapeutics committee and Quality Consultant.  She is a member of the American Academy of Family Practice, The American Association for Physician Leaders and is co-chair of the New Jersey Immunization Network.  Dr. LaCarrubba received her undergraduate degree from Villanova University and her MD from UMDNJ (now Rutgers) Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.  She completed a family residency at Mount Holly Memorial Hospital where she served as chief resident. 

 Joe Connolly is the co-founder and CEO of Visana Health, a virtual-first gynecology clinic he founded from his mother’s experience with endometriosis. Joe’s worked in the virtual-first care space for nearly a decade, including in clinical evidence development, economic evidence development, sales, implementations, and product. Joe’s a founding member of IMPACT, the virtual-first medical practice collaboration committed to supporting virtual-first care companies and their commitment to improving patient outcomes.

Previous to founding Visana, he worked in digital health at Boston Scientific, where he created and scaled a virtual-first digital healthcare solution to health systems. Joe’s a thought leader in the virtual care space and publishes a popular blog on virtual-first care.

Joe has a BS in Bioengineering from Clemson and an MEng in Biomedical Engineering from Duke.

Marcus Thygeson is Chief Health Officer and  leads the clinical team at Surest. Prior to Surest,  Marcus served in a variety of health care  leadership roles, including Chief Health Officer  at Blue Shield of California and President of the  Center for Healthcare Innovation at Allina Health. He has extensive experience leading teams that create and refine health service innovations that improve health outcomes and make health care affordable.  

Marcus serves on the IMPACT Steering Committee, co-chairs the National Committee for Quality Assurance Committee for  Performance Measurement and is a member of the Quantum Leap Healthcare  Collaborative board of directors. He has studied and published on a variety of health  service research topics, including shared decision making, care management  methods, worksite and community wellness, applications of complexity science in  health care and comparative configurational methods. 

Marcus received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and an M.P.H. from the  University of Minnesota. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and  Gastroenterology.

Donald Jones is a globally recognized leader in digital medicine, digital therapies, technology enabled health services and virtual-first healthcare delivery. He is a sought out as a speaker, advisor and board member. He works across the spectrum of healthcare, pharmaceutical, medical device, wearable, smart apparel, material science and healthcare companies. He is an Operating Partner with Takeda Digital Ventures. He sits as an independent director on multiple boards of VC and PE backed companies. Don has advised the Boards and executive suites of many of the largest pharmaceutical and medical device companies including Dexcom, Resmed, Cepheid, Sanofi, Teva, Astra Zeneca, Genentech, Otsuka, Novo Nordisk and the Verily/Sanofi joint venture, Onduo. He is a Senior Advisor with both McKinsey & Co. and the GLG Institute. Jones serves as Chief Digital Officer of the Scripps Research Translational Institute (SRTI), collaborating with the renowned Eric Topol, MD, where they co-founded Scripps Digital Medicine, the world’s first digital health clinical trial center and the non-profit West Health Institute, raising over $130 million. At JP Morgan Healthcare in 2021, Don founded IMPACT, the Virtual First Medical Practice Collaboration, in partnership with DiMe (Digital Medicine Society).

​Beginning in 2002, Don led Qualcomm Wireless Health Global Strategy and founded its healthcare subsidiary. In 2005 he founded the international Wireless Life Sciences Alliance, merging it with HIMSS in 2016. Earlier in his career, Don was COO of MedTrans (re-named AMR), in which he was instrumental in growing from $4.5 million into the largest emergency services provider in the world (now Global Medical Response), with over 38,000 EMS personnel, 7000 ambulances and 450 medical aircraft. He was Founder and Chair of EMME, Mexico’s largest consumer membership healthcare provider and largest private practice, with over 450 physicians. As advisor to the Board of AMR, he helped build the largest medical group in the US, under the EmCare brand (now Envision Healthcare), with over 25,000 physicians. In 2014, EvoNexus recognized Donald Jones as Digital Health Innovator of the Year. Don conceived the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a global competition for a consumer device which successfully makes medical diagnoses. The XPRIZE was awarded in Hollywood in April 2017.

Brooke Benton is a Registered Dietitian and Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist with a Masters Degree in Nutrition.  She has experience working with diabetes, weight management, and chronic disease management.  Brooke has worked in a variety of settings including higher education, community nutrition, long term care nutrition, outpatient nutrition, as well as diabetes education. Brooke has particular interest in working with diabetes management.  She has been a Diabetes Educator as well as a Clinical Coordinator in accredited diabetes management programs providing one on one counseling, group classes, and support groups.  She has also been a contributing writer and blogger for a diabetes program website. Brooke is excited to be part of the Cecelia Health coaching team.  She strives to use her passion for diabetes management to motivate patients by giving them skills and tools to meet their goals.  She understands there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to diabetes management, and that patients have different needs and goals.  Brooke likes to build a relationship with her patients while finding what motivates them to manage their diabetes.

Timothy Law, DO is Vice President Executive Medical Director for Clinical Services at Highmark.

Dr. Law leads efforts on Living Health Solutions Collaborations, the Clinical Quality Governance Committee, the Utilization Management Prior Authorization team, Federal Employee Program and VBR – True Performance.

He is a member of the Medical Policy Team, where he drove completion of HM CED (Coverage with Evidence) policy to allow better access to new technology for our strategic partners and our members. He also serves as chairman of the Care Management and Quality Committee.

Dr. Law is telehealth lead on Highmark’s Covid-19 Command Center team, and led the team in the organization of adding  over 1000 codes for inclusion in the coverage policy during the pandemic, helping to bring virtual care to patients in the midst of a pandemic.

A board certified physician with two decades of clinical experience, Dr. Law serves as the Medical Director and Principal Investigator of the Ohio Musculoskeletal and Neurological Institute (OMNI) at Ohio University with multiple NIH grants funding research in healthy aging and wellness.

Dr. Law is in active clinical practice as a rural Family Doctor in Central Ky. He uses virtual health and house calls to perform full service family medicine to include obstetrics and minor orthopedic and dermatologic surgeries.

Dr. Law earned his medical degree from Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, and an MBA in Health Care Management from Indiana Wesleyan University. He completed family medicine residency at Ireland Army Community Hospital, Fort Knox, KY.

Sheila Phicil is the Director of Innovation at Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) Health Equity Accelerator where she facilitates the development of initiatives that advance racial health equity. Prior to her current role Sheila served as the Administrative Director of the Neurology Department at BMC where she oversaw the operations and finance in support of the clinical, research and teaching missions of the Department. Sheila has over 10 years of experience in healthcare spanning policy, strategy, and operations. She has two Master’s degrees in Public Health and Financial Economics and is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP). In 2020, Sheila was awarded the BMC Leadership Impact Award for demonstrating transformative leadership on topics of diversity, inclusion, and health equity. In 2022, she graduated as a fellow from the Massachusetts Health Leadership College. She believes that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets and therefore is passionate about innovating systems of care to intentionally work for and with the vulnerable and marginalized populations. Sheila also has a knack for storytelling, drawing from her lived experience as a first-generation, Haitian-American woman to shed light on complex issues.

Dr. Timothy Puri is the Associate Chief Medical Officer of Care Partners at ConcertoCare, a tech-enabled, value-based provider of at-home, comprehensive care for seniors and other adults with unmet health and social needs. As Associate Chief Medical Officer of Care Partners, Timothy oversees the company’s collaboration between ConcertoCare providers and patients’ primary care physicians.

Previously, Timothy served as the Regional Medical Director of Northern California at Landmark Health, a risk-based provider group that delivers in-home medical care to chronically ill populations. Earlier at Landmark Health, Timothy led the post-acute care team as medical director, overseeing the company’s rehabilitative and palliative care patients.

Timothy previously served as a clinical advisor at SpectHealth and Baseline. He currently sits on the San Mateo County Medical Association Advisory Board, and serves as vice chair of the Senior Affairs Commission of Redwood City, California. Timothy holds an MD from St. George’s University, an MBA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a BS in biology from Boston University.

Dr. Holly DuBois is a Board-certified Psychiatrist and an early innovator of telehealth.  Dr. DuBois built and developed programs in intensive outpatient services, consult and liaison psychiatry, and 24/7 crisis telemedicine throughout Texas.  She joined Mindstrong in 2020, following her passion and commitment for innovation and quality in mental health care.

Kathleen Aller leads global market strategy and product marketing for InterSystems healthcare solutions. She has a long history
in healthcare and health IT, with expertise in connected health, patient engagement, enterprise intelligence, electronic health records, and quality and performance measurement.

She spent many years with McKesson Provider Technologies (now Change Health). Aller holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Isenberg School of Management.

Pooja Aysola, MD, MBA is the Executive Medical Director and the Head of Clinical Operations at Wheel, the health tech company powering the next generation of healthcare. As the head of Wheel’s clinical team, Dr. Aysola is responsible for leading Wheel’s robust clinical quality assurance program and ensuring the delivery of safe and professional care from Wheel’s trusted network of board-certified clinicians. In addition to her role at Wheel, Dr. Aysola is a practicing Emergency Medicine physician and a recent graduate of MIT’s Sloan School of Management where she was a McGowan Fellow. Prior to joining Wheel, Dr. Aysola served as the Director of ER Quality for her institution and was a faculty member at Brown University. She completed her medical degree and residency at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Her experiences with the single-payer system in Canada were instrumental in her desire to realign incentives in the U.S. healthcare system and motivated her to create change across the industry. Outside of Wheel, Dr. Aysola is also a lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and Boston University Questrom School of Business, and works clinically at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates/Atrius Health, Commonwealth Care Alliance and Steward Health Care.

Andy Ellner is a primary care physician and the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Firefly Health. Prior to starting Firefly, Andy was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the founding co-director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care and the founding director of the Program in Global Primary Care and Social Change at HMS. He has published widely in scientific journals and books and served on the Perspective Advisory Board of the New England Journal of Medicine. Andy received his MD and AB from Harvard and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Guy Friedman is CEO and co-founder at SteadyMD, a B2B telehealth infrastructure provider that powers high-quality telehealth patient experiences for leaders and innovators in healthcare. The company offers a 50-state on-demand clinician workforce, clinical operations, legal and regulatory guidance, and world-class product and technology for healthcare enterprises, digital health companies, labs, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers, large employers, and other healthcare organizations. Prior to SteadyMD, Guy founded and was the CEO of HigherNext, a test administration, online proctoring, and certification platform, which was acquired by ProctorU, where he continued as the VP of Product Strategy.

Guy earned a bachelor’s degree in quantitative economics and a master’s degree in economics from Tufts University, and his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Jay Ahlman is Vice President of CPT Coding and Reimbursement Policy and Strategy for the American
Medical Association (AMA). Jay joined the AMA in 1999 and has held various roles in healthcare
strategy, policy and coding during his tenure. Since 2008, Jay has led the AMA group responsible for the
maintenance of the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set and is the lead staff to the CPT
Editorial Panel for the AMA. During this time Jay has worked with the CPT Editorial Panel to lead many
significant changes, including the evolution of CPT Literature Standards and the launch of new CPT
coding sections including the Proprietary Laboratory Analyses (PLA) code section. Jay is also the lead
staff to the AMA’s Digital Medicine Payment Advisory Group, which is an advisory body made up of 15
industry experts charged with creating solutions to enable the integration of digital healthcare and
telehealth solutions into clinical practice. Most recently, Jay has been involved in the revision of the CPT
Evaluation and Management coding structure and the addition of Remote Physiologic, Remote
Therapeutic Monitoring, and COVID-19 testing and vaccine codes to the CPT code set.

Benjamin Vandendriessche is Chief Medical Officer at Byteflies, the Belgian-American company behind Sensor Dot, a powerful platform for 24/7 capture of medical insights to deliver care at home and augment clinical trials with real-world data. He is specialized in molecular biology, systems physiology, and data analytics for physiologic waveform and vital sign processing. He completed a PhD in Molecular Biology at Ghent University as an IWT Fellow, followed by a postdoc in Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) as a BAEF Fellow. He currently is an adjunct assistant professor at CWRU.

Dr. Ana Gupte is a Strategy, Finance and Innovation leader and advisor with over two decades of experience in  the field of Healthcare Services & Digital Health.  

Most recently, Dr. Gupte served as SVP, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Florida Blue and parent GuideWell. Her thought leadership over her 12 years of Equity Research coverage as Senior Equity Analyst for Payors, Providers and Digital Health at the Wall Street firms of SVB Leerink and Sanford C. Bernstein has garnered multiple institutional investor awards. 

Prior to the Street, she served as Managing Director Corporate Planning at Aetna, Inc., in healthcare management consulting at McKinsey & Company and headed up Drug Development Strategy at Pfizer. She is a frequent television and print media contributor on all things healthcare. 

Ana has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Bombay University, an M.S. & Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, and graduated from the two-year Executive Management program at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.

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 is now the Chairman, CEO, and founder of Cherish. Cherish develops
advanced 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.
He is sought after for his expertise and unstoppable energy as an innovator,
entrepreneur, change agent, strategist, and technology architect.