AIMed Global Summit 2023 San Diego,
June 4 - 7

Eric Eskioglu, MD, is executive vice president and chief medical and scientific officer for Novant Health. He oversees our medical staff systemwide, as well as safety and quality initiatives and programs supporting clinical variation reduction, pharmacy, and healthcare economics. He provides strategic clinical and cultural leadership to ensure the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective, and patient-centered care across the Novant Health system. Dr. Eskioglu co-leads the Novant Heath Institute of Innovation & Artificial Intelligence and is a practicing vascular neurosurgeon. He previously served as the senior vice president of neurosciences for Novant Health.

Dr. Eskioglu has a unique aerospace engineering background combined with his clinical neurosurgical experience. Prior to his career in medicine, he was an aerospace engineer at AlliedSignal Aerospace Company and Boeing. Before joining Novant Health, Dr. Eskioglu worked at Physicians Regional Healthcare System in Naples, Florida, and served as a neurosurgeon physician executive at Health Management Associates. There he established the region’s first comprehensive stroke center. Dr. Eskioglu has also served as the medical director for endovascular/vascular neurosurgery at Lee Health in Fort Myers, Florida. He began his neurosurgical career at Vanderbilt University medical school as an assistant professor of neurological surgery.

A native of Tucson, Arizona, Dr. Eskioglu earned a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona. He received his medical degree, with Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Society honors, from the University of Kansas Medical School. Dr. Eskioglu was the first inaugural Fellow at the National Institutes of Health with Pfizer Clinical Research Scholars program in Bethesda, Maryland. He completed his neurosurgery residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and an additional endovascular/vascular neurosurgery fellowship at the University of Florida Health Hospital. He is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and a Fellow of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

Greg Nelson serves as the AVP of Analytics Services at Intermountain Healthcare. In this role, Greg leads Analytics Product Management, Data Science, and Analytics Engineering and has responsibility for the long-term data and analytics strategy for the organization and leads the initiative to develop our NextGen Data & Analytics Platform on Microsoft Azure. Prior to joining Intermountain, Greg has served in executive leadership roles in healthcare, management consulting, and consumer research.

Greg has a passion for developing people and has taught courses on machine learning, text analytics, statistics, product thinking, and human centered design.  He has served as adjunct faculty at Duke University’s top-ranked Fuqua School of Business, NC State University’s Institute for Advanced Analytics, and serves as an expert for the International Institute for Analytics.

Greg is the author of “The Analytics Lifecycle Toolkit” (Wiley, 2018) and is a regular speaker and keynote presenter at national and international events. Greg earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in Psychology, a Masters in Clinical Informatics from Duke University, and conducted Ph.D. level work in Social and Cognitive Psychology from the University of Georgia.

You can connect with Greg on twitter @gregorysnelson or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/gregorysnelson/

Ms. Testman was named Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation in 2013.  MemorialCare Health System is a $2.5 Billion integrated health system with over 220 sites of care including 4 hospitals, 35 freestanding imaging centers, 9 freestanding ASCs, 13 dialysis centers, a medical group, IPA and health plan collectively managing 250,000 at-risk lives, serving South Los Angeles and Orange Counties.  She has more than 30 years of experience in health care finance.

Prior to her current position and for the past 9 years, she served as SVP of Financial Operations for the Corporation responsible for overseeing financial operations and various system wide consolidated functions including Decision Support, Budgeting, Government Reimbursement, Materials Management/Purchasing, Patient Financial Services, Accounting and Financial Reporting.

She joined the Health System in 1998 and initially held positions as the Chief Financial Officer of Orange Coast Memorial and Saddleback Memorial Hospitals.  Prior to joining MemorialCare she was the Regional Director of Finance for Catholic Healthcare West’s (now Dignity) Southern California region.  She spent the first five years of her finance career in public accounting as an auditor for Arthur Andersen & Co. focusing on health care clients and began her career in healthcare as a Registered Nurse.

She received her nursing degree from Loma Linda University and her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting from Loma Linda University – La Sierra Campus.

Dr. Chris DeRienzo serves as System Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Quality at WakeMed Health and Hospitals. As a member of the system’s senior executive team, Dr. DeRienzo’s responsibilities include clinical integration, care transformation, population health, value-based care, continuous improvement, quality & patient safety, and medical staff services. He is also a practicing neonatologist, a Senior Scholar with the Stanford University Clinical Excellence Research Center, and serves as a Board Advisor to Premier, Inc. (NASD: PINC), the American Hospital Association, and Mercy Health (Chesterfield, MO).

Recognized by Triangle Business Journal, Modern Healthcare, and Becker’s Healthcare, Chris has published and presented internationally on health, transformation, analytics and mindfulness in healthcare. A frequent keynote speaker and advisor to companies ranging from early stage to the Fortune 50, he is also the author of Tiny Medicine: One Doctor’s Biggest Lessons from His Smallest Patients (Big Eye Books, 2019).

Chris’s previous roles include serving as Chief Quality Officer at Mission Health, a $2B integrated health system based in Asheville, NC. His leadership there helped infuse a data-driven, analytics-enabled culture of continuous improvement throughout the organization’s team members, propelling Mission back to recognition by IBM Watson as a Top 15 Health System in both 2017 and 2018. He also previously served as Chief Medical Officer at the AI-based healthcare company Prealize, where he led the company’s clinical and health economics portfolios through a $22 million funding round.

Board Certified in both Pediatrics and Neonatology, Dr. DeRienzo completed his M.D., Masters in Public Policy, and post-graduate medical training at Duke. At a national level, Dr. DeRienzo was just the fourth medical student elected and re-elected to serve on the AMA Board of Trustees. He is a Past-President of the Durham-Orange County Medical Society and has served in leadership roles within the American Academy of Pediatrics and the North Carolina Medical Society.

Outside of work Chris enjoys competing in triathlon. He finished his first full Ironman in Louisville in 2018, is a two-time Ironman 70.3 Finisher and has twice raced at the USA Triathlon Olympic Distance Age Group National Championships. Chris lives with his family and their two incredibly energetic dogs in North Carolina.

Dr. Feaster is Chief Medical Information Officer at CHOC Children’s Hospital. He came to CHOC in 2012 from Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Dr. Feaster has been involved in Information Technology for over forty years, and has helped several hospitals where he’s worked implement information systems.

Dr. Feaster received his MBA in 1993 and has held several medical administrative positions. One of his many roles at CHOC is to help design and implement technology to support population management, both for current and future well and “at risk” populations. He also directs CHOC’s analytics team which supports hospital operations, clinical care and CHOC’s medical intelligence initiatives.

He has helped guide the organization through MU Stage 2 readiness and the organization’s recently awarded HIMSS Stage 7 EMR Adoption designation and Most Wired status. During his clinical career, Dr. Feaster has maintained busy practices in Pediatric Critical Care and Pediatric Anesthesia.

He is Board Certified in Pediatrics, Anesthesia and Clinical Informatics and still maintains a part-time Pediatric Anesthesia practice in addition to his IT responsibilities.

Ami B. Bhatt, MD, FACC, is chief innovation officer (CIO) of the American College of Cardiology, effective January 2022. In her role, Bhatt provides leadership and expertise in health care innovation and continues to grow the College’s comprehensive Innovation Program in support of the ACC’s Mission to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health.

Bhatt has been a member of the ACC for nearly 20 years and a member of the ACC’s Health Care Innovation Section, as well as the College’s Lifelong Learning Oversight Committee. As an active clinical cardiologist, investigator and educator Bhatt brings nearly 10 years of experience in telemedicine and digital health to her new role. She founded her first program in virtual care in 2013 and continues to work on creating culturally relevant personalized virtual cardiovascular care delivery models. Her research has centered on identifying and implementing solutions to overcoming access barriers to cardiovascular and telemedicine care.

A graduate from Harvard College and the Yale School of Medicine, Bhatt completed her medicine and pediatrics residency at Harvard, her adult cardiology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and her adult congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension fellowship at the Boston Children’s Hospital. She most recently served as the director of Outpatient and Telecardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Corrigan-Minehan Heart Center. While ACC CIO, Bhatt will continue clinical practice at MGH in adult congenital heart disease and teaching as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

Jayme Strauss is the Chief Clinical Officer of Viz.ai. Jayme has over 10 years experience as an executive building clinical service lines in the areas of Neuroscience and Oncology.

Jayme previously was the Executive Director of Neuroscience at Piedmont Healthcare in Georgia, and Assistant Vice President of Neuroscience and Oncology at Baptist Health South Florida.

Jayme is passionate about evolving the way that healthcare is delivered globally, ensuring patients have access to life saving therapies, and moving science forward through research.

Dr. Seagraves is a Senior Healthcare Advisor and Consultant.

In December 2019 she was the Enterprise Vice President of the Neurosciences Institute (NSI) for Atrium Health. Prior to joining Atrium Health in Dec 2019, Karen was the Executive Director of the Marcus Stroke and Neuroscience Center for the Grady Health System in Atlanta, GA for almost 9 years.

She spent 13 years working clinically as a registered nurse, an educator and clinical nurse specialist with the Northside Hospital system in Atlanta. She has a PhD in Nursing and a MPH in Health Policy and Management. She is currently licensed as an Advanced Practice RN.

Karen maintains certifications as a Nurse Executive Advanced-BC, an Adult Clinical Nurse Specialist-BC, an Adult Nurse Practitioner-BC, and is a Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA). She is also a Joint Commission stroke program reviewer for the Disease Specific Care Program, since 2009.

Dr. Baker is a congenital cardiologist who is dual board certified in pediatric and adult congenital heart disease, as well as fellowship trained in interventional cardiology. He received his B.S. in biology from University of Michigan, his M.D. from Albany Medical College and all his postgraduate medical training at the Medical University of South Carolina where he is an associate professor. He has authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal publication, over 50 published abstracts and holds a U.S. patent in image guided procedures. He has extensive experience in translational medical research in areas such as medical device testing, multiscale modeling and image guidance system development. His current focus is in applied artificial intelligence in medicine. He is heading up the effort to create the Applied Medical Artificial Intelligence Incubator at Medical University of South Carolina.

Dr. Maia Hightower, MD, MPH, MBA is the CEO and Founder of Equality AI, and is the Associate CMIO and Sr. Director Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for The University of Utah Health. She is the former CMIO at the University of Utah and former CMIO and Chief Population Health Officer at University of Iowa Healthcare.

Dr. Hightower is an expert and a nationally sought speaker in Responsible AI and the intersection of digital technology with health equity, diversity and inclusion.  She strives to ensure that the value from digital transformation of healthcare is equitable across all stakeholders, including our most vulnerable.

She is the CEO and Founder of Equality AI, an early-stage healthcare tech startup developing a responsible AI toolkit and AI business intelligence platform that monitors algorithms for performance, bias and outcomes.

Dr. Hightower is a champion for health equity, diversity, and inclusion awareness and initiatives. She developed the Healthcare IT Equity Maturity Model (HITEM) to dismantle structural bias hardwired in healthcare IT and develop an inclusive and equity minded healthcare IT culture. Dr. Hightower is recognized by Health Data Management as one of the “Most Powerful Women in Healthcare IT” and “25 leading CMIOs at healthcare organizations,” and by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of “50 hospital and health system CMIOs to know”.

Dr. Hightower received her Medical Degree, as well as a Master of Public Health, from the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine, followed by residencies in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. She also holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

David Higginson has dedicated more than 25 years to children’s health care and joined Phoenix Children’s in 2011 as the Chief Information Officer (CIO). As CIO, he oversaw all aspects of information technology strategy, project execution, systems design, and technology infrastructure maintenance. Phoenix Children’s implemented a fully integrated EMR, Billing, and ancillary clinical systems with a single database and product line integration under his direction. Before transitioning to his current role as Chief Innovation Officer in 2020, David served as Phoenix Children’s Chief Operating Officer beginning in 2018, where he was responsible for Nursing, Operations, Information Technology, Supply Chain, Process Optimization and Marketing.

Higginson is an innovator and entrepreneur. He successfully launched and developed his own health care software company, commercialized numerous innovations into patents and successful products and is passionate about operational efficiency and process improvement. He regularly speaks at health care conferences on the evolving role of technology as the efficiency platform underpinning care delivery and the importance of operationalizing the insights provided by data in the EMR. In 2016, Higginson was named “CHIME Innovator of the Year” and was awarded AZ Top Tech’s “CIO of the Year” in 2017 and the Phoenix Children’s IT department has twice been recognized as the Best Healthcare IT department in the US.

Before taking his position at Phoenix Children’s, Higginson was Chief Information Technology Officer at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) in Little Rock. During his 16-year tenure at ACH, he implemented more than 500 systems and was instrumental in building the IT and research departments as the hospital doubled in size.

After obtaining his degree in accounting/finance from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, he qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant in 1994 while working as an investment analyst in London. At the age of 10, he began developing computer systems. He combined his keen interest in computing with his financial expertise when he developed systems for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the UK’s Royal Mail.

Hatim is a Primary Care Physician in North West London, with roles in national healthcare policy, medical education and digital health. Hatim is one of the co-founders of the ‘Topol Programme for Digital Fellowships in Healthcare’ which provides health professionals with time, support and training to lead digital health transformations and innovations in their organisations. Hatim is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University London, where he is leading the implementation of the first longitudinal approach to digital health within an undergraduate medical curriculum. Hatim provides the clinical leadership to the DART-Ed (Digital, AI and Robotics Technologies in Education) Programme at Health Education England, which looks to evaluate the National Health Service workforce preparedness for working effectively with these technologies.