Innovations for Federal Health Equity

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

  Amy Kluber

  • Editor-in-Chief
  • GovCIO Media & Research

  Amy Kluber is editor-in-chief of GovCIO Media & Research. Previously she managed two aviation publications at B2B media company Access Intelligence. She was nominated for The Innovation in Aerospace Journalism & Publishing Award for launching and hosting an aviation podcast. Prior to that she wrote news scripts and produced videos for the network Newsy. Follow Amy on Twitter: @amykluber

  She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Having traveled around the world since an early age, she grew up a U.S. Army brat born in Vicenza, Italy, and spent most of her youth living in Seoul, South Korea.

  In her free time, you may find her at Disney World.

• 
  Dr. Ernest Moy Executive Director, Office of Health Equity, VA
  

  Dr. Ernest Moy

  • Executive Director, Office of Health Equity
  • VA

  Ernest Moy, M.D., M.P.H., is the Executive Director of the Office of Health Equity of the VHA. This office manages and supports efforts to understand and reduce disparities in health and health care affecting Veterans. Currently, the office is coordinating analyses and messaging related to disparities in COVID-19 testing and treatment among Veterans and building tools to address structural bias, discrimination, and social determinants of health.

  Prior to joining VHA, he was a Medical Officer in the Office of Analysis and Epidemiology at the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At CDC, he studied rural health disparities, analyzed linked hospital-vital statistics data to identify care patterns that placed patients at high risk for opioid poisoning death, and developed new data visualizations and partnerships for disseminating health statistics.

  Prior to CDC, he was Director of the Division in the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that designed and produced the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, submitted annually to Congress, and related web tools. He has also worked as a Director of Research and Assistant Vice President at the Association of American Medical Colleges, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Emergency Care Physician at the Baltimore VAMC. He was selected to serve as the first Academy Health Innovator-in-Residence.

• 
  Dr. Leith States Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director, Office of Science and Medicine, OASH, HHS
  

  Dr. Leith States

  • Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director, Office of Science and Medicine, OASH
  • HHS

  As the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) Chief Medical Officer, Dr. States advises and supports the Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH) and other senior OASH leadership regarding issues of national public health importance through collaboration with OASH program offices, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) enterprise and interagency, and critical external stakeholders. The strength of these relationships is enhanced by data-driven evaluation to identify areas of greatest need in the support of developing the most impactful recommendations to the ASH and other senior leaders.

  Before being named to the permanent CMO role in OASH, Dr. States served as Deputy and Acting CMO from October 2018 to January 2020. During his time with OASH he has been fortunate to contribute to the development or advancement of initiatives concerning health equity (health equity in innovation for aging medically underserved populations, stigma reduction in persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), persons living with disabilities, persons with a history of substance use disorder), social determinants of health (Building a Healthier America initiative), and disparities reduction (Sickle Cell Disease in youth and hydroxyurea utilization, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest).

  Prior to his arrival at HHS Dr. States was a Navy Medical Corps Officer where he served as a Public Health Emergency Officer to Navy Medicine West ensuring public health protection to over 500,000 active duty personnel spread across the Pacific region. During this time he also was assigned to Navy Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit FIVE where he served as Department Head for Operations, and Officer in Charge for the Forward Deployable Preventive Medicine Unit – team FIVE. He also served as Battalion Surgeon for 1st Battalion, 1 Marines, 1st Marine Division, where he deployed in support of combat operations during Operation Enduring Freedom serving as the senior medical department leader to a population of over 1200 Marines in garrison and combat settings.

  Dr. States is board certified in Preventive Medicine, and is a current member of the American College of Preventive Medicine. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Azusa Pacific University in 2005 and received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine in 2010. In 2015, he completed his Master of Public Health Degree with a concentration in Population Health from Loma Linda University School of Public Health. He also graduated from the Loma Linda University Preventive Medicine residency that year, serving as Chief Resident in his final year of training. He is anticipated to complete his Master of Business from the George Washington University in the fall of 2021.

  His personal awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal and multiple unit and campaign awards.

• 
  Susan Wedge Managing Partner, US Public & Federal Market Leader,, IBM Consulting
  

  Susan Wedge

  • Managing Partner, US Public & Federal Market Leader,
  • IBM Consulting

  Susan Wedge is the IBM Consulting Managing Partner for the U.S. Public & Federal Market leading a team of over 4,000 IBMers across the U.S. Government, Education, Life Sciences, and Healthcare industries. She has dedicated her career to serving her clients and the people they serve.

  Ms. Wedge started her career as a consulting intern at American Management Systems where she transformed Federal clients’ financial operations with software solutions. Since joining IBM in 2002, she has expanded her focus, leading numerous teams in
  transforming of all aspects of her clients’ business.

  Prior to her current role, she led IBM’s Federal Civilian, Health, and Defense portfolio where she was responsible for bringing innovative capabilities that deliver improved experiences and mission outcomes for the American citizen. She also previously led IBM’s Federal Strategy, Experience, and Process Transformation growth platforms where she oversaw the company’s market-specific offerings and talent across eleven practice areas including digital strategy, interactive experience, artificial intelligence, analytics, and intelligent automation.

  Ms. Wedge, a 2018 Fed100 winner, is eminent across the industry authoring blogs and speaking at industry forums. She holds a B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia and lives in Virginia with her husband and two children.

• 
  Brendan Fowkes Healthcare CTO, IBM
  

  Brendan Fowkes

  • Healthcare CTO
  • IBM
• 
  Mark Johnson Vice President, Federal Technology, IBM
  

  Mark Johnson

  • Vice President, Federal Technology
  • IBM

  Mark is Vice President of the IBM team committed to the mission success of our US Federal customers using modern IT. Before IBM, he held several positions at Oracle, culminating as the VP of Federal Cloud Sales. Mark was also an officer for 21 years in the United States Navy, where he was a Test Pilot and the Commanding Officer of an FA-18 Hornet Fighter Squadron. Mark has founded multiple IT startups, including one that was acquired by Microsoft, and is an evangelist for using modern IT automation to secure and manage hybrid/multi-cloud architectures.

Interactive Sessions

• 
  Accelerate Healthcare Research Quantum System One
  

  Accelerate Healthcare Research Quantum System One

  Cleveland Clinic and IBM have unveiled the first deployment of an onsite private sector IBM-managed quantum computer in the United States. The IBM Quantum System One installed at Cleveland Clinic will be the first quantum computer in the world to be uniquely dedicated to healthcare research with an aim to help Cleveland Clinic accelerate biomedical discoveries. or researchers at Cleveland Clinic,  it means the chance to develop more precise, targeted, and effective medicines–and more accurately predict which patients will encounter life-threatening and chronic diseases.

  For people across the country, it means the potential to make major leaps forward in the fight against complex diseases.

  We don’t yet know precisely which breakthroughs quantum computing will help us achieve.  But we do know that by working to dramatically reduce the time it takes to investigate the most complex mysteries of human health this effort will close the gap between imagination and discovery. Quantum and other advanced computing technologies will help us expedite progress toward new treatments and cures for patients.

• 
  Automate Workers' Compensation: VA SWIMS
  

  Automate Workers' Compensation: VA SWIMS

  The Department of Veterans Affairs SWIMS Workers’ Compensation solution is a low code commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) web-based application that leverages robust case and document management features of the eCase Platform to automate the lifecycle of workers’ compensation claims. The application assists users in capturing Employee Information, Medical Information, Work Status, Continuation of Pay, Disability Management, Reporting, and other case management activities when working through a claim in a user friendly and guide solution.

• 
  Deliver Smarter Customer Care with Virtual Agents
  

  Deliver Smarter Customer Care with Virtual Agents

  Learn how your federal agency can take advantage of chatbots and virtual assistants to deliver dynamic and trustworthy experiences and build strong relationships with citizens. Smarter customer care drives an ever-improving feedback loop between customer knowledge and customer Interactions. Both fuel improvements to the other and are tied together.

  Virtual agents greet customers, understand their questions in natural language, clarify and screen if needed, handle digressions/ disambiguation, send a text message with location specific scheduling link, deep links to specific info etc. and transfer to agent if needed.  Agencies benefit from strengthened customer service, lower costs, and reduced risk.

• 
  Innovate with IBM Federal Garage
  

  Innovate with IBM Federal Garage

  IBM Garage™ is an end-to-end model for accelerating digital transformation. It helps you generate innovative ideas and equips you with the experts, practices and technologies to rapidly turn those ideas into business value.  When you work with IBM Garage, you bring customer pain points into focus. You empower your team to take manageable risks. You adopt leading technologies, speed up product development and measure the value of everything you do.

• 
  Intelligent Automation: VBA Claims Process
  

  Intelligent Automation: VBA Claims Process

  The Veteran Benefits Administration was spending too much time processing its mail. So it turned to artificial intelligence-enabled systems to slash its processing time.  By applying AI that could more quickly sort incoming claims from multiple inputs — mail, fax and electronic submissions — the Department of Veterans Affairs was able to reduce the time just sorting the claims from 10 days to about half a day. The VA had too many people doing manual labor and now employees can focus on complex decision making, settling claim disputes and making decisions about benefits.

• 
  Secure Healthcare POWER plus FHIR
  

  Secure Healthcare POWER plus FHIR

  HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is a data standard that promotes secure and easy healthcare information sharing.  FHIR provides a new way to share and manage data —simplifying development, reducing data silos, and ultimately moving healthcare to an interoperable model.

  Without FHIR, complex and costly ETL jobs are required. to copy and transform the data before it can be used.  With FHIR, Shared data is managed and made available via a common FHIR REST API layer and database.

• 
  Sepsis Detection and Response: AI/ML on OpenShift at the Edge
  

  Sepsis Detection and Response: AI/ML on OpenShift at the Edge

  Sepsis, a blood infection, is a complex and hard to detect problem that can lead to patient death. Time-to-antibiotic-administration is the key factor in saving affected patients. Early detection, therefore, is a potential game changer.

  Our demo solution uses tools including Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Red Hat OpenShift Data Science, and our partners’ edge computing capabilities to monitor a patient in a sparsely-connected environment, and alert in real time if the onset of sepsis is detected. Our ML model takes inputs from patient monitoring devices, predicts a risk score, and then kicks off a system of clinical workflows designed to respond in a timely and appropriate way to arrest the infection and save the patient.

• 
  Using Data to Advance Racial Equity in Healthcare
  

  Using Data to Advance Racial Equity in Healthcare

  Federal healthcare agencies are challenged to ensure that care is distributed equitably across all the populations that they serve. These enterprises need to bring together traditional claims data plus additional 3rd party socio-economic data sets. In addition, they need to ensure that any AI/ML model is explainable and does not include bias in the result.  Learn how IBM is using technology to ensure that trustworthy models can be created specific to care management.