Neil C. Evans, M.D. is the Chief Officer for the Office of Connected Care in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Clinical Informatics. In addition to his executive leadership role in Clinical Informatics within VHA, Dr. Evans is an active clinician, managing a panel of patients in the Primary Care clinic at the Washington, D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC).

Under Dr. Evans’ leadership, the Office of Connected Care is dedicated to improving services to Veterans, their families and Caregivers by increasing access, fostering continuity and promoting patient empowerment through digital health technologies. The Office of Connected Care manages VA’s expansive telehealth program, VA’s patient portal, My HealtheVet, the VA Mobile program, and VHA’s Innovation initiatives.

Along with the rest of the Office of Connected Care leadership team, Dr. Evans oversees the development and implementation of enterprise-wide Veteran digital health strategies, transforming care delivery across the care continuum and geography, and facilitating alignment of health information technologies within VHA to produce a consistent experience for users and continuously improve based on user input, research and evaluation.

Dr. Evans began his VA career after completing medical school at Johns Hopkins University and his subsequent training in Internal Medicine through the Osler Medical Residency, also at Johns Hopkins. He received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware. He holds a faculty appointment in Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Kathryn King Cristaldi, M.D., MHS, is the medical Director for School Based Health and External Consultation, Associate Program Director for the National Telehealth Center of Excellence, and an assistant professor in the Division of General Pediatrics at MUSC Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Cristaldi is a general pediatrician with a special interest implementing innovative programs targeted at extending the reach of primary care and preventative medicine to underserved populations. Hailing from a rural area herself, she has continuously sought out opportunities to form networks within her local community to support public health interventions. Beginning early in her pediatric training, Dr. Cristaldi was able to leverage community relationships to form a strong research partnership between the school district and the medical university in order to evaluate school-based health programs. She continued this partnership through her fellowship resulting in an AAP Young Investigator Award.

Following fellowship, Dr. Cristaldi accepted an appointment as the Medical Director for School-Based Health in the Center for Telehealth at MUSC. In this role directs the growth of, programmatic functioning, evaluation and the clinical care provided by other pediatricians, nurse practitioners and herself in approximately 80 school-based telehealth centers across South Carolina. In addition, as Director of External Consultation she directs a team of providers, administrators and information technology professionals who provide telehealth consultation to external entities and statewide partners. Most recently, she has been named the Associate Director of MUSC’s HRSA designated National Telehealth Center of Excellence. The Center of Excellence designation was awarded to MUSC as academic medical center with a history of both breadth and depth in telehealth programing. As a Center of Excellence MUSC will inform the national telehealth landscape through the following objectives 1) Analyize of the impact of telehealth on federal and local healthcare spending, 2) Detect key aspects of provider and patient engagement in telehealth and 3) Define and disseminate materials for implementation of an open access network.

In addition, she has helped form the South Carolina School-Based Health Collaborative, bringing providers from across the state together to examine best-practices for school-based health. She co-chairs the South Carolina Telehealth Alliance’s School-Based Telehealth Workgroup, forming a network of hospital systems, providers who collaborate together and with state agencies to implement school-based telehealth programs in areas of highest health and educational disparities. Dr. Cristaldi also serves as the representative from the AAP Section on Telehealth Care to the Pediatric Academic Society (PAS) Meeting Program Committee and has been asked to present at numerous national conferences to share her experience developing and implementing state-wide telehealth programs.

Dr. Cristaldi received her Bachelor of Science at the University of Dayton and earned her Medical Degree at the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University. She completed her pediatric residency at MUSC, and an academic generalist fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University, earning a Master of Health Science degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Devin leads internal product and business development projects and cultivates partnerships with outside organizations that align with the strategic goals of Boston Children’s Hospital. She is responsible for helping clinicians, entrepreneurial individuals, and groups inside and outside the hospital develop and deploy their technologies to maximize their impact on the healthcare industry. Her work involves market research, business plan development and product development with the goal of identifying the most impactful pathway for each innovation.

Jackie Riso is a Senior Project Manager on the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator team. Jackie is responsible for leading a range of short & long-term projects, implementing new initiatives and ensuring successful project completion. She manages our hospital to hospital telemedicine programs and virtual visit implementations across Boston Children’s Hospital. Jackie started her career at Boston Children’s in 2011, in Gastroenterology and Nutrition. She spent 3 years managing a variety of operations, such as patient care, supporting a team of 50 and coordinating medical rotations of Boston Children’s fellows along with visiting international Harvard Medical students. She then followed her passion for business operations and joined the Strategy and Network Development team in 2014. After completing her Master’s degree focused on the digital aspects of business, she was thrilled to follow her passion, help build, and become part of the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator team in 2015.

Jackie completed her Master’s degree at Boston University in E-commerce, Systems, and Technology and a BS at Emmanuel College in Business Management, along with a minor in Information Technology.

Caitlin Schumann is a program coordinator on the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator team. Caitlin’s primary role has been launching and scaling the virtual visit program at Boston Children’s Hospital. She currently manages the technical operations, support and training for the virtual visit program, and is involved in developing other enterprise digital health programs and solutions. Caitlin’s interests and skills are in program development and operationalization.

Caitlin completed her BS in Nutrition and Dietetics and MPH concentrating in Health Policy and Management at UMass Amherst.

Roger Smith, Ph.D., is currently the Chief Technology Officer for the Florida Hospital Nicholson Center where he is responsible for establishing the technology strategy and leading research experiments in robotic surgery, telesurgery, simulation-based education, and telehealth. He has served as the CTO for the U.S. Army PEO for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO-STRI); VP and CTO for training systems at Titan Corp; and Vice President of Technology at BTG Inc.

Roger holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, a Doctorate in Management, an MBA, and an M.S. in Statistics. He has published 3 professional textbooks on simulation, 17 book chapters, and over 100 journal and conference papers. His most recent book is A CTO Thinks About Innovation. He has served on the editorial boards of the Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation and the Research Technology Management journals.

David Cattell-Gordon is the Director of Telemedicine at the University of Virginia’s Karen S. Rheuban Center for Telehealth. He also serves as the Director of Rural Network for the UVA Health System. At the University, he teaches and serves on the faculty in Public Health Sciences and the School of Nursing. He has been involved with telemedicine since 1997, overseen telehealth initiatives at UVA since 2007 and been part of the team that lead UVA to have one of the nation’s leading programs.

The University of Virginia’s Center for Telehealth provides telehealth services in over 60 different specialties through a network of over 150 sites and supports broad-scale translational research through telehealth research initiatives. The Center operates the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth resource center serving 8 Mid-Atlantic States and the District of Columbia. UVA Telehealth has also launched pioneering programs in remote monitoring, pediatrics, cancer control, and global outreach. In 22 years the Center has spared the burden of travel for Virginians of over 17 million miles.

David, who was born and raised in the coalfields of Southeastern West Virginia, is a community organizer by training with advanced degrees in divinity and social work. David is also co-founder and senior advisor to The Healthy Appalachia Institute—a public health initiative-- at The University of Virginia’s College at Wise, located in Virginia’s coalfields. He is also co-founder of the Virginia Institute of Autism, an applied behavioral school, support program and research organization, and has published widely in the fields of autism, telemedicine as well as Appalachian culture.

David has received the Cisco Inaugural Telehealth Center of Excellence Award, The Virginia Governor’s Technology Award and the Doulas Wilder Excellence in Government Award. He is a member of the American Telemedicine Association, the National Association of Social Workers and a board member of the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resources Center and the Virginia Institute of Autism.

Focusing on emerging health care sectors, Cybil Roehrenbeck helps clients achieve their objectives by employing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to their legal and business challenges. She counsels clients on federal legislative and regulatory opportunities in the following areas:

• Health information technology
• mHealth and telehealth
• Precision medicine and genomics
• Innovative health care delivery models
• Coverage and reimbursement

She also provides counsel on perennial regulatory issues, including fraud and abuse (Stark and anti-kickback) compliance, competition matters, and audits.

Cybil’s prior experience includes serving as a lobbyist and attorney for the American Medical Association (AMA), legislative counsel to U.S. Representative Walter B. Jones (R-NC), and associate with Watts Partners, a government affairs firm led by U.S. Representative J.C. Watts, Jr. (R-OK).

Cybil works with clients to help them effectively present their values and challenges to Congress and federal regulators and obtain the best possible results for their businesses. She has had significant success in securing favorable amendments to federal legislation and regulation, including obtaining valuable informal guidance and feedback from federal regulators.

Natasa Sokolovich is currently Executive Director, Telehealth and Senior Director, Affiliated Physician Services, UPMC. UPMC, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a $16 billion global health care provider with over 80,000 employees, 30 hospitals and over 400 doctors’ offices and outpatient sites. UPMC also maintains its own health insurance services division with over 3.2 million members.

As Executive Director, Telehealth, Natasa is responsible for the strategic growth of UPMC’s Telehealth program. As a leading healthcare provider and insurer, UPMC is committed to implementing innovations in technology to develop new models of care that support the healthcare transition from a “volume to a value” based model. Through the ongoing expansion of multiple use cases and clinical services, the UPMC Telehealth program is ranked as a national leader, providing virtual clinical services to both UPMC and non-UPMC organizations.

The UPMC Telehealth program was launched in late 2006, with TeleStroke services and in 2008 services were expanded to include TelePsychiatry consults. UPMC’s TeleStroke & TelePsychiatry services currently span multiple locations throughout Pennsylvania, Northeastern Maryland and West Virginia and Minnesota, facilitating care to thousands of patients. UPMC Telehealth offers patients access to world-class clinical care closer to home. Visit volumes continue to exceed year over year, growth projections. In FY 2017 over 34,000 patients were treated via UPMC telemedicine services.

In 2012, UPMC expanded the hospital-based telemedicine services with a new model of out-patient care delivery through the launch of multiple, virtual multi-specialty clinics across various rural communities. These clinics are branded as UPMC Teleconsult Centers. The UPMC Teleconsult Centers provide patient access to over 35 virtual sub-Specialty services. Through this new virtual care model, patients have access to specialty clinical services which were previously not available within their communities. UPMC Teleconsult centers are available at five locations, with over 6,700 specialist visits completed through FY 2017.

In 2013, Natasa oversaw the launch of UPMC’s direct to consumer, on-line convenience care platform- UPMCAnywhereCare.com, providing 24/7/365 day/year, on-demand access to acute care diagnosis and treatment for patients with low acuity conditions. UPMC was one of the first healthcare organizations to launch its own on-line, convenience care platform, with integration to the system’s outpatient electronic health record and patient portal. In 2016, the UPMC AnywhereCare platform was further enhanced, offering additional consumer features and access through a native App, via a smart phone or mobile device. UPMC AnywhereCare services are provided by UPMC employed clinicians to patients across Pennsylvania, regardless of insurance coverage. Over 17,000 patients have successfully utilized UPMC AnywhereCare to receive care.

As Senior Director, Affiliated Physician Services, Natasa led the launch of a new suite of professional services called- UPMC Practice Solutions. UPMC Practice Solutions provides a menu of options which support private Practice Physicians. Services include: Electronic Health Record Solutions, Answering services, Transcription services and various other business solutions. The UPMC Practice Solutions program enrolled over 650 participating providers. In addition to the UPMC Practice Solutions program, Natasa led UPMC’s partnership with the Western Pennsylvania Regional Extension Center- “PA Reach West” (Federal Program through the Office of National Coordinator) as a sub recipient working to assist “preferred primary care providers” with adopting an Electronic Health Record and becoming “meaningful users” of this technology. Through the end of the program, UPMC contracted to assist over 750 providers throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Prior to joining UPMC, Natasa worked with several leading Pharmaceutical and Biotech Companies, including- Johnson & Johnson, Roche Laboratories and Enzon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Her professional experience includes operations, sales and marketing, management and contracting, as well as strategic planning.

Natasa’s education includes a dual major, Bachelor of Science, Magna cum Laude degree from the University of Pittsburgh in Business and Psychology, as well as, a Masters in Healthcare Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III College. Natasa also holds a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and is licensed to practice Law in Pennsylvania. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the American Telemedicine Association, where she serves on the Business & Finance Special Interest Group. Born in Slovenia, Natasa is fluent in Serbo-Croatian.

Joseph Brennan serves as the Senior Director of MedNow, the telehealth division of Spectrum Health, a 12-hospital, nonprofit health system based in Western Michigan. Since helping start MedNow in 2014, Joe has overseen the launch and scale of both MedNow’s Direct-to-Consumer primary care and specialty telemedicine services.

Joe has championed several pioneering components of Spectrum’s MedNow program, including a robust dashboard for outcomes analytics, a custom developed mobile app, and a digitally-driven, multimodal advertising strategy. He is also an active participant in industry events and has been honored for his commitment to community partnership. Joe was most recently named a Crain’s Detroit Business Health Care Hero for his work on patient access through the MedNow platform.

Prior to joining Spectrum Health MedNow, Joe served in various positions in technology and start-up entrepreneurship. He graduated from DePaul University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Leadership and is currently enrolled in the Stanford University Graduate School of Business LEAD Program.

Steve is the System Director of Virtual Health at Saint Luke’s Health System. He is responsible for the inception of the program in 1998 and the creation of virtual health care teams within each of the hospitals in the Saint Luke’s network. This includes strategic orchestration of clinical, administrative and technical components of their telehealth services. He has developed both inpatient and outpatient telemedicine programs in nearly all service lines provided in the Saint Luke’s Health System. He has orchestrated the necessary technology & providers to create access to a unique, sustainable model of telemedicine.

Steve served on the Missouri Governor’s Telemedicine subcommittee and HIT task force and is regularly engaged with Kansas & Missouri legislative issues impacting Telehealth and HIT. He served on a State subcommittee with the Board of Healing Arts to better define the practice of telemedicine in Missouri. He is a co-author of: a Telemedicine Toolkit in 2017 in conjunction with the American Health Information Management Association.

Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, Ph.D., MBA, BCB, BCN is President of the Virtual Reality Medical Center (VRMC), with offices in Sorrento Valley, La Jolla and Coronado, California; Qingdao, China; and Brussels, Belgium. Professor Wiederhold is registered as a Licensed Clinical Psychologist with the California Board of Psychology and the Belgian Commission des Psychologues. Her doctorate is in Clinical Health Psychology, and she is Board Certified in both Biofeedback and Neurofeedback. She is Chief Executive Officer of the Interactive Media Institute, a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the application of advanced technologies for patient care; a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD; Medical Staff at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla and Co-chair Pain and Palliative Care Committee; a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University in Milan and an Advisory Board Member for the International Child Art Foundation in Washington, DC.

Founder of the international CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy, & Social Networking Conference (CYPSY), now celebrating its 23rd year, she also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the MedLine-indexed CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking Journal (CYBER) published by Mary Ann Liebert Publishers in New York. She has over 300 scientific publications and is currently completing her 18th book. Recognized as an international leader in the treatment of stress-related disorders, burnout, pain and anxiety (panic, posttraumatic stress disorder and phobias) with Virtual Reality exposure, biofeedback and cognitive-behavioral therapy, in 1996 she conducted the first randomised controlled clinical trial using VR and biosensors to treat fear of flying. In 2006 she conducted the first randomised controlled clinical trial using VR to treat Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffering from PTSD. She has conducted over 10,000 VR therapy sessions and given invited lectures and training programs in 29 countries throughout Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East.

Professor Wiederhold works to inform and educate policymakers, funding agencies, world leaders, the scientific community and general public about the transformative impact technology can have on healthcare. A U.S. citizen, Dr. Wiederhold has lived and worked in Asia, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium.

Theresa Meadows is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth, Texas. Cook Children’s is a national award-winning, not-for-profit, integrated pediatric health care system comprised of nine companies. She leads a team of 300 members covering areas such as infrastructure, applications, telecommunications, and program management. The IS team currently supports 140 project initiatives that include deploying business intelligence, advanced clinical systems, security and enterprise resource management.

For has 20+ years she has lead efforts for incorporating information systems as a mechanism for facilitating process improvement, clinical quality, and efficiency. Prior to joining Cook Children’s her career included serving in roles as a registered nurse in a Cardiac Transplant Unit; healthcare consulting, project management, and leadership positions at a web development company and a large Electronic Medical Record Company. Meadows also served as a Regional Director for Ascension Health Information Services where she not only lead software implementations but was instrumental in the development of Communities of Excellence.

In her current position, Meadows has led the organization through extensive improvements and modernization. In 2012, the organization received recognition as one of the Most Improved Hospitals as part of the “Most Wired” award program and recognized as one of the Information Week 500 innovators. From 2013 to 2017, Cook Children’s has received “Most Wired” designation. Cook Children’s was recognized by Computeworld’s Honors program for their state of the art distributed antenna system implementation. In addition, Ms. Meadows was also named one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT leaders for 2013. Ms. Meadows’ department has been recognized as one of the “Best Hospital IT Departments to Work” by Healthcare IT News and by Computerworld as one of the 100 Best Places to Work in IT in 2015. In 2016 & 2017, Meadows was recognized as one of the Most Powerful Women in Healthcare IT in 2018 and in 2017 was a Finalist for the North Texas non-profit CIO of the year.

Ms. Meadows served as the Co-Chair for the Health and Human Services Healthcare Cybersecurity Task Force. This task force is charged in creating recommendations in improving cybersecurity posture in the healthcare industry. The taskforce recommendations will be delivered in March 2017. Meadows currently serves on the HCI Groups CXO Advisory Board. She served as chair for the North Texas Healthcare Information and Quality Collaborative (NTHIQC). Ms. Meadows has published several articles and her organization was the first to participate in the CHIME case study publications on their successful implementation of bar-coded medication verification.

Ms. Meadows has a master’s degree in healthcare informatics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is an active member of the Children’s Hospital Association CIO Council; is a Fellow in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS); is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and is an active member of the College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME). Ms. Meadows is a graduate of CIO Bootcamp and is a credentialed by CHIME as a Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO).

Lynn Hamilton is the Chief Commercial Officer at Talkspace responsible for strategy and enterprise growth across multiple sectors including employers, payors, health delivery systems, universities and local, state and federal agencies.

Prior to Talkspace, Lynn was at Magellan Health for nearly seven years. As the Senior Vice President for Magellan Health’s Employer and Federal Government businesses she was responsible for the oversight of existing account relationships, new business development, service delivery, quality and operations. Lynn oversaw the launch of the Federal business for Magellan resulting in several significant contract wins for Military Behavioral Health.

Prior to Magellan, she was Vice President at CIGNA Healthcare where she held a variety of leadership roles with increasing responsibility during her 10-year tenure including financial roles and account management and business development oversight. Before CIGNA, she held senior financial roles at MedPartners in the Physician practice management industry.

Lynn received her BS in Accounting from Fairfield University and a MBA in Finance and Healthcare from the University of Connecticut. She holds a CPA certificate in the State of Connecticut and began her career at Ernst & Young, LLP.

As Senior Program manager, Ryan leads the Telehealth strategies & programs at the Partners Healthcare’s Center for Population Health.

Ryan works closely with institutional stakeholders around design, development, implementation & the measurement for both synchronous and asynchronous Telehealth initiatives. He has over 7+ years working within Information Systems and Technology for Partners Healthcare systems. Prior to joining the Telehealth team, his focus had been primarily based within Ambulatory Quality & Improvement and Primary care workflow optimization implementation strategies for EHR integration. The role included identifying system solutions within an EHR to help ~215 Primary Care practice attain National Center for Quality Achievement (NCQA)’s certified Medical Home Recognition. In addition, Ryan lead a cross collaborative team on the design and build of an adult and pediatric Primary Care registry for use across Partners Healthcare.

Adam Licurse, MD, MHS is an associate medical director at the Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization, and an associate medical director at Partners Population Health Management. He practices primary care at the South Huntington primary care practice.

At Brigham Health, he leads a number of population health and care redesign efforts, including the Brigham’s virtual care and patient reported outcome measure (PROMs) programs. In his Partners Population Health Management role, he directs the strategy and implementation of the group's multiple patient engagement and telehealth programs, including efforts in shared decision making, in-office and virtual patient education, remote monitoring, patient texting, and virtual patient self-management. He has published multiple articles in his field, teaches local trainees and regional colleagues, and has been an invited speaker at numerous national conferences on population health, telehealth, and patient engagement. Adam completed residency training in Internal Medicine at BWH, and earned his MD and MHS at Yale School of Medicine where he graduated cum laude. He graduated from Yale College.