2015 was an exciting year for digital health with incredible movement – venture investors contributed more than $4.3 billion to the space, upwards of 250 digital health companies raised $2+ million, there were 180 M&A deals, and five companies went public. In 2016, innovative solutions will continue to reshape healthcare. To ensure health technology solutions create lasting improvements demonstrating clear financial and clinical wins, business and technology leaders need to understand when, where, and why care communication and processes fail. Come hear from people throughout the healthcare supply chain who will share perspectives on designing, purchasing, and using digital health innovations, information you can use to refine and focus product development and strengthen your sales pitch.

Join us for healthy refreshments, including sandwiches, sushi, and nonalcoholic drinks.

Price: $30 until January 27th at 8:00 pm; $40 after then and at the door as ticket availability permits.

Denny Brennan, Executive Director, Massachusetts Health Data Consortium.

Denny Brennan is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium (MHDC). Since 1978, MHDC has provided a forum for collaboration and health data analysis for the state’s health providers, health plans, government agencies, industry associations, and health technology and service providers. MHDC’s mission is to maximize the value of collaboration in the application of health information and technology to achieve and sustain improvements in health quality, cost, and effectiveness across the Commonwealth. Mr. Brennan brings twenty-five years of experience as a consultant and technology executive. He has worked with the country’s leading healthcare providers and payers on strategy, organizational effectiveness, and information management challenges. His areas of expertise include population health management, the formation and management of Accountable Care Organizations, payment reform, and information technology strategy, including health information governance, security, and exchange. Mr. Brennan has a Masters in Business Administration from the Yale School of Management and a Masters in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Maxim (Max) TopazPhD, RN, MA, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women's Hospital

Maxim Topaz PhD, RN, MA is a health infromatician and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Medicine at the Brigham Women’s Health Hospital and Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA, USA). His work is broadly focused on identifying innovative ways to promote human health through information technology. Maxim has completed numerous studies of clinical decision support, focusing on homecare settings, and is now involved in creating natural language processing applications for big data analysis. He published more than three dozen manuscripts on topics related to health informatics. Maxim serves as a Member-at-large at the Nursing Informatics Working Group with American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and is chairing a nursing students’ working group with International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). He earned his PhD degree as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and his Masters and Bachelors degrees from the University of Haifa, Israel.

Benjamin (Ben) Flynn, CTO, Bjönd 

Ben has a passion for developing innovative software that solves big problems and challenges (even flies in the face of) the status quo. He did it for over a decade for the world’s biggest financial institutions, and he’s doing it for healthcare now. With his communication skills and world-class technical expertise, Ben leads Bjönd’s development team and oversees platform selection and technical design for all Bjönd products.

Ben has a BA from Wesleyan University and an MA from Fairfield University. Prior to joining BjöndHealth, he led a software development team for a market-leading company that provides enterprise solutions to global financial institutions.

Nina Gilmore, Consulting Product Designer, Oracle Corporation 

Nina is passionate about using design as a means to improve communication, deepen understanding, and promote thoughtful action. With over 15 years experience designing business intelligence tools and applications, she translates a client's key concerns into succinct visual displays that give users the information they need when they need it, providing insights while enabling deeper exploration and decisive action.

Outside of work, Nina applies her natural curiosity and design skills to managing a mysterious health condition that has defied easy diagnosis and treatment. By combining her health data across multiple sources, visualizing and re-imagining the problem, and partnering with a multi-talented, collaborative medical team, Nina has achieved remarkable gains in her health and well-being.  Her life's mission is to use thoughtful design to improve the lives of both patients and their care teams, fostering communication and confidence in the possibility of wellness.

Moderator: Dr. Kalyan (Kal) Kalwa, Founder of Health Innovators.

Dr. Kal is a Physician and a Pharmacist by training and education with 10 plus years industry experience in Information Technology. Born to a Pharmacist, Dr. Kal left India 15 years ago with a promise to his parents that he would make a big impact in Healthcare. Through his leadership and community building experience he gained through Toastmasters, he built Health Innovators to become one of the largest healthcare technology community in the Boston area. Dr. Kal realized that Doctors are missing in the innovation ecosystem, to engage Doctors in the innovation ecosystem he has built Hi Docs to engage the doctor in the innovation ecosystem. Now Doctors can have a say and they can freely express themselves in the innovation ecosystem at Health Innovators.