Speakers

U.S. healthcare must get better faster. The pandemic exposed a system that’s fragmented, inefficient, reliant on legacy systems, and difficult to change. This is not a small problem. Nationally, healthcare constitutes about 20% of all economic activity. Chugging along like a massive ocean vessel, healthcare can change course only if all hands are on deck and working together.

Collaboration will be essential to healthcare’s timely transformation. Leaders must break down silos (or find emergency exits), reach across boundaries, and form partnerships with other change agents. Organizations that do the same old thing will get the same old result. The wages of recalcitrance are fixed.

In this session, three objectives will guide the panel’s discussion:

• Considering the urgency to leverage IT and transform healthcare, what are the biggest challenges that government leaders must overcome? How do healthcare leaders catalyze collaboration with partners in industry and academia?
• A major challenge of digital transformation is “change management,” which starts with people buying into the proposed transformation. How do agencies drive cultures of adoption while embracing innovation? How will the pandemic’s disruptions to traditional work systems affect implementation of new IT strategies?
• Is there an optimal strategy for identifying areas of the healthcare ecosystem that are ripe for change? What’s the best way to introduce emerging technologies that will quickly and significantly advance healthcare missions?

Speakers

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is at the forefront of defining the nation’s future healthcare ecosystem with the consumer at the center. Digital transformation is underway. Join this session to see how CMS has leveraged and will continue to define the next phase of a modern resilient government. CMS speakers will share how innovative technology implementations are saving the agency money, reducing burden and improving the user experience. The panelists will discuss how technology innovations are being integrated in everything they do at the agency from modernizing the claims payment process to supporting value-based care to the inclusion of health equity in all CMS initiatives.

Potential topics include:

• How is CMS leveraging HCD best practices across all components?
• How does the use of low-code and other development techniques improve service delivery while controlling costs?
• How is CMS rolling out health equity throughout the agency?
• The role of data in identifying gaps in care and developing interventions.

Speakers

Healthcare agencies, charged with the daunting task of advancing public health, have the added challenge of pursuing that objective in an environment that is always evolving. In pursuit of their primary mission, innovators at federal agencies seek new ways to leverage technology. Public health IT experts are assessing how technology can augment human workers at a time when qualified healthcare workers are in short supply. Emerging technology has potential to improve the customer experience (CX) of patients; improve delivery of telemedicine via cloud technology; and leverage technology to promote data-based decision making. Health IT experts succeed by delivering services today and positioning their agencies to meet the challenges of change and disruption. Essentially, public health leaders must excel at preparing for the unknown. Health IT can help.

Emerging technology panelists will explore ways in which agencies are using technology in unique ways to solve public health issues. Our experts will consider agencies’ planned use of emerging technology to “future proof” themselves against the next pandemic or other major healthcare challenge that might arise.

Potential topics include:

• Exploring innovative strategies and emerging IT used by technology leaders to advance public health.
• Identifying effective ways that agencies are collaborating within their agencies and among other public-sector organizations, including effective information sharing.
• Reviewing agencies’ plans and strategies for “future proofing” operations to continue advancing public health, regardless of emerging challenges.

Speakers

Speakers

Public-sector health IT ecosystems are changing. During the pandemic, workers responsible for acquiring the components of complex networks began relying more on new technologies, driven by the demands of working remotely. At some agencies, acquisition offices began automating business processes via artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, or robotic process automation. Elsewhere, other agencies are moving toward adoption of those tools or are studying them. Recognizing that quality data largely determines the efficacy of advanced technologies like AI, agencies are pursuing more and better partnerships with industry partners and public-sector organizations. By improving acquisitions processes, agencies hope to speed the modernization of health IT systems. The goal is to preserve the integrity and efficiency of credible acquisition processes, while identifying and fixing those that are problematic. No one wants to make a bad process faster.  

Join this session to hear federal acquisition specialists discuss how improving the process of acquisitions improves the resiliency of the health IT ecosystem. Panelists will share experiences of making the transition to new processes, using technology that supports those shifts, encountering and overcoming obstacles, and outcomes that have benefitted their organizations, including improved interoperability, resilience, and data use.

Potential topics include:

• Exploring new acquisitions processes that can improve interoperability.
• Enhancing collaboration by using acquisition to engage stakeholders.
• Using acquisitions to advance the resiliency of health IT ecosystems.
• Looking ahead and anticipating what’s next for health IT acquisitions.

Speakers

Military Health IT officials are working hard to lay the building blocks of future health care for veterans and service members. As a result, the Defense Health Agency (DHA) is focused on standardizing and improving processes across integrated health systems for optimal service member readiness. The agency advances high reliability practices across the Military Health System (MHS) to decrease complexity, modernize infrastructure, and become more flexible and adaptable. The goal is to provide combat support and peacetime services to millions of warfighters, veterans and their families. Health IT upgrades are transforming the MHS, from enhancing electronic health record systems to optimizing joint health information exchange, to aiding in the analysis of epidemiology data that improves the health and readiness of all service members and their beneficiaries.

Join this session to hear military health IT leaders talk about current and emerging DHA Health IT initiatives. Panelists will discuss the importance of maintaining premium care for patients at a time when information technology systems are changing rapidly across the MHS.

Potential topics include:

• What are future initiatives that will drive DHA J-6 (Joint Warfighter)? What is the future roadmap?
• How are agile transformative initiatives and transitioning systems improving the Defense Health Management System (DHMS)?
• An update on MHS GENESIS. When fully deployed, it will provide a single health record for service members, veterans, and their families.
• What role can Health IT play in emerging Bio surveillance initiatives?
• What are the health IT opportunities related to the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act and potential for R&D funding?

Speakers

Just a few years ago—an eternity in the IT universe—telehealth was something of an oddity, a fringe technology that wasn’t well understood. Its advancement languished. Despite a proven ability to bridge geographical divides separating healthcare providers and patients, the delivery of care via telehealth fell short of demand. Today, telehealth has become a foundational technology in healthcare, propelled to new levels of relevance by practical considerations: spiraling healthcare costs, growing demand for healthcare by an aging population, and a pandemic that normalized remote work. There is more to be done. Although telehealth is no longer on the fringe, it hasn’t yet attained its full potential as a driver of efficient healthcare delivery. For that to happen, federal telehealth will require changes in policy, advancements in technology, and improvements in the way patients and healthcare workers access telehealth—and each other.

This panel will explore the current state of telehealth in the federal space and identify critical next steps for expanding and maturing the government’s use of telehealth technology.

Potential topics include:

• Highlighting key federal telehealth technologies.
• Sharing use cases to illustrate effective collaboration of government-industry partnerships.
• Reviewing federal telehealth’s development, including relevant policy changes, progress to date, and opportunities for continued growth.
• Identifying investments in tools, technologies, and skillsets—by industry and government—that are needed to improve the functionality of telehealth and to make it available to more U.S. citizens.

Speakers

Speakers

The business of the Federal Government is to serve the American people. The President’s Management Agenda (PMA) is the Office of Management and Budget’s plan for transforming how agencies improve service delivery by putting people at the center of those efforts. One of the goals of the PMA is to provide a modern, streamlined, and responsive customer experience (CX) across the government that is comparable to leading private-sector organizations. 

On day two of the 15th annual Health IT Summit, all attendees will participate in a 45-minute, interactive session to answer questions addressing 1) CX challenges in government that could benefit from HCD thinking; 2) Where HCD has been successfully implemented to solve CX challenges in government; and 3) What can be done to bring an HCD focus to government's CX efforts. Participants will be randomly asked to address one of the 3 above questions, then provide recommended changes (to policy or procurement, for example) that will lead to building more systemic HCD approaches within government services and programs. Responses will be turned into the facilitators, aggregated, and presented back to health agencies and attendees.

Don’t miss this opportunity to share your insights and learn from others about how to move HCD to the forefront of service delivery for all agencies.

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ IT leadership wants to establish the VA as a leader in digital transformation—and hopefully be a model for other agencies across government. To that end, VA is on a journey to improve veteran digital and user experience, increase security and effectiveness, and move to a modern data infrastructure, among other efforts. The VA is updating its financial management and logistics system to boost support for caregivers by enhancing benefits system, as well as overhauling its Electronic Health Records (EHR) system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the VA showed that it could move quickly and scale its IT solutions to continue to deliver accessible care to veterans. For example, the department enabled over 230,00 veterans to schedule vaccine appointments via text messages, according to VA IT leaders.

Join this session to hear VA leaders from the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) discuss how they are collaborating to modernize IT and speed decision making to deliver veteran care. Discussion will include collaboration efforts and successful use cases, accomplishments, obstacles, and how they are working to overcome those obstacles.

Potential topics include:

• How is the VA working to balance modernization initiatives while maintaining and upgrading legacy systems in a post-pandemic world?
• What techniques and technology are VA leaders using to design and deliver digital services that continually improve and optimize the veteran experience?        
• How are VA leaders and teams collaborating within and across agencies to effect change?
• How are development teams applying DevSecOps to deliver next-generation veteran products and services that are secure and efficient?
• How will data modernization impact veteran care?

Speakers

To strengthen the federal government’s protection against rapidly evolving cybersecurity threats, the White House, Congress, and federal oversight groups have imposed several new cybersecurity requirements. These requirements include adoption of zero trust architecture, stronger software supply chain security, and policies to strengthen the government’s cybersecurity workforce. In 2021, a report commissioned by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), part of the Department of Homeland Security, found that the federal government “lacks a comprehensive, integrated, government-wide strategy for developing a national cybersecurity workforce.” The breadth and complexity of these requirements call for collaboration among agencies and industry to expedite meeting them.

In this session, federal health cybersecurity professionals will share their perspectives on the continuing evolution of cybersecurity. Panelists will discuss how they are complying with new the requirements, share lessons learned, and compare ways of balancing priorities while enhancing their agencies’ cybersecurity.

Potential topics include:

• Developing the cybersecurity workforce.
• Exploring agencies’ strategies for balancing cloud transition and IT modernization amid new cybersecurity requirements.
• Sharing lessons learned by agencies moving toward zero trust architecture.
• Assessing critical issues regarding protection of sensitive healthcare data.

Speakers

A major benefit of IT modernization and digital transformation in the public sector is the ability of agencies to unlock value that’s been hidden in large, disparate, and siloed data sets. Manipulating data to make it more readable and organized drives data-based decision making, which improves operational efficiencies, reduces waste, and improves mission attainment. Using data science to mine insights from otherwise inert information across the entire health ecosystem will improve public health outcomes. Getting to the value of data requires work. Squeezing value from data requires knowing the problem that data can help solve, what data is available, where it resides, and the characteristics of those repositories. Incompatible data storage systems create challenges to mining data that’s locked away in multiple locations. Also to be considered are tools for extracting value from data, including applications that incorporate artificial intelligence.

In this session, data specialists will review the current state of data collection, storage, analytics, and sharing. Panelists will discuss how the field has changed and how it will continue to evolve, including opportunities and challenges for distilling actionable insights from the terabytes of data held by public and private sectors, including healthcare data.

Potential topics include:

• Looking at agencies’ use of data as a strategic asset, including inventory practices, data governance, usability of data, and methods for evaluating data.
• Discussing how the application of data science and analytics can help improve public health outcomes and enhance health equity.
• Discussing barriers to sharing data—across federal, state, local, and commercial entities—to improve public health. Barriers include policies, systems, the lack of skilled workers, etc.

Speakers

Protecting and strengthening equitable access to high quality and affordable healthcare is a primary goal of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) 2022-2026 Strategic Plan. In addition, HHS is focused on reducing costs, improving quality of healthcare services, and ensuring access to safe medical devices and drugs. Healthcare equity is a cross-cutting, multi-agency initiative. HHS’ Equity Action Plan was developed with cross-cutting department conversations and is designed for department officials to take concrete action to transform how HHS does business in ways that promote and advance equity. Technology plays a big role in advancing equity throughout HHS as well as the nation. For example, The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funds our nation’s health centers so healthcare experts can use the latest technology and data to provide high-quality care to individuals and communities who have been historically underserved.

Join this session to learn how HHS agencies are working together and across government—and beyond—to achieve their goals and the role technology plays to ensure and measure success. Learn how innovative, open-source technology tools can help HHS agencies address health equity and social determinants of health (SDOH) and how the use of equity-enhancing patient-generated health data (PGHD) can assist clinical care and research.

Potential topics include:

• Big data initiatives, data modernization, and the building of coordinated data platforms and data exchanges across HHS.
• Enabling health equity via artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), data exchange, and analytics.  
• Deploying infrastructure modernization initiatives—laboratory infrastructure, telehealth, and cloud—across HHS.
• Collaboration best practices to expand health equity objectives across HHS.
• Using emerging technology to enhance precision nutrition and complex biomedical challenges.
• Next steps for industry to continue to support HHS’s health equity mission.

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