Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering

National Priorities and Goals

Speakers

 

Mark Braunstein, MD, teaches health informatics and is involved in research aimed at wider and deeper adoption of health information technology to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery. He was co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Patient Care Technologies, Inc. ("PtCT"), an ATDC Graduate company, a 1998 Inc 500 company, and a leading provider of electronic patient record and care management systems to the home care industry. PtCT was acquired by MEDITECH in 2007.

He received his BS degree from MIT in 1969 and his MD degree from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in 1974. After an internship at Washington University he joined the faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy at MUSC until he left in 1978 to co-found PROHECA, an early developer of clinical pharmacy systems. PROHECA was acquired by National Data Corporation (NDC) in 1981 and was the seed for NDCHealth. At NDC he ran what was then the NDC Healthcare Division for five years and was the company's President and COO for three years until he left in 1990 to co-found PtCT.

He is the author of over fifty papers; articles and book chapters devoted to various aspects of clinical automation. His most recent publication is "Searching for the Holy Grail: Integrated Electronic Medical Records and Beyond", a chapter he co-authored for the book "e-Healthcare: Harness the Power of Internet e-Commerce and e-Care", edited by Douglas E. Goldstein and published by Aspen.

He is Senior Adviser for health information technology to Focus, LLC, an investment banking firm that provides a range of services tailored to the needs of emerging growth and middle market businesses from offices across the country. He is the immediate past Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Advanced Technology Ventures (GATV) - a corporation that supports the Advanced Technology Development Center, a technology incubator operated by the Georgia Institute of Technology.

 

Peter J. Fabri, MD, is a professor of surgery at the University of South Florida's College of Medicine. His areas of expertise include surgical endocrinology, surgical oncology, and critical care. Fabri has publised many articles, most recently focusing on surgical approaches and management in oncology patients. Fabri earned his medical degree from Loyola University. He completed his interships and residencies at Ohio State University, and fellowships at the University of Florida and University of South Florida.

 

Nan Kong, PhD, is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering in Purdue's College of Engineering. His research interests lie in discrete optimization under uncertainty. On the application side, Kong has studied the logistics and resource allocation issues in the U.S. liver transplantation and allocation system. His work is intended to design a better regional distribution system for liver allocation. He received an Honorable Mention for the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award from the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in 2006, and received the Pritsker Dissertation Award, 1st Place, from the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) in 2007.

Kong has researched on several other operations research applications in health care with his close collaborations with various health care professionals and coursework in a clinical training program at Pitt. He continues his research on several issues related to liver, heart, and kidney transplantation and allocation. He has also started working on (rural area) outpatient clinic access management (an important problem in the Veterans Affairs hospital system).      

Kong has published in Mathematical Programming, European Journal in Operational Research, and Journal of Medical Decision Making. He has served as referee for Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Networks, Asian Pacific Journal of Operations Research, Journal of Global Optimization, Optimization Letters, Omega, Algorithmic Operations Research, and Health Care Management Science. He has also served as a referee for the 2005 Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) Annual Conference, 2007 Industrial Engineering Research Conference (IERC2007), and 2007 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference.  

He earned his doctorate in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Glen P. Mays currently serves as associate professor, chair pro tem, and director of research for the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He also serves as director of the PhD program in health systems research at UAMS, and as associate professor of health policy in the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas.

Mays’ research focuses on strategies for organizing and financing public health services, health insurance, and medical care services for underserved populations. He has led a series of studies examining the institutional and economic factors that influence the availability and quality of public health services. Currently, he is principal investigator of two national studies examining the causes and consequences of recent changes in public health spending levels and delivery systems.

Mays’ work in health insurance and safety-net care includes economic evaluations of state strategies to expand health insurance coverage and access to care, as well as studies of health promotion and disease management initiatives pursued by private health insurers and employers. As part of this work, he has served as a senior researcher on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-supported Community Tracking Study at the Center for Studying Health System Change, where he studied the decisions of insurers and employers regarding health benefits. Currently, he serves as co-director of the AHRQ-funded Arkansas Consortium for Health Services Research, where he directs research on access and financing issues.

Mays has served on numerous health policy advisory committees including those for CDC, HRSA, the Institute of Medicine, and various professional associations and state legislative bodies. He chaired the Public Health Systems Research Interest Group at AcademyHealth during its initial two years, and received the Dissertation of the Year Award from AcademyHealth in 2000. He has published more than 50 journal articles, books and chapters on his research.

Mays earned an AB degree in political science from Brown University (1992), received PhD (1999) and MPH (1996) degrees in health policy and administration from UNC-Chapel Hill, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in health economics at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy (2000).

 

Stephen D. Roberts, PhD, has been a Professor of Industrial Engineering at North Carolina State University since 1990. From 1990 to 1999 he served as Head of the Industrial Engineering Department at NC State. Previously, he spent four years as a Professor at the University of Florida, and 18 years as a joint Professor at Purdue and Indiana University School of Medicine. He has two years experience with TRW, Inc. and was director of Health Systems Research Group, Regenstrief Institute for Health Care. He received the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award at Purdue and is an Associate Editor of Management Science and Simulation. He has developed INSIGHT and SLN simulation language. He was also a board member for the Winter Simulation Conference from 1988-1996 and served on the Editorial Advisory Committee for TOMACS. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, Society for Computer Simulation, and The Institute for Management Sciences. 

 

Vinod Sahney, PhD, is Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Office at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Prior to joining the company, he served as Senior Vice President at Henry Ford Health System for 25 years, including responsibilities for Strategic Planning, Marketing, Government Relations, Public Relations, Community Affairs, Quality Resource Group, Special Events, Management Services, Information Services, New Enterprise Development Corporation, the Center for Health Services Research and the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.

Sahney has been elected to both the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering. He has served on the faculty of Harvard University for the past 31 years and has been a faculty member for Harvard's Executive Program in Health Policy and Management. He also served as one of nine judges for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and The Military Health Care Advisory Board.

Sahney is a co-author of a book titled Reengineering Health Care: Building on CQI. He has authored over 50 publications, including: books, chapters in books, publications in journals and conference proceedings. He has made over 100 presentations at national and international meetings.

His board service includes the Institute for Healthcare Improvement as a founding member, director and board chair; St. Joseph Mercy – Macomb Hospital; St. Joseph Mercy – Oakland Hospital; Enterprise Development Fund; Michigan's Children; Group Practice Improvement Network as a founding member and director; Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development; founding member and president of the Society for Health Systems; Faculty Practice Plan at Washington University School of Medicine; and Henry Ford OptimEyes.

He has received a number of awards including the Dean Conley Award from the American College of Health Care Executives for the best paper published in health care management; the Best Paper Award and Quality Award from Health Care Information and Management Systems Society of the American Hospital Association; a Distinguished Service Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers; the Founders Award from the Society of Health Systems; the Fellow Award from both IIE and HIMSS/AHA; the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the Gold Award from the Engineering Society of Detroit.

 

Laura Sands, PhD, current research is focused on identifying care pathways that optimize health, functioning and quality of life in older adults, particularly those who are disabled. She is analyzing several large data bases, that include self-reported data, clinical data and medical claims data to understand: 1) risks (e.g. obesity) for loss of functioning and need for long-term care services among older adults, 2) how the type and amount of home-based long-term care services received by disabled older adults affect the amount of time they are able to remain in the community, and 3) how unmet needs for long-term care services affect patients' health and subsequent use of health care services. In addition, Sands is working with Purdue University biomedical and industrial engineers to develop efficient systems to improve attendance rates to scheduled appointments. Sands' prior research included determining whether individual dementia patients benefit from pharmaceutical therapy. She has also contributed psychometrically to the development of instruments to assess quality of life in persons with dementia; patient satisfaction; and patient preferences for treatment.

Sands and Joseph Thomas from the School of Pharmacy at Purdue University are co-directors of the Center for Healthcare Outcomes Research and Policy in the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. Much of their current efforts are focused on analyzing Medicaid claims data to inform state policy about optimal care pathways for patients who are at risk for poor health outcomes. Recent center publications describe: 1) methods for using claims data to identify patients with dementia, 2) differences in resource utilization between patients using nursing homes versus home and community-based services for long-term care, and 3) effects of prescribing patterns on loss of functioning among persons with dementia.

Laura Sands received a BA in Psychology, a MA in Biostatistics and a PhD in Quantitative Psychology, all from the University of California, Berkeley.

Fall 2009 Conference