Our speakers

Bakul Patel is Associate Director for Digital Health, at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Mr. Patel leads regulatory policy and scientific efforts at the Center in areas related to emerging and converging areas of medical devices, wireless and information technology. This includes responsibilities for mobile health, health information technology, cyber security, medical device interoperability, and medical device software.

Mr. Patel is the FDA liaison between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). Since its inception in 2013, Bakul chairs the International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) “software as a medical device” working group, a global harmonization effort.

Before joining FDA, Mr. Patel held key leadership positions working in the telecommunications industry, semiconductor capital equipment industry, wireless industry and information technology industry. His experience includes Lean Six Sigma, creating long and short-term strategy, influencing organizational change, modernizing government systems, and delivering high technology products and services in fastpaced, technology-intensive organizations.

Mr. Patel earned an MS in Electronic Systems Engineering from the University of Regina, Canada, and an MBA in International Business from The Johns Hopkins University.

He was named top-20 Portuguese world changer and he is a leading expert in the real-world application of Advanced Analytics & Machine Learning to Hospital problems, transforming sparse patient’s BigData into actionable clinical insights. His team built one of the most outstanding Hospital Big Data platforms currently working in EU hospitals. This platform behaves like a “Data Robot” that captures and analyses 560 billion patient data pointsminute, coming from 30 different systems, to predict and signal at-risk patients for clinical deterioration up to 7 days in advance. This work has received some of the highest in the industry, amongst which the 1st prize in the HIMSS Europe Digital Healthcare 2016 Award (Barcelona), the 1st prize in the “2014 Microsoft Worldwide Health Innovation Award (MSHUG)” (Orlando, USA) and the 2014 “Big Data & Analytics Solution of the Year” prize by IT Europa (London, UK).

Gary Marcus, scientist, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and AI contrarian, was CEO and Founder of the machine learning startup Geometric Intelligence, later acquired by Uber.

As a Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, he has published extensively in fields ranging from human and animal behaviour to neuroscience, genetics, and artificial intelligence, often in leading journals such as Science and Nature.

As a writer, he contributes frequently to the The New Yorker and The New York Times, and is the author of four books, including The Algebraic Mind, Kluge:The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind, and The New York Times Bestseller, Guitar Zero, and also editor of the recent book, The Future of the Brain: Essays By The World’s Leading Neuroscientists, featuring the 2014 Nobel Laureates May-Britt and Edvard Moser.

In November 2011, he invented the now-ubiquitous trolley problems for driverless cars (borrowed, mostly recently, by Barack Obama).

Dr. Oliver Morgan is the Director of the Health Emergency Information and Risk Assessment Department in the WHO Health Emergencies Program. From 2007 through 2016, Dr. Morgan worked for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during which time he held critical leadership positions in the Ebola response between November 2014 and February 2016 (CDC Atlanta Ebola Response Incident Manger and CDC Country Director in Sierra Leone).From March 2010 to October 2014, Dr. Morgan was the CDC Country Director in the Dominican Republic. Dr. Morgan was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at CDC from 2007 to 2009 with the International Emerging Infections Program, during which time he conducted projects in Thailand, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, and Guatemala. Before joining CDC, Dr. Morgan worked for the UK Health Protection Agency, leading epidemiological investigations of outbreaks (enteric, vaccine preventable, hospital acquired, zoonotic, respiratory, and sexually acquired infections), chemical and radiation exposure incidents, terrorist bombings in London, natural disasters, and humanitarian civil conflicts. Dr. Morgan has also worked as a consultant to WHO/PAHO in several countries. Dr. Morgan’s academic achievements include a doctorate in epidemiology from Imperial College London and extensive publication in peer reviewed journals and reference books.

Salvatore Scalzo has been working for more than seven years in the European Commission. Since November 2013, he is Policy and Legal Officer in the Unit dealing with legislation on medical devices (currently unit D4 of the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs). After having dealt with the negotiations of the proposed new Regulations on medical devices which were adopted in spring 2017, he is currently working on the legal interpretation and implementation of those Regulations and coordinating, among other tasks, the activities of the European Commission Expert Groups on medical device identification and traceability and medical software. 

Bertrand Bodson has been Chief Digital Officer of Novartis since January 1, 2018. He is a member of the Executive Committee of Novartis.

From 2013 to 2017, Mr. Bodson served as Chief Digital and Marketing Officer of Sainsbury’s Argos, where he led Argos’ successful transformation from a traditional catalogue business to the third-largest online retailer in the United Kingdom.

Prior to that, he was Executive Vice President of the global digital business at EMI Music from 2010 to 2013. He co-founded Bragster.com, a social networking and content sharing website, and has also held senior roles at Amazon.

Mr. Bodson earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in the United States, where he was a Baker Scholar, and a master’s degree in commercial engineering from the Solvay Business School (Belgium)/McGill University (Canada). He is a member of the Board of Directors of Electrocomponents PLC.

Dr Indra Joshi is clinical lead for NHS England’s digital experience programme. She has an overarching knowledge of the national patient-facing digital initiatives within the NHS with a focus on real world evidence, data and digital health tools standards.

Indra has a unique portfolio with experience stretching across policy, governance, digital health and marketing, national project strategy and implementation; whilst remaining true to her professional training in emergency medicine.

She is the Clinical Director of One HealthTech, a network which champions and supports underrepresented groups in health innovation, particularly women, to be the future leaders in healthcare.

Indra, a mother-of-two, is also a Vice Chair for the British Computer Society (Health), an international speaker and consultant on digital health, an expedition medic.

Steve Guise has been Global Head of Informatics for Roche Pharmaceuticals since October 2016. During these nearly two years, Steve has built and led a new informatics organization focused on business partnering and driving technology innovation to address business challenges — to ultimately benefit patients.

Steve joined Roche in 2008 as Basel Site Head, Pharma Research Informatics. In 2010, he became Global Head of Scientific Information Systems and Principal Architect, Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) Informatics. Steve was Head of Pharma Informatics for Asia Pacific based in Shanghai and Singapore for three years. He then took on the role of Head of Diagnostics Information Solutions Software Center of Excellence before being appointed Global Head of Informatics.

Steve is passionate about finding new ways to more effectively bring medical innovation to our patients, particularly where the application of technology can bring about a step change.

Prior to joining Roche, Steve held various IT and management positions at Astra Zeneca in the UK. He has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from The University of St Andrews (UK).

Riccardo Miotto is a senior data scientist in the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and a member of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare. Riccardo’s work encompasses the design of algorithms for information retrieval, machine learning and data mining applied to clinical data for personalized medicine and medical search engines. Previously, Riccardo worked on clinical trial search engines through free-text eligibility criteria processing and machine learning applied to music information retrieval, in the particular semantic discovery and recommendation, automatic tagging, and cover identification. Riccardo obtained his Ph.D. in Information Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy.

Dr. Alessandro Curioni is an IBM Fellow, Vice President of IBM Europe and director of the IBM Research Lab in Zurich, Switzerland. He was also recently appointed as the Watson IoT Research Relationship Executive.

Dr. Curioni is an internationally recognized leader in the area of high-performance computing and computational science, where his innovative thinking and seminal contributions have helped solve some of the most complex scientific and technological problems in healthcare, aerospace, consumer goods and electronics. He was a member of the winning team recognized with the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize in 2013 and 2015.

Dr. Curioni received his undergraduate degree in Theoretical Chemistry and his PhD from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. He started at IBM Research – Zurich as a PhD student in 1993 before officially joining as a research staff member in 1998. His most recent position was Head of the Cognitive Computing and Computational Sciences department.

Dr. Navin Ramachandran is a practising radiology consultant at University College London Hospital, an honorary senior lecturer / healthcare data researcher at University College London Centre for Health Informatics & Multiprofessional Education and a co-founder of OpenCancer and the Platform for Enhanced Analytics and Computational Healthcare (PEACH). His main interests are in digital design, data modelling, interoperability, analytics, identity and consent management and he is also looking into the use of traditional blockchain in healthcare.

Amir Saffari has a PhD in Machine Learning and has been working in the field of Artificial Intelligence for more than 17 years, researching and developing ML theory, applications, and, products. He’s numerous publications in top-tier ML conferences and journals and most of his research has been released as open source software. He was part of Sony’s R&D team and has been involved in a few ML startups prior to joining BenevolentAI where he is currently leading the research and development of ML technology to drug discovery.

Dr. Bart Geerts is the founder and CEO of Amsterdam startup Healthplus.ai with tools to predict depression relapse through mobile app use, readmissions for chronic heart failure for cardiologists via home monitoring, 3D bone segmentation for orthopaedic and trauma surgeons and in-hospital infections.

He is an active physician and has over ten years of clinical experience as an anaesthetist, intensivist and clinical pharmacologist in the Netherlands and UK. He has managed a research group of more than ten scientists with a focus on medical technology and big data.

Bart has years in Pharma and AI. He has worked on several innovation projects in hospital consortia regarding digital health. He has studied medicine (MD), biomedical sciences (MSc), intensive care medicine (PhD), and global business (MBA at IE University).

Kaveh Safavi, M.D., J.D. is the senior managing director for Accenture’s global healthcare business. Dr. Safavi is responsible for developing and driving a growth strategy that differentiates Accenture’s offerings for providers, health insurers and public and private health systems across the globe.

Dr. Safavi joined Accenture from Cisco, in 2011, where he led the global healthcare practice. Prior to that, he was Thompson Reuter’s chief medical officer of its health businesses and United Healthcare’s vice president of medical affairs. He also has served in leadership roles at HealthSpring and Humana.

As a seasoned executive, Dr. Safavi brings more than three decades of leadership experience to Accenture Health including such accomplishments as establishing one of the Midwest’s first electronic health record-enabled primary care practices. He has published numerous papers and is quoted on healthcare issues in various media publications, including the Wall Street Journal, BBC, New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Harvard Business Review and the Economist.

Dr. Safavi serves as a member of the board of directors for Xcertia, an organization that supports industry guidelines for safe and effective mobile health apps. He’s also serves on the advisory committee of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

Dr. Safavi has earned the distinction of both medical and law degrees, an M.D. from Loyola University School of Medicine and a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law. He is board-certified in internal medicine and pediatrics and completed his residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

Dr. Safavi is a lifelong Chicagoan.

As lead for Health and Life Sciences in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Elena is responsible to drive strategy and business development for public health and pharma, working together with a community of over 150+ professionals across the region.

Elena spearheaded key initiatives on Health 4.0 and health digital transformation. Mobilizing a core group of industry stakeholders, Elena started the European Cloud in Health Advisory Council, a vendor-neutral C-level forum aimed to foster cloud-first innovation in the health sector. The Council promoted two Calls to Action: one on Health Data Saving Lives and Protecting Patients’ Rights (eHealth Week 2017); and Trust in the Cloud, leading with cloud-first policies (eHealth Week 2016).

In July 2017, Elena was elected to the HIMSS Europe Governing Council.

In 2013, working with a group of leading e-Health partners, Elena led two industry-wide go to market and advocacy positions on innovative health services; the Manifesto for a Healthier Europe and Healthier Cities.

From 2007-2012, Elena held the role of Senior Director Health and Education Policy in Europe, when she led the creation of the Employability Alliance aimed to empower 20 Mil people with Skills for New Jobs.

Elena started at Microsoft in 2003 as Director of Corporate Affairs and Corporate Responsibility. She is the co-founder and Board Member of the Women in Leadership (WiL) Network, a joint effort between Microsoft, INSEAD and the Women Forum.

Dr Farzana Rahman splits her time as a Consultant Radiologist at University College London Hospital and Clinical Advisor at NHS Digital. She is also the lead for Digital Strategy at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges – specifically looking at the impact of AI and leading on these projects.

Andrea Superti-Furga has obtained his medical degrees at the Universities of Genoa and Zurich and certification in Pediatrics in Italy and Switzerland. His mentors were Professors Paolo Durand, Victor McKusick, Andrea Prader, Andres Giedion, Richard Gitzelmann, Beat Steinmann and Sergio Fanconi.

He developed a research activity on inborn diseases in Zurich and then in New York with Prof. Francesco Ramirez. In 2002, he was appointed Professor for Molecular Pediatrics at the University of Lausanne; in 2004, Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Freiburg, Germany; in October 2010 he was awarded the Leenaards Chair of Excellence in Pediatrics at the University of Lausanne. In 2014 and 2015 he was Director of the Department of Pediatrics in Lausanne. Since 2016 he is Professor and Head of the Division of Genetic Medicine at the University Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, that includes a clinical section as well as a diagnostic laboratory for cytogenetics and molecular genetics.

His clinical expertise is in pediatrics and genetics. His research activities have been focussed mainly on genetic disorders affecting metabolism, connective tissue, and the skeleton. His skills range from clinical assesment and evaluation to biochemistry, metabolism, molecular biology, next-generation seuencing, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence.

Andrea Superti-Furga is committed to a holistic approach to children and adults with genetic disorders and rare diseases with a comprehensive perspective that includes the genetic and molecular bases of development and disease, the precision medicine approach to diagnosis and treatment, and the medical, social, economical and ethical issues around individuals with genetic diseases and their families.

Chris Gibson, PhD, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company leveraging the latest in automation, artificial intelligence and biology to do drug discovery at scale. Chris developed the technology and approach underlying Recursion as part of his MD/PhD graduate work in the lab of Co-Founder Dr. Dean Li at the University of Utah. Chris left medical school to transform this technology into the rapidly growing company it is today. Chris is a graduate of Rice University with degrees in bioengineering and managerial studies, as well as a graduate of an intense entrepreneurship course at Stanford GSB. He is a Board Member of CureHHT, a patient advocacy group for Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia, and a member of the Rare and Undiagnosed Network Advisory Board. Outside of work, Chris enjoys cycling on both the road and the trails that cut through Utah’s great wilderness, as well as spending time with family.

Throughout his career, Baschi Dürr, lic. rer. pol. (Basel University), has worked inter alia at Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Wirz Investor Relations, F. Hoffmann-La Roche and Farner Consulting. Politically active for over 20 years, he was a member of the Basel Parliament since 2003. In 2012, aged 35, Baschi Dürr was elected to the Government of Basel.

Dr Rosemary Rebuli is the Global Head of Trial Management for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Beginning her career in South Africa as a medical doctor practising anaesthesiology, Rosemary later moved to the pharmaceutical sector where she gained a broad experience across multiple areas of drug development including clinical, pharmacovigilance and most recently operations arenas. With this background, Rosemary is passionate about leveraging innovation, data and digital to enable patient access.

Dr. Ian Norton is an Emergency Physician with post graduate qualifications in International Health, Tropical Medicine and Surgery and works for the World Health Organization HQ in Geneva heading the new Emergency Medical Team Unit.

He is the lead author of the WHO Global classification and standards for Foreign Medical Team (FMT) deployment to sudden onset disasters which led to his appointment to the WHO leading the development of a global registry of EMTs and the increasing role of WHO in their quality assurance and coordination.

He will share his perspective on WHO is using big data and machine learning models to understand developing economy health, humanitarian aid and how epidemics spread.

Professor Luciano Floridi is deeply engaged with emerging policy initiatives on the socio-ethical value and implications of digital technologies and their applications.

And he has worked closely on digital ethics (including the ethics of algorithms and AI) with the European Commission, the German Ethics Council, and, in the UK, with the House of Lords, the Cabinet Office, and the Information Commissioner’s Office, as well as with multinational corporations (e.g. Cisco, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Tencent).

Currently, he is a Member of the EU’s Ethics Advisory Group on Ethical Dimensions of Data Protection, of the Royal Society and British Academy Working Group on Data Policy, of Google Advisory Board on “the right to be forgotten”, of the Advisory Board of Tencent’s Internet and Society Institute, and of NEXA’ Board of Trustees.

He is the Chairman of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Medical Information Framework (a €56 million EU project on medical informatics).

Daniel has nearly 20 years’ experience leading the charge to bring transformational technology to new industries. During his career, he has founded and led several internet startups based in Denmark, Germany, the US and the UK. After studying law as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Houston, Daniel earned his MBA at the University of Chicago, then shifted his focus to consulting at Boston Consulting Group before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey.

The Health Ethics and Policy Lab focuses on ethical and policy challenges in precision medicine and digital health. The advances in genomics, omics and data intensive research, have brought medicine and healthcare to an inflection point.

Such progress holds great promise for improving individual and population health, while also presenting unprecedented ethical and regulatory challenges in areas such as privacy, individual freedom and risk policy. In order to harness the full potential of those novel approaches in health care, robust ethical policies are needed to resolve novel and pressing issues.

At the lab, we identify and tackle the key ethical, legal and societal implications (ELSI) of precision medicine and digital health. The complexity of these questions calls for an interdisciplinary approach to research in bioethics and health policy, which is why, our team has expertise in philosophy, social science, clinical medicine, public health, data science, health policy, law.

Babita Sharma is a BBC News presenter, regularly seen on the BBC News Channel, BBC World News, and presenting the show Newsday.

Babita has presented the finance programme Your Money, and fronts business reports for BBC News. She has also covered economic and political stories from around the world.

Patrice Matchaba, M.D., has been Global Head of Corporate Responsibility for Novartis since October 1, 2017.

Dr. Matchaba most recently served as Global Head of the Cardio-Metabolic development unit at Novartis, where he led the global clinical development of the cardio-metabolic portfolio. He joined Novartis South Africa in 2000 as the Country Pharma Organization Chief Scientific Officer. Since moving to Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation in the United States in 2002, he has held several roles of increasing responsibility such as Therapeutic Area Head for Immunology and Infectious Diseases; Global Head of Drug Safety and Epidemiology; and Global Head of the Integrated Development Functions and Regions, which include Global Clinical Operations, Global Clinical Submissions, Integrated Information Sciences, Development Informatics, Development Diversity and Inclusion, and all Medical Country Pharma Organization regions.

Dr. Matchaba completed his medical training at the University of Zimbabwe, and is a fellow of the College of Obstetrics and Gynecology South Africa. In addition, he is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development.

Clara Palau is the product manager for UNICEF’s Magic Box, an initiative focused on using data science and artificial intelligence to support humanitarian and development programmes for the most vulnerable children, by enabling partnerships through private sector, academia and public organisations.

Before joining UNICEF, she gained international experience as a manager and as a researcher in different industries and technology areas, working for Orange, CERN and Indra. She holds a MsC in telecommunication engineering and a master in non-profit organisation management.

Since July 2018 Marco Marsella is Head of the “eHealth, Well-being, and Ageing” Unit in the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission.

The Unit’s mission is to improve health and well-being, quality of life and work in general – with specific attention for ageing well – by combining digital policy, research & innovation, and deployment support. The aim is to support innovative digitally-enabled solutions and policies for people to enjoy healthy and independent living, relevant organisations and public sector to deliver high-quality and efficient health and care services including personalised medicine, and market players in Europe to reap business opportunities.

From 2016 to June 2018, he was leading the Unit responsible for the Web Accessibility Directive, Safer Internet and Language Technologies. He has worked on policy development, innovation and research implementation in the areas of digital content, technologies for learning, e-inclusion and assistive technologies. Prior to joining the European Commission, Marco worked as AI researcher in Italy.

Anne is the global Industry Senior Managing Director for Accenture’s Life Sciences business and a global client lead. She has been with Accenture for 28 years. Over this period she has worked across the US, Europe and Asia with global companies transforming their business and operating models, to meet changing market and portfolio needs. She has been in China since 2007 and has been on the board of the global Products Operating Group of Accenture since 2006. She has published numerous articles over the past 20+ years. Her most recent publication is a book entitled ‘Healthcare Disrupted: Next Generation Business Models and Strategies@ (Wiley Feb 2016)”. Based in Hong Kong, Ms. O’Riordan is a member of The Women’s Foundation, the 30% Club and co-chair of the Women of Influence Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce.

Jay Komarneni is Chair of the Human Diagnosis Project. Previously, Jay advised preeminent organizations at McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company, helped launch and operate a global alternative investment firm, and participated in Y Combinator, the top technology accelerator. Jay has been recognized as a Thouron Scholar, a Luce Scholarship recipient, a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, an MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35 semifinalist, and by the MacArthur Foundation for leading one of eight organizations globally with a bold solution to a critical social problem. Academically, Jay completed five degrees in six years at Oxford and Penn before enrolling in the M.D. program at Johns Hopkins (which he ultimately did not attend).

ClickMedix is a global mobile health (mHealth) social enterprise founded by faculty and students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Carnegie Mellon University to increase capacity of physicians and health organizations to serve more patients.

By enabling existing medical experts to serve more patients, they can address the following global healthcare challenges:
– Lack of access: Patients cannot easily reach doctors.

– Lack of funds: Patients cannot afford the high cost of healthcare, and governments/NGOs are unable to subsidize under-served populations entirely
– Lack of medical resources: Most countries face severe shortages of trained healthcare professionals, especially medical specialists.

They bring affordable and quality health services to under-served patients, by enabling health organizations to reach more patients through mobile phone/tablet facilitated remote diagnosis using AI as well as remote training and supervision of their staff assistants, nurses, and health workers.

Maxine Mackintosh is the co-founder of One HealthTech – a community which champions and supports underrepresented groups in health innovation, particularly women, to be the future leaders in healthcare. She does this alongside a data science PhD in London where she is mining medical records for new predictors of dementia.

Her professional work has led her to the Royal Society, Roche, L’Oreal, Department for International Development, and NHS England. She is part of a number of communities and committees including the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers, the British Computer Society and the Digital Health Forum.

Alexander is a co-founder of Nye, an early stage healthcare company with a big dream to build a health system which maximises welfare and an individual’s ability to flourish. He is also a practicing primary care physician and on the faculty at Oxford University. He was previously a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University where he studied System Biology and Genetics and was the Head of Research at the King’s Centre for Global Health. In 2008, Alexander started an award-winning health technology company which delivers health system capacity building in fragile states, with a particular focus on Somalia. Most recently MedicineAfrica and partners were awarded the first of UKAID’s flagship global Higher Education programme, Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education Innovation and Reform (SPHEIR). He likes to ski and play the bagpipes.

Simon founded QuantumBlack to help clients improve asset, operations and human performance by applying new intelligence gained from data, advanced analytics and visualisation. He provides Board-level  expertise to leading  organisations around the world, blending  strategy,  analytics,  engineering  and  design  to  help  solve  the  most challenging problems. The impact can be transformational, changing the way business is done.

Simon is fascinated by interpreting complex data, making it accessible for clients, and helping them apply it to gain competitive advantage.

Simon is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences. He contributes to respected publications, including the Economist, Newsweek, Wired and McKinsey Quarterly.

Simon is accustomed  to building  successful  businesses,  including creating a  software company and  a  joint  venture  with  the  Vodafone  McLaren Mercedes Formula One racing team.

Mary Margaret (“Mimi”) Huizinga, MD MPH FACP, is the Vice President, Strategic Data and Digital for US Oncology at Novartis. Dr. Huizinga leads the digital and data strategies and supports the broader digital, data and real world evidence needs for US Oncology. In addition, she oversees the generation and dissemination of value evidence at Novartis through the work of the HEOR (health economics and outcomes research) team.

Prior to joining Novartis, Dr. Huizinga was the Chief Health Information Officer at Premier, Inc., ensuring that Premier’s products and services met the evolving needs of healthcare systems. She led Premier’s Applied Science division of over 40 HEOR scientists. Dr. Huizinga also oversaw a collaborative of over 40 integrated delivery networks that were participating in alternative payment models. She led the development of a benchmarking approach that helped systems prioritize efforts to achieve success in these programs. Dr. Huizinga was named a core faculty in three of CMS’s learning action networks for Pioneer ACOs, Next Generation ACOs and ESCOs (ESRD Seamless Care Organization). She was a member of various National Quality Forum (NQF) and PCPI committees.

Previously, she was the Medical Director for the Center of Health Promotion and Disease Management at Vanderbilt University where she promoted population health and shared data strategies and was a leader in informatics. She worked to harmonize cross-continuum metrics across many payer programs and provide actionable reports to physicians and administrators at various sites of care. Dr. Huizinga was the Vice President for Quality at LifePoint Hospitals and led the Hospital Engagement Network. At LifePoint, her efforts lead to a cultural change movement and have significantly reduced mortality, readmissions and patient harm while improving employee satisfaction. Dr. Huizinga has also worked as an Associate at McKinsey & Company’s Washington, DC, office and as a faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Huizinga graduated summa cum laude from Mississippi State University with a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Mathematics. She received a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and a Doctor of Medicine from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN. Dr. Huizinga completed a two year fellowship in Quality Improvement at the VA hospital in Nashville. She is a board-certified internist, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a part-time Assistant Professor of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Amir Banifatemi has more than 25 years of experience in development and growth of emerging and transformative technologies. At XPRIZE he is the Prize Lead of the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE and has launched the Cancer XPRIZE goal. The winning Cancer XPRIZE team will develop scalable and culturally sensitive solutions to rapidly, accurately, and affordably screen for early cancers where intervention can reduce human suffering.

Dr. Jordi Serrano Pons is a General Practitioner and the founder and CEO of UniversalDoctor, a social enterprise developing award-winning applications to facilitate multilingual communication between health care professionals and patients that don’t share a common language. Most recently UniversalDoctor won the United Nations World Summit Award for Global Champion of the mHealth category. Jordi is also the Co Founder of Zero Mothers Die, an innovative global public-private partnership initiative focused on reducing maternal mortality through the systematic use of ICTs and mobile health solutions.

Jordi is a widely recognized and active participant in the digital health and innovation field, both in Europe and abroad. He has been consulting as a Health and Innovation Consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has coordinated the development and implementation of different mobile data health applications and supported the World Health Organisation Innovation Group.

In addition, Jordi serves as Innovation Consultant for various entities, including Fira Barcelona (host of the annual Mobile World Congress) and healthcare organizations in Spain, and is now a Grand Jury member of the World Summit Award. Through his work, Jordi collaborates with a number of regional and national governments at the European level and has been a Speaker at notable events specifically focusing on health and technology, including Health 2.0, Convergence Summit, MIHealth, Mobile World Congress and more.

Jordi studied medicine and specialized in Family Medicine. He also holds a Master’s degree in Health and Environment and a Postgraduate degree in International Studies from the University of Barcelona. He currently resides in Geneva, Switzerland and Barcelona, Spain.

Stefano Stramigioli received the M.Sc. with honors (cum laude) in 1992 and the Ph.D with honors (cum laude) in 1998. He is currently full professor of Advance Robotics and chair of the Robotics and Mechatronics group at the University of Twente. He is currently serving (for a second term) as the Vice President for Research of euRobotics, the private part of the PPP cooperation with the European Commission known as SPARC, the biggest robotic civil program worldwide.

He is an IEEE Fellow and has been an IEEE RAS officer for many years. He is an ERC Advance Grant recipient. He is currently leading a growing group of more than 50 people (https://www.utwente.nl/ewi/ram). He has been Editor in chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, AdCom member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, founder and chair of the Electronic Products and Services of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and serving as Vice President for Membership of the same society for two consecutive terms.

To name some recognitions, he has been the 2000 recipient of the education award of Electrical Engineering at the TU Delft, 2009 recipient of the IEEE-RAS distinguish service award, 2016 euRobotics Tech-Transfer Award, 2016 Hemlyn Best Design Award for Surgical Robots, 2017, Hamlyn Best Video Award, 2016 IEEE RAL best paper Award, 2017 IEEE RAM Best paper award.

He is involved in different projects related to Control and Robotics for medical, inspection and maintenance and other applications among which the Robird.

Sarah Porter has launched 21 b2b and b2c technology products in 11 countries since 1996 and has a renowned reputation for taking ideas from concept to market with subsequent significant growth globally.

Emerging tech / AI / Medtech / Singularity / existentialism is where her core experience lies and she has over 20 years of commercial experience.

As a board executive for i2i events (parent company The Guardian Media Group / Apax – Ascential – previously Top Right Group) with the specific remit to rapidly grow the business whilst leveraging operational costs and prepare pre IPO. She sat on the i2i mergers and acquisitions committee identifying, analysing and approaching target businesses and accelerated growth by 22% within 12 months.

Achievements include the launch and acquisition of Money 2020 – a leading fintech product. This included negotiation, 3 stage due diligence, its subsequent integration, and the long term geo-adaption into a global portfolio worth over $40m. The launch of World Retail Congress in 10 countries, the re-launch of Cannes Lions festival.

Sarah is a regular keynote speaker on start-ups, business and women / equality related issues and is an ambassador for the Royal Marsden where she champions the use of AI tech in oncology advances.

From Kabul to Geneva to Palo Alto, Joel K. Myhre has been honoured over his two decades of public policy and advanced ICT experience to help bring advanced humanitarian technology innovations to civil society actors across the Pacific Rim, Europe, North America, Africa, & Central Asia. He has worked with a broad swath of Public Health, Counter-terrorism, Humanitarian and Disaster Response entities, in addition to UN and US DoD engagements throughout the Pacific Rim and Europe.
Having implemented UN, ISO, & US geospatial standards globally. Mr. Myhre’s technical geospatial endeavours include Membership in the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS), co-founder of the California Homeland Security GIS Working Group (now HIFLD), participant in the Global Healthcare Facility Database Initiative, and GEOINT subject matter expert for both the LA FBI’s WMD effort and the ad hoc WHO Advisory Group on Mass Gatherings.
Recent endeavours have focused on global public health alerting and response (WHO Geneva), EOC interoperability in Afghanistan, and use of satellite / mobile / UAV data sources for crisis response.

Stefan Germann, CEO Fondation Botnar

Fondation Botnar is a Swiss foundation established in 2003 with the core purpose of improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people in growing secondary cities around the world. Stefan is tasked as first CEO to set up the management office and lead the foundation in the next stage of it’s development. Fondation Botnar is joining Intelligent Health to promote the importance of AI for child health and wellbeing. The foundation is hosting a panel discussion to highlight key uses of AI in health assessments, disease prevention and promotion of wellbeing, with a focus on the opportunities, challenges and equity in healthcare for children and adolescents.

Lapetus, a US-based start-up can scan the picture of a person and by analysing thousands of different regions of the face, looking not just for basic information such as gender but for clues about how quickly the person is ageing, their body mass index and whether they smoke – can predict life expectancy.

Armed with this and other information from customers, the computers come up with what Lapetus says is a far more accurate prediction of life expectancy than traditional methods can provide. And the whole process takes only a few minutes.

Achim Plueckebaum is the Global Head of Drug Development IT since September 2016. He is a member of the IT Leadership Team of Novartis.

Achim joined Novartis in 2006 as CIO Germany. In 2009 he became the Novartis CIO for Europe. From 2012 to 2014 he held the position of Commercial IT Head for the Pharma Division. Prior to his current appointment, Achim served as Global Head of Commercial IT across all Novartis Divisions, and as Head Pharma IT.

Before joining Novartis, Achim worked for Accenture UK in their IT Strategy practice. Prior to that, Achim spent six years in various international IT roles at Sanofi in Germany, France and the US.

Achim holds a degree of M.S. in Information Systems from Stevens Institute of Technology, USA from 2004, and an M.B.A. from the University of Giessen, Germany and Edinburgh, Scotland from 1997.

Giuseppe Marbach received his PhD degree in theoretical physics from the University of Basel in 1990, and was from 1990 to 1991 a post doctor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Since 1992, he worked for several private companies as a research scientist and developed algorithms for image and video content analysis (objects recognition and tracking in video).

In the last years, he focused his interest in Deep Neural Networks for visual recognition. He joined 2017 Balzano Informatik, where he is currently the lead data scientist for medical images.

His areas of interest include deep learning models – Convolutional Neural Networks and Generative Adversarial Networks – for 2D and 3D medical images, multispectral images and video content analysis.

Noni Gachuhi has been working in public health for over 18 years, designing and delivering health programs for reproductive health, malaria, and HIV prevention across Africa and Asia. In her current role at Global Good/ Intellectual Ventures, she oversees a portfolio of products intended for use at primary health care in low resource settings.

Global Good Fund (www.globalgood.com) is a partnership between Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures. Global Good focuses on global health technology solutions through collaborations to invent, develop, and deploy commercially-viable technologies that improve health and quality of life in developing countries.

GG/IV believes in the power of AI to replicate human performance on complex tasks and extend the reach of medical expertise, especially in places with a qualified health workers or where data connectivity maybe limited. Our laboratory has the following capabilities:

Powerful dataset construction – Development of robust and complex biomedical algorithms – Development of intuitive GUIs for diagnostic assistance

Siddartha Jha is the AI/Digital Program Manager for Fondation Botnar. He grew up in India where he completed his Bachelor in Engineering degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He gained many years of experience in Research and Development projects in technology and the healthcare industry, with a focus on mobile phones and hearing devices. He holds an MSc. in Biomedical Engineering and a CAS in Computer Science with a focus on AI and information systems, both from ETH Zurich.

In recent years, Siddhartha has been closely involved in research, innovation and development of intelligent algorithms for use in hearing devices. Some of his co-authored and patented work around adaptive frequency remapping have found use in the latest digital hearing aid technology to help mitigate problems accompanying acute hearing loss.

Siddhartha is deeply interested in using technology and algorithms for social good. He sees a huge opportunity in exploiting advances in artificial intelligence and digital technologies to accelerate delivery of quality healthcare at homes & hospitals and enhance the quality of education at schools around the world. At Fondation Botnar, he is supporting digital health and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.

Nikhil Krishnan is a senior analyst at CB Insights, where he produces data-driven analysis and research reports on trends in digital health, ag tech, and construction. He sends the weekly Digital Health Insights newsletter to 30K+ members. His research has been featured in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and more.

Prior to joining CB Insights, Nikhil worked at Uber, the Small Business Administration, and Relationship Science.

Huguette has a demonstrated history of working with international organizations and governments. She is passionate about fostering collaboration and expanding access to impactful knowledge. Her primary goal is to leverage technology to achieve meaningful progress, in sub-Saharan Africa.

Her experiences include developing and implementing context appropriate technology-based solutions. She has worked on projects in education, mining, environment, agriculture, and health in over 20 countries.

Huguette also mentors students and young professionals interested in collaboration and in leveraging appropriate, sustainable, and cost-effective technologies to make a difference in their communities.

She currently lives in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and travels to countries in Central and West Africa to conduct policy and strategy development sessions.

Her experiences include developing and implementing context appropriate technology-based solutions. She has worked on projects in education, mining, environment, agriculture, and health in over 20 countries.

Huguette also mentors students and young professionals interested in collaboration and in leveraging appropriate, sustainable, and cost-effective technologies to make a difference in their communities.

She currently lives in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and travels to countries in Central and West Africa to conduct policy and strategy development sessions.

Dismus Masheti is Chief Marketing Officer at ConnectMed, a Kenya-focused telehealth platform that allows you to video consult a doctor anytime, anywhere. ConnectMed has recently expanded into chronic disease management and wellness, and our platform is specifically designed for the African context; we offer low cost, on-demand doctor consults over video along with other essential healthcare services through intelligent technology solutions. Healthcare is a fundamental human right, and therefore should be accessed conveniently at an affordable cost. My passion and career path has always been centered around medical services and medical technology sales. Prior to joining ConnectMed, I have over 10 years of experience in both pharmaceutical services and medical technology where I have held several key positions. I previously managed national sales strategy at Beta Healthcare International and also at Access Mobile. I hold a Bachelor degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Egerton University Kenya and am currently pursuing a MSc. in Public Health from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Matteo Lai is co-founder and CEO of Empatica, a human data analytics company based in Milan and Boston. Empatica sells the world’s smallest and most accurate wearable sensor for research, and it recently launched Embrace, the first medical grade wearable designed to save lives for people with Epilepsy and Autism. He holds a Master in Innovation Management from Alta Scuola Politecnica. He also studied engineering, trained as an architect, and holds a Double MSc degree in Architecture from Milan’s Polytechnic and Turin’s Polytechnic.

Professional with 20+ years of experience in development of complex software projects in hybrid platforms. During his career, he has taken part in all of the stages of software development cycle providing best industry practices to the team. Also, Alexander has an extensive expertise in neural network development and deep machine learning. Right now he is a part of the Skychain team, where he works as a Chief Strategist.

Dr. Andre Chow gained a BSc degree in Surgical Technology and graduated from Imperial College School of Medicine in 2004. He began his surgical training at St. Mary’s Hospital in London and in 2006 became a full member of the Royal College of Surgeons.  In 2008 he was awarded one of three places as an Academic Clinical Fellow, and in 2009 was appointed a Clinical Innovation Fellow at Imperial College London. In 2010 he was awarded a prestigious Welcome Trust Research Fellowship to pursue research in the fields of stem cell technology & biomaterials, and completed his PhD at Imperial College in 2012.  Andre has over 30 peer-reviewed journal publications to his name and has also authored several book chapters. He has been an invited speaker at international surgical conferences on the subject of surgical quality assessment, and regularly presents on medical entrepreneurship and surgical training.

Dániel is the creator of the first compartmentalized protein-protein interaction database, with years of experience building computational models in order to understand the behaviour of human cells. As a medical doctor, Daniel translates computational results into clinical interpretations, indispensable to design innovative and relevant treatments to defeat cancer.

A clinician by training, Charlie is Freenome’s Chief Partnership Officer, focusing on mid- and longer-term relationships that will help define the company’s future directions and revenues and works closely with the business development team in managing corporate client accounts and institutional collaborations.Prior to co-founding Freenome, Charlie co-founded a company that uses circulating cell-free (cf)DNA from maternal blood samples to diagnose chromosomal abnormalities during pregnancy. The resulting in-vitro diagnostic, IONA, has been marketed successfully across Europe and the Middle East. Charlie studied medicine and neuropsychology in the UK, earning a Masters degree from Oxford with a focus on immunotherapy. He has worked in some of the UK’s leading oncology centers, including the Royal Marsden.

Francesca is Director of Research and Innovation at Cambridge Cognition. She has extensive experience of statistics, cognitive neuroscience and cognitive test development in a range of clinical populations. Since joining Cambridge Cognition in 2014, Francesca has worked to develop novel cognitive testing methodology to support high-frequency, near patient testing using digital technology, providing researchers and healthcare providers with unique insights into cognitive health.

Francesca obtained a PhD in Dementia with Lewy Bodies at Newcastle University, followed by post-doctoral and academic positions at University College London and at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge. She maintains academic collaborations focused on neurological disorders, ageing and dementia.

Thomas Wiegand is a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin and is jointly heading the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Germany, in 1995 and the Dr.-Ing. degree from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, in 2000.

The projects that he co-chaired for the development of the H.264/MPEG-AVC standard have been recognized by an ATAS Primetime Emmy Engineering Award. He was also a recipient of a ATAS Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for the development of H.265/MPEG-HEVC and a pair of NATAS Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards.

Marcel Salathé is a digital epidemiologist working at the interface of population biology, computational sciences, and the social sciences. He obtained his PhD at ETH Zurich and spent two years as a postdoc in Stanford before joining the faculty at Penn State in 2010 at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. In 2014, he spent half a year at Stanford as visiting assistant professor. In the summer of 2015, Marcel became an Associate Professor at EPFL where he heads the Digital Epidemiology Lab at the new Campus Biotech. In 2016, he has also been appointed Academic Director of EPFL Extension School, whose mission is to provide high quality online education in digital technology.

Dr. Ann Aerts has been Head of the Novartis Foundation since January 2013, where she has played a key role in devising new policy recommendations. She has the exciting responsibility of heading an organization committed to exploring innovative solutions to public health problems. The Novartis Foundation has the challenging goals of expanding access to quality healthcare and eliminating diseases such as leprosy and malaria. Before her current role, Ann was Franchise Medical Director Critical Care for Novartis Pharma in Basel and Therapeutic Area Head Cardiovascular and Metabolism in Novartis Pharma Belgium.

Prior to joining Novartis, she served as Director of the Lung and Tuberculosis Association in Belgium, as Head of the Health Services Department of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva and was Health Coordinator for the ICRC in several countries.

Dr. Krishnamurthy serves as a senior advisor for health information systems and digital health at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He has extensive experience in designing, implementing, coordinating, and managing national and subnational eHealth systems and services, including health information systems, emergency operations centers, and public health surveillance information systems.

Dr. Krishnamurthy has also assisted numerous countries in all of the six WHO Regions in their development and implementation of national and sub-national eHealth strategies, standardization and interoperability of eHealth systems and services, and utilization of strategic information for evidence-based public health decision-making.

Previously Dr. Krishnamurthy served as Senior Informatics Advisor at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He holds many prestigious honors and awards.

Mr. Eskandar is the ICT Applications Coordinator at the ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division of the Telecommunication Development Bureau of ITU. Mr. Eskandar is currently involved in providing assistance to several developing countries by advising on eApplications strategies and policies, assisting in implementing technical cooperation projects in areas of digital health, agriculture, governance and education. He has lead the development of several guidelines and best-practices reports on eApplications.

Previously, Mr. Eskandar had extensive experience in the field of ICT for Development where he, through working with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent in Switzerland and, UNDP and other NGOs in Egypt, was involved in several development projects in the fields of Health, Education, Illiteracy Eradication, Community Development, SME development and Micro Credits. This included, among others, introducing Telemedicine services in rural areas, introducing ICT in Schools, creating Community Development Portals, Community Learning Centres, developing e-Learning and training programs for Youth.

Mohammad Ghassemi is an award winning scholar and entrepreneur. He holds a Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence, and a minor in institutional communications. He is regarded for his work in creating the world’s largest open access intensive care database, a wearable A.I. for social coaching and a rapidly growing platform that connects thousands of students for face-to-face meetings at six universities across the US.

Valérie D’Acremont is a clinical epidemiologist at the Swiss TPH and one of the nine Pfizer Research Prize 2015 awardees for her paper on febrile illnesses published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The prize is one of the most prestigious awards in Switzerland for a single research paper.

Prof. Acremont led the research team from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel and the Policlinique Médicale Universitaire in Lausanne where the causes of febrile illnesses in Tanzanian children was systematically assessed. Prof. Acremont got her PhD in Epidemiology and a Masters in International Health from the University of Basel, Switzerland. Prof. Acremont also received a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Mr. Heuer joined dacadoo in 2011 as COO, signing responsible for sales, marketing and operations. From 2003 to 2011, he worked in various sales, business development & marketing roles with increasing management responsibilities in the medtech industry, first with Guidant Corp. in Belgium, France and Switzerland and then with St. Jude Medical as Managing Director of Switzerland from 2008 to 2011. From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Heuer held sales and marketing positions in the fast moving consumer goods industry with Nestlé in Brazil. Manuel Heuer holds an MBA from IMD International.

Peter Speyer is Global Head of Development Portfolio, Medical, Digital and RWE Solutions at Novartis, responsible for creating applications and data platforms for collecting and managing internal and external data and applying analytics, machine learning and AI for insights generation. Prior to his role at Novartis, Peter was Chief Data & Technology Officer at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was responsible for data and IT for the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, including obtaining and managing data from 190 countries and running high performance computing infrastructure, as well as creating IHME’s global public data catalog Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) and innovative interactive data visualizations.

Prior to joining IHME, Peter worked in strategy and product management in the media industry, including Corbis and Bertelsmann. He holds an MBA from Temple University in Philadelphia, USA, and a Master in Business and Engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.