“INNOVATIONS AND DATA-POWERED HEALTH:
PRECISION NURSING AT THE POINT OF CARE”

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD | Director, National Library of Medicine

PBrennan

Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, is the Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she oversees the world’s largest biomedical library. Since becoming director in August 2016, she has positioned the Library to be the hub for biomedical data science at NIH and across the biomedical research enterprise globally. She spearheaded the development of a new strategic plan that refocuses and enhances NLM’s research, development, training and information systems. By leveraging NLM’s heavily used data and information resources and programs, Dr. Brennan is strengthening and advancing NLM’s data infrastructure to accelerate data-driven discovery and health, engage new users in new ways, and develop the workforce for a data-driven future.

Dr. Brennan is a pioneer in the development of innovative information systems and services, and her professional accomplishments reflect her background, which unites engineering, information technology, and clinical care to improve public health and ensure the best possible experience in patient care. Dr. Brennan holds an appointment as an associate investigator in the National Institute of Nursing Research Division of Intramural Research, where she directs the Advanced Visualization Laboratory.

Prior to joining NIH, she was the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor in the School of Nursing and College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and also led the Living Environments Laboratory (now the Virtual Environments Group) at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.

A past president of the American Medical Informatics Association, Dr. Brennan was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2001. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the American College of Medical Informatics, and the New York Academy of Medicine.

In 2020, Dr. Brennan was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).  The AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer.

10-11 A.M. | SESSION 1: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON DATA-POWERED NURSING SPEAKERS

Jungmin Park, PhD, MPH, RN

Jungmin Park, PhD, MPH, RN, is an assistant professor at Hanyang University in Korea. Her research interests include chronic illness using healthcare big data and healthcare platform service. She is a healthcare nursing bigdata research lab director and board member of Digital Healthcare Alliance Forum (DHAF). Dr. Park received her doctorate in nursing at The University of Texas at Austin and worked as an assistant professor at California State University, Chico in the United States.

Dawn Dowding, PhD, RN, FAAN

Dawn Dowding, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a professor in Clinical Decision Making, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, UK. She is a nurse and health services researcher with expertise in the field of health care decision-making and nursing informatics. Her particular interest is the development and evaluation of decision support tools, and more recently the application of Health Information Technology for assisting decision making in practice. She was previously a professor of nursing at Columbia University School of Nursing and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Additional past appointments include Professor of Applied Health Research, University of Leeds UK and a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice from 2009-2010, working at Kaiser Permanente, Oakland CA. She is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and a Fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics (UK). Dr Dowding completed her registered nurse training at St Bartholomew’s College of Nursing and Midwifery, London, has a BSc(Hons) in Psychology with Nursing Studies from City University, London, and a PhD in Psychology and Nursing from the University of Surrey, UK.

Rodrigo Jensen, PhD, MSN, RN

Rodrigo Jensen, PhD, MSN, RN, is an assistant professor at the Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)  -Botucatu Medical School, in Brazil. He is the assistant dean for the Graduate Program in Nursing (Masters and Doctorate of Nursing Practice levels) at UNESP. The Doctorate of Nursing Practice program at UNESP is the first in Brazil. Dr. Jensen earned a Ph.D. in Health Sciences and a Master’s in Nursing Science from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in Brazil. He is also a midwife nurse and had a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sao Paulo (USP).

Dr. Jensen is a member of the Brazilian Health Informatics Society and the Technical Advisor to the Systematization of Nursing Practice Committee at the Brazilian Nursing Association. He is the founding member of the national Nursing Process Research Network (RePPE) in Brazil.

11 A.M. TO NOON | SESSION 2: DIGITAL CARE DELIVERY AND CLINICAL TRANSLATION SPEAKERS

Rebecca Schnall, PhD, MPH, RN-BC, FAAN

Rebecca Schnall, PhD, MPH, RN-BC, FAAN, is a nurse scientist and informatician who has committed to mentoring the next generation of nurse scientists. She leads an independent research program focused on understanding the information needs of vulnerable patient populations and developing informatics tools to promote health and prevent disease. The fundamental question underlying her program of research is “How do we capture information and deliver it to consumers from underserved communities so that they can access it and make informed decisions about their health?” Dr. Schnall’s program of research has focused on understanding the information needs of vulnerable patient populations and developing informatics tools to reduce health disparities for persons from underserved communities. Dr. Schnall’s work reduces health disparities for persons from underserved communities and more specifically those living with and at risk for HIV. These mixed methods studies have resulted in a greater understanding of the information needs of consumers/patients, serving as the foundation for design of web-based and mobile applications with demonstrated impact. Dr. Schnall’s research focuses on translating evidence-based approaches for self-management into informatics tools, such as mobile health (mHealth) applications, that can be used by consumers to improve the quality of their everyday lives. Importantly, the development of these tools has relevance to the international HIV epidemic, which affects more than 36 million people around the world, since mobile technology is nearly ubiquitous even in the most resource-poor countries. In addition, her research has an impact on health policy, as the consumer health informatics tools that she develops and evaluates have high potential to enable more streamlined efficient health care on a wide scale and in the most underserved communities. In addition to her research efforts, Dr. Schnall mentors all levels of students at Columbia Nursing as well as master’s in public health students, epidemiology post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty in nursing, public health and medicine. Through her extensive mentoring activities, she is helping to develop the next generation of nursing leaders.

Karen Dunn-Lopez, PhD, MPH, RN

Karen Dunn Lopez, PhD, MPH, RN, is an associate professor at The University of Iowa College of Nursing where she is the director of the Center for Nursing Classification and Clinical Effectiveness. Dr. Dunn Lopez’s research focuses on tailoring health information technologies to individuals’ cognitive characteristics as a method for improving technologies’ usability and effectiveness in supporting complex decision making. Many of the technologies in her research are grounded in novel uses of NANDA-I, Nursing Intervention Classification (NIC) and Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) as a means of making nurses’ contribution to care more visible.  In addition to her scholarly research, Dr. Dunn Lopez is an active informatics leader in national organizations.  She currently serves as the Chair of the American Medical Informatics Association, as a Governing Director of the Alliance for Nursing Informatics and as a Work Group Member of the Health Informatics Management Systems Society’s Guidelines Initiative.

Padraic M. McVeigh | Sarah S. Sazama

Padraic (Paddy) McVeigh is a Quality Manager for Telehealth Services within the Office of Connected Care.  He is a registered nurse and U.S. Army veteran with over 23 years of active and reserve service.  Prior to joining the VA, he served in a myriad of leadership and staff positions in the U.S. Army Medical Department, with the latter part of his military service focused on Quality Management, Performance Improvement. Patient Safety, and Healthcare Accreditation.  While on active duty, Paddy was hand-selected to complete a 1-year Quality and Safety Fellowship with The Joint Commission in Oakbrook Terrace, IL.  He also deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn, and Operation Enduring Freedom.  As part of the VHA’s Telehealth Quality Team, Paddy focuses on consultation, data reporting, modeling, and analysis, and project management.

Paddy holds a BSN from the University of Scranton, an MSN from the University of Virginia, and is enrolled at the University of North Carolina’s Business School working towards a Master’s in Business Administration while also enrolled in the American Medical Informatics Association’s (AMIA) 10×10 Certification Course.  Paddy lives in the Sandhills of North Carolina with his wife and 3 daughters.  

Sarah Sazama has been employed with the Department of Veteran Affairs since 2009.  She currently works within the Office of Connected Care/Quality Team since 2016 as a Program Analyst.  She is the lead logistical team member in charge of the National Virtual Care Scorecard.   In addition to her logistical support and consultation on the scorecard, she also provides data analysis and program management for the Office of Connected Care and has helped create and manage multiple data dashboards.

Sarah Sazama earned her BA in EBIO Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her M.B.A in Health Care Administration from the University of Colorado at Denver. Sarah resides in Denver with her husband and five children.

1-3 P.M. | SESSION 3: PRECISION NURSING AND HEALTH SPEAKERS

Maxim Topaz, PhD, RN

Maxim (Max) Topaz, PhD, RN, MA is the Elizabeth Standish Gill Associate Professor of Nursing at the Columbia University Medical Center. He is also affiliated with Columbia University Data Science Institute and the Center for Home Care Policy & Research at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. His research focuses on data science and he finds innovative ways to use the most recent technological breakthroughs, like text or data mining, to improve human health. Dr. Topaz’s research motto is “Data for good”. Dr. Topaz is one of the pioneers in applying natural language processing on data generated by nurses. His current work focuses on developing natural language processing solutions to advance clinical decision-making.

In the past, Dr. Topaz was involved with health policy (national and international levels), leadership (e.g. Chair of the Emerging Professionals Working Group of the International Medical Informatics Association) and health entrepreneurship. Dr. Topaz’s clinical experience is in internal and urgent medicine. 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. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham Women’s Hospital. He served as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Nursing, University of Haifa (Israel) where he was heading a Health Information Technology Lab. He published more than seventy articles on topics related to health informatics and received numerous prestigious awards for his work.

Blaine Reeder, PhD

Blaine Reeder, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Missouri with joint appointments in the Sinclair School of Nursing and the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics. He is a human-centered design methodologist that conducts informatics research with smart technologies for independent aging, design information systems, and developing research infrastructure. Dr. Reeder is PI of the Precision START Lab at the MU Sinclair School of Nursing and Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of Directors for Hekademeia Research Solutions, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded to provide persistent infrastructure support for emerging technology research in academic environments.

Katherine Kim, PhD, MPH, MBA

Katherine (Kathy) Kim, PhD, MPH, MBA, is an associate professor at UC Davis, Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, and Program Director, Health Innovation Research at Center for Health and Technology. She is a member of the founding faculty for Healthy Aging in a Digital World Institute and the Family Caregiving Institute. She also serves as Senior Scientist for Health at CITRIS: Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society at UC Berkeley. She has an active research portfolio serving as PI/Co-PI of over 20 grants and a funding history exceeding $9M.

Before becoming an academic she spent 20 years as a hospital and medical group manager, healthcare management consultant, and software entrepreneur. She has spent a lot of time on college campuses: she has degrees from Harvard, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis, and has taught at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and UC Davis.  Kathy’s current teaching includes Healthcare Innovation and Technology (a design thinking and informatics course), and PhD research methods and seminars.

Outside of work, Kathy likes to garden, hike, cook, and eat good food with her husband and two children.

Staja Booker, PhD, RN | Keesha Roach, PhD, RN | Jennifer Dungan, PhD, MSN

Star Booker

Staja Booker, PhD, RN, is an assistant professor of nursing at the UF College of Nursing. Dr. Booker’s NIH-funded research and expertise focus on comprehensive factors in the experience of osteoarthritis and movement-evoked pain; self-management interventions to reduce the stress and burden of joint pain; and, the application of technologies for pain measurement and interventions. Dr. Booker helped develop the first nursing clinical practice recommendations and a model for pain assessment and pain measurement in older African Americans.

KRoach

Keesha Powell-Roach, PhD, RN, has degrees in Psychology, Biology, and Nursing and is an assistant professor at the UF College of Nursing. Dr. Roach trained at the NIH, the Pasteur Institute in France, and UF CTSI’s Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence. Her expertise is in the characterization of pain phenotypes, associated biomarkers, and health disparities, most notably in sickle cell disease, as funded by the NIA and NHLBI.

JDungan

Jennifer Dungan, PhD, MSN, is an associate professor of nursing at the University of Florida. Dr. Dungan’s research and expertise focus on genomic underpinnings of complex cardiovascular disease and patient outcomes. Her previous NIH-funded work has identified genetic markers associated with survival outcomes in people with cardiovascular disease and has revealed unique gene markers for disparate outcomes among women.