ePatient Summit 2019 - Speaker Bios

Dr. Elizabeth Baca

Deputy Director
Governor’s Office of Planning and Research

Dr. Elizabeth Baca is passionate about innovations to foster total health and well-being. She currently serves as the Deputy Director in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR). She is engaged in innovation in the public sector to foster health through multiple projects including precision health and medicine, healthy planning, healthy food systems, big data, and public-private partnerships. Dr. Baca serves as a lead for the Governor’s Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine. Through her role in OPR, she is an advisor for Urban Land Institute’s Health Leaders and FS6, a Food System Accelerator.

Ryan Bengtson, MHSA

Senior Vice President, Clinical Innovation
Connance, A Waystar Company

Ryan is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience in healthcare strategy and operations. He has a successful track record developing and launching new service lines, growing existing lines of business, leading strategic initiatives, and delivering significant financial and operational results for clients. Prior to joining Waystar, Ryan served as Senior Vice President for Clinical Innovation at Connance. He was previously a Managing Director at Huron Consulting Group, and began his career at Accenture. Ryan holds a Masters in Health System Administration from the University of Michigan, a Bachelors in Industrial Engineering from the University of Houston, and completed advanced studies at the Harvard Business School.

Thomishia Booker, LCSW, EdDCP

Manager, Care Management
Alameda Health System

Thomishia Booker is a Manager of Care Management with Alameda Health System (AHS). She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and holds a Doctorate in Education Counseling Psychology. She has worked in a variety of settings and has held various management roles throughout her career. Prior to coming to AHS, she worked in non-profit mental health as a Clinical Director of Programs. Her role in Care Management includes oversight of the following departments: Sexual Assault Response and Recovery Treatment, Palliative Care, Spiritual Care, and Decedent Affairs. In addition, she is responsible for system wide housing and transportation. Thomishia led the system wide implementation of non-emergency transportation within AHS and provides ongoing training in order to improve transportation related throughput issues.

Renee Dua

Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer
Heal

Dr. Renee Dua is a busy, working mother who practices medicine while running Heal, the leading on-demand doctor house call app available in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco / Silicon Valley, San Diego, Washington D.C., Northern Virginia, and Atlanta. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she followed her father’s footsteps and entered the field of medicine, and now shares a medical practice with him in Los Angeles.

After an agonizing experience taking her infant son to the ER and waiting 8 hours to see a doctor, she decided to form Heal to reduce the amount of waiting time to see a doctor, especially during evenings and weekends when doctor availability is extremely limited. She also wanted to offer an affordable means for people of all ages who have difficulties going to the doctor’s office, or who may not have insurance, to receive ongoing medical care. Her goal is to improve the quality of medical care by offering an excellent alternative to the traditional doctor’s office setting and allowing more face-to-face time with licensed, world-class physicians.

Dr. Dua is a licensed physician practicing nephrology, internal medicine and hypertension. She was recently awarded Rock Health’s Prestigious Award for Most Tech-Savvy Provider.

She has previously served as Chief of Medicine at Valley Presbyterian and Simi Valley Hospitals. She completed her BS in Biochemistry at UC San Diego, her MD at Chicago Medical School/Rosalind Franklin University, her residency at UCLA, and her fellowship in nephrology at USC. Outside of work, Renee loves cooking for family and friends. As the mother to two young boys and a baby daughter, she is still learning parenting “on the job” and believes there is no way one can ever be perfectly prepared for this challenging role. She is always improving her ability to efficiently multi-task, now that she must juggle family, Heal, her busy medical practice, and continually reminding herself not to lose her phone and car keys. Renee is married to technology entrepreneur Nick Desai.

Kristi Ebong

Senior Vice President of Strategy and General Manager
Healthcare Providers at Orbita

Kristi Ebong is Senior Vice President of Strategy and General Manager of Healthcare Providers at Orbita, which provides the gold-standard enterprise platform for healthcare organizations to securely design, build, manage and optimize AI-driven voice and chatbot applications across omnichannel environments. Ebong was the former head of emerging technology at Cedars-Sinai, where she was responsible for adoption and scale of new technologies across the health system, and launching the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator where she evaluated over 3,000 startups. Previously, she evaluated and led innovation pilots at Stanford Healthcare and drove thought leadership for Healthspottr’s network of healthcare deal-makers. Ebong comes from deep roots in health tech, starting her career at Epic Systems. She also previously served under the Obama Administration in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, and has worked with large healthcare providers, startups, and foundations. Ebong has master’s degrees in Public Health and Business Administration from The Johns Hopkins University, and bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Global Security from The University of Wisconsin. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.

Steve Grau

Founder and CEO
Royal Ambulance

Steve Grau is Founder and CEO of Royal Ambulance, the Bay Area’s premiere full-service healthcare transportation hub, committed to delivering customized transportation management solutions to healthcare systems. Serving Alameda, Santa Clara, Contra Costa, and San Mateo Counties, the company offers all levels of transport from non-emergency rideshare, to BLS to specialty CCT and more, along with custom solutions in patient experience & patient flow.  Under Steve’s leadership, Royal has received numerous prestigious awards and grants including The Beryl Institute Patient Experience Grant, Modern Healthcare’s “Best Places to Work 2018” and Inc Magazine’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.

Steve founded Royal Ambulance in 2005, after dealing firsthand with the challenges associated with the care coordination needed for his mobility-impaired grandfather - and becoming determined to improve this experience for patients and their families. Since then, Royal grew quickly, from two ambulances and 10 EMTs to over 65 transport vehicles and over 350 team members, providing over 60,000 annual transports.

Steve has dedicated his career to implementing innovative, customer-focused solutions by identifying, troubleshooting, and pinpointing system and process problems. Earlier, these skills were fundamental in the application of high-tech solutions, aiding him throughout his successful IT consulting business, and assisting him in directing technology departments for a wide spectrum of organizations, from Startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Steve is a Board Member of Hebrew Free Loan of San Francisco, on the Board of Directors of the California Ambulance Association and a proud Rotarian. He currently resides in Burlingame, California with his wife (and VP of HR at Royal) Eve Grau and their two daughters, Sasha and Nicole.

Sean Mehra

Chief Strategy Officer
Healthtap

Sean is an entrepreneurial executive dedicated to leading exceptional teams to distribute inventions that enhance our quality of life, the survival of our species, and the health of our planet. He is focused on forming and operating early to growth stage, high tech ventures to achieve significant scale, commercial success and fulfillment of a meaningful mission.

Sean is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at HealthTap, a digital health company transforming access to quality primary healthcare for millions worldwide. In the first 7 years of his tenure, he was Chief Product Officer and one of the founding members, helping to lead the organization from a seed-stage startup in private beta to a growth stage company with $85M in financing, eight-figures in annual consumer and enterprise revenue, and over 350 million consumers served.

Prior to that, Sean was Founder & CEO of PayoutHub, a social game-monetization platform that was acquired, and the Founder & COO of GXStudios, a venture-backed, team-based casual games platform. Sean advises startups regularly through VC firms, Stanford's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (now "TSAI City"), Yale University’s official incubator and fellowship program for entrepreneurs — which he co-founded. Sean holds numerous honors and inventions in the fields of health informatics, A.I., drug delivery, genetic testing, medical devices, and new industrial polymers.

Sean earned an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.S. (with Distinction) in Biomedical Engineering and Pre-Medicine from Yale University. He's an inventor at heart, a scientist by training, an engineer by trade, and a designer by hobby.

John Sharp, MSSA, FHIMSS

Director, Thought Advisory
Personal Connected Health Alliance

John Sharp, MSSA, FHIMSS, is a senior manager in the Personal Connected Health Alliance, a HIMSS innovation company, where he is responsible for thought leadership in connected health. His current interests include evidence for digital health, health behavior change, AI, Digital Therapeutics and telehealth policy. He is located in the HIMSS Innovation Center in Cleveland. He advises startups through the Medical Capital Innovation Competition and the Healthbox Studio. He is also Adjunct Faculty in the Health Informatics Master’s Program at Kent State University teaching Clinical Analytics. He is the author of several book chapters and journal articles on connected health, social media and chronic kidney disease. His most recent book chapters appear in Health Informatics: A Practical Guide. John is on the International Editorial Board for ICT&Health and a founding board member of NODE Health (Network of Digital Evidence).

Angie Stevens

Executive Director, Telehealth
Kaiser Permanente

Angie Stevens is executive director of Telehealth, leading a strategic portfolio in Care Delivery Technology Services in Information Technology at Kaiser Permanente. She is actively working to deploy enterprise-wide solutions supporting the national and regional Telehealth strategies including video visits, remote patient monitoring and clinical communications.

With more than 20 years of experience in health care IT, Angie leverages technology to create comprehensive, user-centric solutions demonstrated to improve administrative workflow and clinical outcomes. Her experience is both extensive and varied from hospitals to payers and software design to operations and implementations.

Angie joined Kaiser Permanente in 2013. Prior to Kaiser Permanente, she worked at McKesson Health Solutions as a health care product management executive. She also held the position of senior vice president of IT at Universal American Financial Corp and worked as a vice president of Hosting Solutions at The TriZetto Group.

Angie holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Texas and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Denver.

Dan Trigub

Head of Business Development
Uber Health

Dan Trigub leads the Uber Health team. Before Uber, Dan spent 2.5 years at Lyft as Regional VP of Strategic Partnerships with a focus in healthcare. He previously spent time working in Business Development at eBay and founded several companies including OpenPlacement, a care coordination platform allowing hospital professionals to connect with post-acute care providers for their patients at the moment of discharge.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Dan worked in consulting and was an Associate at GCA Savvian Advisors, an M&A and Capital Advisory Investment Bank in San Francisco, where he represented emerging technology, digital health, and healthcare providers. Dan holds a degree in economics from Vassar College.

Sara Vaezy

Chief Digital Strategy Officer
Providence St. Joseph Health

Sara Vaezy is the Chief Digital Strategy Officer for PSJH. Sara leads the development of the digital strategy and roadmap, digital partnerships and business development, and technology evaluation and pilots at PSJH. Prior to PSJH, she worked for The Chartis Group, a healthcare management consulting firm, where she focused on enterprise strategic planning, payer-provider partnerships, and the development of population health companies. Sara holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley in Physics and Philosophy and an MHA and MPH in Healthcare Policy from The University of Washington’s School of Public Health.

Erik Wagner

Senior Director, Global Provider Strategy
Healthcare and Life Sciences | Salesforce

Erik Wagner leads global provider strategy for Salesforce Healthcare and Life Sciences. With over 27 years of experience in the inpatient, outpatient, and vendor sides of healthcare, Erik brings a unique perspective to the complex issues facing healthcare organizations today. He has managed hundreds of health IT implementations at healthcare organizations across the US, with expertise in product and system architecture, sales, product management, training, support, and account management. On the Salesforce healthcare industry team, Erik is helping provider organizations globally, to improve patient engagement and experience. This, in turn, will drive better outcomes, reduce costs and decrease employee burnout through improved workflow efficiencies with the Salesforce healthcare platform. Erik speaks at international healthcare conferences and hosts webinars to discuss digital solutions in today’s changing healthcare landscape.

Haipeng (Mark) Zhang DO, MMSc

Medical Director of the Digital Innovation Hub
Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Haipeng (Mark) Zhang DO, MMSc, is the Medical Director of the Digital Innovation Hub at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Associate Program Director of the Clinical Informatics and Innovation Fellowship at Partners Healthcare and a Palliative Care consultant at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

He received a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed his Internal Medicine residency and chief year at Allegheny General Hospital. He is a graduate of the Harvard Interprofessional Palliative Care Fellowship, the first graduate of the Clinical Informatics and Innovation fellowship at Partners Healthcare, and completed a Masters Medical Science in Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School.

Throughout his career, Mark has held an interest in leveraging technology to improve clinical medicine. He is the founder and co-creator of Palliative Care Fast Facts for iOS and Android mobile applications. This application is one of the most widely used clinical reference applications in palliative care in the world. He is the co-founder of Cake, a venture backed company focused on advance care planning.

He also founded and was the first president of American Medical Informatics Association Clinical Informatics Fellows (ACIF), the national organization for clinical informatics fellows.