Daniel Summa
Board of the U.S. Ecological Advanced Research & Conservation Hub
Using Machine Intelligence to Cure Lyme Disease
Pennsylvania is ground zero for Lyme Disease with more than 7,350 confirmed cases in 2015 or more than 25% of the 28,000 confirmed cases nationwide. Actual infection rates are widely believed to be 10 times the reported cases or close to 300,000 new Lyme cases annually.
This talk will describe how the U.S. Ecological Advanced Research & Conservation Hub (USEARCH) is using machine intelligence to take in data to research and explore the connections between Lyme Disease, genetic information and environmental factors.
Daniel (Dan) Summa is the Executive Director and Member of the Board of the U.S. Ecological Advanced Research & Conservation Hub. Over the last 25 years Mr. Summa has been a successful technology entrepreneur having built or been an advisor to several successful startup companies with the most recent being Kindling, an innovation software company he founded which was sold to Spigit in 2016. Mr. Summa is a former partner in Genesys Partners, a New York City investment banking, venture capital and venture development company that specializes in the early stage digital information industry. Dan is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School. He is involved in various charities and community organizations including Semper Fi Fund and other veteran causes.
Kevin Wu
R&D Engineer
Musculoskeletal Tissue Foundation, Jessup PA
Biologics Solutions Based on Human Allograft Tissue Science and Technologies
Kevin Wu is a graduate of Cornell University, where he received his Master of Engineering degree in Biomedical Engineering. He is currently an R&D Engineer in MTF’s Wound Care division, which offers highly advanced wound care solutions that are safe, clinically based, cost-effective, and work in concert with the body’s natural healing process.
Barry Demansky
Associate Director
Musculoskeletal Tissue Foundation, Jessup PA
Barry Demansky received a Bachelor of Arts in Technical Theatrical Production from Penn State University in 1991 and a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechatronics from Temple University as an adult learner in 2012. His career arc has taken him from lighting design and hand crafting stage properties, apprenticing in foundry patternmaking and industrial prototyping, to CNC programming and machining footwear molds, cement industry ball mills, kilns and pressure vessels to his current role as Associate Director of Specialty Spine Operations at MTF Jessup’s facility.
Drew Kearney
Signallamp Health
Why Our Healthcare System Resists Innovation & What To Do About It
Sophisticated, disruptive and costly new technologies rarely gain traction in healthcare. Successful innovators are uninhibited, but mindful of the status quo and understand that technology alone cannot change the way healthcare services are delivered by physicians, consumed by patients, and financed by payers.
Drew Kearney, JD, is the co-founder and CEO of Signallamp Health. Drew’s work on value-based payment models and HIT taught him that the most under utilized asset in healthcare is the physician-patient relationship. Drew believes that extending this relationship beyond the clinical setting without impeding physician workflow is essential to improving the management of chronic health conditions.
Signallamp’s proprietary process and technology aggregates and transforms data from both a patient’s medical history and real-time personal interactions into structured, actionable intelligence to improve patient care, while generating monthly recurring revenue by providing care management services on behalf of providers.
Drew lives in Northeast PA with his wife, Colleen and three children, J.D., Gwendolyn, and Leland.
Ed Connors
CEO
Heudia Health, East Stroudsburg PA
From Vision to Value – Aligning Medical Care with the Social Determinants of Health
Heudia’s presentation will explore an entrepreneur’s journey that led him away from the world of STEM education to create a highly scalable technology platform that addresses the focal point of most Value-Based Care Models. The result is a highly transformative and scalable approach that has been proven to increase access to care by as much as 180% over three years and can reduce avoidable Emergency Department expense for Medicaid by $3.7 Billion annually.
A key market innovation reduces a complex, labor intensive, methodology into a simple subscription-based software service that streamlines the entire process providing customers with an affordable, efficient, and impactful product that provides significant clinical, economic and community impact while returning high margins typical of the SaaS industry.
Serial Healthcare Technology entrepreneur with 25 years product development/quality management and public health experience. Nominated for the National Medal of Technology and innovation in 2016 for his work to align medical care with the social determinants of health. He is the driving force behind Heudia Health which emerged as an extension of a multiyear collaboration with Dr. Michael Dulin, Chief Clinical Officer for Analytics and Outcomes Research at Carolinas Healthcare System.
Mr. Connors was also the lead technologist on the National Healthy Start Association’s Maternal and Child Health’s HIE Interoperability Toolkit program funding by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. He is intensely focused on improving health outcomes for vulnerable populations through the empowerment of community-based participatory research teams, capacity building, and community engagement predicated on using software workflows and toolkits to digitally scale and sustain healthcare related innovations.
Jennifer Walsh, Esq.
Senior Vice President and General Counsel
The Wright Center, Scranton PA
Harnessing Technology to Foster a Learning Culture Focused on Quality Improvement
Jennifer Walsh, Esq. joined The Wright Center in August 2016 as Senior Vice President of Organizational Integrity and Compliance and General Counsel. Jennifer’s key responsibilities include oversight of organizational compliance, development of a robust patient engagement program and serving as legal counsel for The Wright Center, amongst additional responsibilities that arise within a dynamic, community owned non-profit. She has professional experience in representing clients in both state and federal courts, enhancing risk management initiatives, training board members and management/supervisors on critical areas of employment law and has presented seminars to client groups and attorneys on issues of importance in labor/employment law, social media and litigation arenas. Jennifer enjoys spending time with her family, is learning the ropes of making natural/organic soap and is energized by the potential to impact healthcare in America by bolstering meaningful organizational innovations right here in NEPA.
Chason Sordoni
Chief Operating Officer
SnapSlide, Moscow PA
Revolutionizing Closures
Chason Sordoni is the COO of SnapSlide and a native of Northeast Pennsylvania, where his family has been operating businesses for four generations, including manufacturing, telecommunications, banking and construction. Growing up in operating businesses, Mr. Sordoni learned the value of team-work, trust and accountability. He is enthusiastic about SnapSlide as a cost-saving and environmentally-conscious convenience for the entire world, but he is passionate about SnapSlide becoming a life-changing solution for those with disabilities.
Marilyn White
Northeast Regional Cancer Institute, Scranton PA
Northeast Regional Cancer Institute: A Model of Cooperation
Marilyn White is the former Northeast Regional Cancer Institute VP of Registry Services, now NRCI Consultant. Marilyn was responsible for forming the unique NRCI community based registry and developing it into the success that it is today.