Join us to discuss the future of healthcare as we know it with two of the leaders helping shape our future.

Ranch Kimball is President and CEO of Joslin Diabetes Center.  As Joslin’s first business executive to hold these roles, Kimball sets the strategic direction and is focused on expanding the impact of Joslin.  Dr. John Halamka MD, MS is leading the future of healthcare IT and is the CIO of the Harvard Medical School and BIDMC, CEO of MA-Share, Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network & CIO of the Harvard Clinical Research Institute.  Together they will share their insights on current status of the healthcare environment and what is to come.  

From treatment to practice, to government action and what is new today, Ranch Kimball will leadoff and give us insight on what is happening right in our backyard to change the way we know healthcare.

Kimball joined Joslin in February 2007 after serving as the Secretary of Economic Development under Governor Mitt Romney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts .  In this role he oversaw 22 agencies, four cabinet secretaries, more than 2,500 employees and a $2 billion total budget.

Kimball has spent 25 years in the private sector helping businesses grow and is widely respected in the business community, with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino calling Kimball “one of the city's most respected and well-known business leaders.”  A member of the Board of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, he ran a private equity firm for Kissinger McLarty Associates and was a partner at Boston Consulting Group, working extensively with technology, telecommunications, manufacturing, media and healthcare companies.  Jack Connors, Chairman of Hill Holliday and Chairman of Partners Healthcare, has said of him, “Kimball offers expertise in leadership, life sciences and a demonstrated ability to build relationships between legislative, business and academic communities.”

 In 2006, Kimball received the Biotech Industry Organization’s award for top state executive in the nation.  The Mass Network Communications Council named Kimball one of its “Policy Makers of the Year” for 2005.

 Next, John Halamka who is helping lead the way in developing Electric Health Record (EHR)as  well as Personal Healthcare Records (PHR) will give us guidance and insights with changes coming that will forever change the way we interact with the healthcare system.  

 While EHR digitalize all the personal health record, PHR is a new healthcare management tool that will let patients manage their own digitalized personal health records by allowing them to control and share their health data with others if they choose.  Currently about 50 major hospitals are introducing their own systems and Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault started to offer their services to the public for free.  PHR is aligned with the new administration’s initiative to build an IT infrastructure in the US Healthcare system.

Dr. Halamka created “Patientsite’ for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and its patients so that patients can log in to the secured website to download and control their own health records as well as communicating with doctors and hospital staff, making appointments and consulting about treatments. They can also download their data to GoogleHealth and Microsoft Voult.

As CEO of MA-SHARE, he oversees the Regional Healthcare Information Organization in Massachusetts which develops clinical exchange applications and policies. As Chairman of NEHEN, he oversees the HIPAA transactions exchanged among the payers and providers in New England.  Dr. John Halamka also leads the “Life as a Healthcare CIO” blog and is the Chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), and a practicing Emergency Physician.

After discussing the future of healthcare as each panelist sees it, we will open the discussion with these two leaders to questions from the audience.