Innovation in Action: Easing the Burden on Clinicians and Patients with Machine Learning

The end of January saw the first U.S. case of COVID-19. A little more than a week later, the first person-to-person case appeared in the U.S. and the Trump Administration declared the coronavirus a public health emergency the next day. As the world watched the disease spread, healthcare organizations had to quickly figure out how to treat, examine, and calm anxious and possibly highly-infectious patients without overwhelming their emergency rooms and ICUs.

With a call from the leadership team at Providence St. Joseph, Maryam Gholami, head of digital products, was tasked with figuring out the problem. As she’ll explain in this special HIMSS webinar, Providence, one of the largest healthcare organizations in the northwest, recognized that a huge volume of worried people would ask for tests, and Gholami turned to Chatbots and machine learning to help triage the population.

This is a familiar story in the early stages of the pandemic. Necessity required healthcare to innovate to alleviate the burden on healthcare providers and also to better serve an anxious and reeling public.

Join HIMSS for this webinar to hear Gholami and Jawad Khan, Rush University Medical Center’s director of data sciences and knowledge management, discuss how COVID-19 put machine learning and AI projects on the fast track throughout healthcare and if this accelerated path will continue when COVID-19 is in the rearview mirror.

Key discussion points:

Scaling technology quickly to address demand
How machine learning can improve patient pathways to ease provider burden
Navigating symptoms and results to steer patients
Talking to executive leadership about critical technology
Working under pressure with clinical and non-clinical staff
Lessons learned, pitfalls and hurdles and their solutions

Moderator: Jonah Comstock, Director of Content Development & Editor-in-Chief

Jawad Khan

Director of Data Sciences and Knowledge Management
Rush University Medical Center

Bio info: Jawad Khan is director of data sciences and knowledge management at Rush University Medical Center, where he leads...

Jawad Khan is director of data sciences and knowledge management at Rush University Medical Center, where he leads Rush’s analytics and data strategy, focusing on leveraging data from all sections of the business, including clinical, ERP, security, device sensors, and people/patient-generated data, to provide improved safety, better clinical outcomes, reduced cost, and innovation. Jawad has more than 20 years of experience in analytics, software development, data management, and data security. Previously, he was a lead architect at Century Link, where he provided cloud enablement strategies for data and applications to clients like GE Capital, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and Warner Bros., and a managing director at Opus Capital Markets, where he was responsible for leading analytics, data security and compliance, and software development as well as data center and infrastructure development and operations. He also worked as a software engineer consultant for one of the Big Six consulting firms. Jawad holds a degree in computer engineering from Southern Illinois University. He speaks regularly at professional and community events and is a Cricket commentator for Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ

Jonah Comstock

Director of Content Development & EiC
HIMSS Media

Bio info: Jonah Comstock is the Editor of MobiHealthNews where he oversees all editorial content and manages the news team. An...

Jonah Comstock is the Editor of MobiHealthNews where he oversees all editorial content and manages the news team. An alumnus of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and The College of Wooster, Jonah has previously written for Psychology Today and the Columbia Journalism Review. He's also a Dow Jones Copy Editing Fellow and has worked on the copy desks at Newsday and the Tampa Bay Times. He worked on the weekly radio show Uptown Radio at Columbia and brought that expertise to MobiHealthNews to help start the MobiHealthNews Podcast. Jonah works out of MobiHealthNews HQ in Cambridge, MA. He has spoken at HIMSS' mHealth Summit and served as a judge for the GSMA Global Mobile Awards. Reach him at jonah.comstock@himssmedia.com or on Twitter @JonahComstock.

Maryam Gholami

Chief Product Officer at Digital Innovations
Providence St. Joseph Health

Bio info: Maryam Gholami is the group vice president, product and engineering for digital innovations at Providence. She...

Maryam Gholami is the group vice president, product and engineering for digital innovations at Providence. She brings over 15 years of experience in building technology products and companies, leading multidisciplinary teams including product, design, and engineering, within well-established companies and start-ups such as Microsoft, Practice Fusion and Zoi Health.

At Providence, she leads the product development and operations team responsible for incubation, commercialization and growth of the consumer digital products portfolio. She is also responsible for leading the applications of advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning to bring access and convenience to consumers, simplify caregiving and increase operational efficiency. With almost 10 years of experience in machine learning and artificial intelligence including information retrieval, recommendation engines, NLP, voice, and computer vision, Maryam has been instrumental in moving healthcare forward with AI. Some of her most recent work includes AI-enabled HIPAA compliant voice skills through partnership with Amazon Alexa and digital health assistant chatbot for navigation and triage.

Prior to Providence, Maryam was the co-founder and CEO of Zoi Health, a start-up which combined the power of human coaches and AI to provide ongoing monitoring and health coaching to people with chronic conditions such as Diabetes and Hypertension.