Supporting the Frontline: Leveraging Digital to Maintain Continuity of Care for Patients with Chronic Conditions in Times of Health Crises

Dr. Charles Alessi is a globally recognized and trusted leader in health care. He brings to HIMSS a wealth of experience, particularly around health systems and the interface between healthcare, social care and the personalization of wellness. He is a physician in London, with more than 35 years of experience in all aspects of clinical practice in the UK National Health Service. Most recently, he served as the Chairman of the National Association of Primary Care, part of the NHS confederation, where he was at the heart of the recent health and social care reforms. He is also the Senior Advisor to Public Health England, a position leading thought leadership around productive healthy ageing including dementia, targeting risk reduction. Furthermore, he fulfils key roles in PHE around digital interventions, particularly those that involve behavioral change. Other responsibilities include air quality and antibiotic prescribing. He forms part of the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Panel that is formulating new guidelines around risk reduction in dementia globally and also leads thought leadership around productive healthy aging. He has extensive experience in military medicine, being a past Medical Director and Director of Clinical Governance for the British forces in Germany and was recently appointed to serve on the Reference Committee tasked with renewing military medicine in the United Kingdom. He holds a variety of international academic positions both in Europe and the Americas and has published widely in the media and journals. He is an Adjunct Research professor in Clinical Neurosciences at the Schulich School of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and Visiting Scholar at the Odette School of business in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He continues to advise major corporations and national governments around health and care reform, particularly where systemic reform and digital interventions are being considered.

Henning Schneider, CIO, Asklepios has been the head of the medical IT department at the UKE since 2008. In February 2012, he took over the role as Chief Information Officer (CIO). He is also Vice-Chair, HIMSS Board of Directors, Germany. From 2003 to 2008 he succeeded as a program manager at Siemens AG Healthcare Sector running complex customer projects to improve healthcare processes by integrating clinical workflows with IT and medical devices. Before this – from 1998 to 2003 – Henning Schneider worked at Siemens Business Services as a senior consultant for e-banking solutions. Born in Hamburg, Germany in October 1973, he studied Computer Science and Business Administration at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg and the University of Hamburg. During his work at Siemens he was the winner of the Siemens Top Plus award in Dubai as one of the leading Project Manager worldwide in 2003. In 2005 he invented and established the Imaging Science Institute (www.isi-erlangen.de) which was a joint research center between Siemens and the University Hospital of Erlangen to improve and develop medical devices, IT-Systems and processes directly in a clinical environment. In 2011 the UKE was honored with the HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 Award. In 2015 the CIO Magazine and Computerwoche honored Henning Schneider with the "CIO of the year award” (category: innovation). From October 2016 Henning Schneider will take up the role of Group CIO at the healthcare group Asklepios Kliniken GmbH, which is one of the leading private operators of hospitals and healthcare facilities in Germany.