Speaker Bio Information

Keynote Speakers

Opening Keynote Speaker

Wendy Chapman, PhD

Wendy Chapman, PhD is the new Associate Dean for Health Informatics and Chief Learning Health Officer at UT Southwestern. She recently moved from the University of Melbourne where she directed the inaugural Centre for Digital Transformation of Health and was previously the chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah. She is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medicine. Her research began in natural language processing of clinical notes, and she is now dedicated to helping develop an informatics-powered learning health system. She moved with her husband and three huskies to Dallas to chase that dream.

Closing Keynote Speaker 

Lisa Bazis, CISSP, HCISPP, CHISL

Lisa Bazis is a distinguished cybersecurity leader with over two decades of experience in IT and more than 15 years dedicated to information security, particularly within the healthcare sector. As the Chief Information Security Officer for the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and Nebraska Medicine since 2018, Lisa has been at the forefront of protecting critical health information systems and driving strategic security initiatives.

Her expertise spans governance, risk management, compliance (GRC), and security architecture, while she also oversees a comprehensive security program that includes malware defense, digital forensics, and enterprise-wide cybersecurity operations.

Lisa holds multiple industry certifications, including CISSP, HCISPP, and CHISL, and she brings both technical depth and strategic vision to her role. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Master of Science in Cybersecurity, underscoring her commitment to continuous learning and leadership in the evolving threat landscape.

A passionate advocate for building resilient healthcare systems, Lisa brings a wealth of insight, practical experience, and thought leadership to every stage she steps on.

Presentations

Nora Cox

Nora Cox is regarded as one of the most knowledgeable and effective health care advocates in Texas and beyond. She spent five years in the Texas capitol helping shape health care policy, representing then-Governor Rick Perry in collaborative conversations

with legislators, private sector health care concerns and the Texas Health & Human Services Commission. In that capacity, she is credited with leading major reform efforts in Medicaid, overseeing the creation of the state’s health information exchange, and playing a key role in reorganizing the state’s fractured health and human services system.

Since then, she has been an incredibly effective advocate for the modernization of health care delivery in her role as Chief Executive Officer of the Texas e-Health Alliance. She founded TeHA as a non-profit advocacy group in 2009 to give health information technology stakeholders a voice in public policy. Under Nora’s insightful guidance, the Alliance has grown into the state’s leading advocate, for the use of information technology to improve the health care system for patients at every level, from local communities to national level policy.

During the 2017 session of the Texas Legislature, Nora helped broker a cease-fire in a longstanding dispute over the legality of telemedicine in Texas, resulting in the passage of Senate Bill 1107 that removed the final barriers to widespread adoption of the life-saving technology. She followed that up in 2019 with the passage of SB 670 and HB 1063, which significantly expanded Medicaid reimbursement for telemedicine, telehealth, and remote patient monitoring. In 2021, Nora led the passage of HB 4, which made permanent many of the telemedicine and telehealth services that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic a permanent part of the state’s regulatory framework.

Nora also holds national roles as the Chair of the Sequoia Project’s Emergency Preparedness Workgroup and as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Center for Telehealth and e-Health Law.

Nora is a highly sought after speaker and commentator on healthcare issues, consulting with entities in numerous states and at the federal level. Her expertise in the utilization of health information technology and the manner in which governments contract for essential services has proven invaluable for state and national leaders struggling to craft effective health care policy.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin and owns a hardcover first edition of Dune and Game of Thrones.

Panel Speakers

Syed AbuMusab, PhD

Syed AbuMusab is an Assistant Professor of philosophy at the University of Texas-Arlington, where he specializes in the philosophy and ethics of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. His research examines how AI systems impact fundamental social

institutions, including education, healthcare, law, art and human relationships. In addition to traditional analytic philosophy, Syed draws on feminist philosophy and religious thought, bringing a distinctive multidisciplinary perspective to addressing contemporary challenges in AI ethics. His doctoral work examined the social ontological status of chatbots and their implications for societal structures. His current work explores the metaphysics of AI and the issues of value alignment from a global perspective. Through his research in the philosophy of mind and computation, Syed aims to ensure that emerging technologies contribute positively to communities in the United States and worldwide, while remaining grounded in both philosophical rigor and ethical considerations. Examples of his recent work can be found at www.syedmusab.com.

Phil Beckett, PhD

Phil came to Houston in 1991 as a post-doctoral fellow to study protein metabolism at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center. At Texas Children’s Hospital he developed a rapid amino acid assay used to perform protein clamps and measure insulin sensitivity in children with diabetes.

Phil kickstarted his informatics career in the neonatal ICU writing interfaces to capture data electronically from monitoring systems around the concept that quality is driven by data. He co-founded a startup, RosettaMed as a developer for patient data capture applications with interfaces to electronic health records. He led the sale of the company to Kryptiq Corporation before joining Baylor College of Medicine to lead their clinical information systems implementation (Epic, iSite PACS). Phil joined Greater Houston Healthconnect (an HIE) in May 2012 and served as a pioneer for interoperability in Houston and the Southeast Texas region. Phil introduced and integrated diagnostic image sharing with the goal of reducing duplicate tests and reducing patient exposure to unnecessary radiation. As CEO of C3HIE he continued to expand HIE services across Texas through collaboration with community partners and a focus on value and delivery through account management. Since January 2025 Phil is CEO of Texas Health Services Authority, a statutory organization to promote and enable interoperability across Texas.

Phil has a major focus on usability after many years working with physicians – if it isn’t easy they won’t use it – and on patient engagement. He believes that consumers will drive the future of healthcare.

In his spare time, Phil is a sailor (on Galveston Bay), Vice Chair of Close to Home, the Homeless CoC in San Antonio; Chair of the Homeless Management and Information System and Data in San Antonio; on the eHealth Advisory Committee for Texas; Deans Advisory Committee UTSA School of Health, Community and Policy; and Co-Chair for the

Civitas national conference. All of these efforts tie together the factors that affect our health – policy, environment, community and medicine.

Sharon Blackerby, DNP, RN, NPD-BC,NI-BC, CPHQ

Xiaoqian Jiang, PhD

Dr. Xiaoqian Jiang is the Associate Vice President for Medical AI, Chair of the Department of Health Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, and the Christopher Sarofim Professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). He also directs the Center for Secure Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare (SAFE) at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Jiang is a leading expert in privacy-preserving data mining, federated learning, and explainable machine learning, with multiple grants from NIH and other prestigious awards such as the CPRIT Rising Stars and UT Stars. His research spans a range of critical health AI applications, from Alzheimer’s prevention to stroke rehabilitation, and his innovative work in human-in-the-loop AI models and computational phenotyping has earned several best paper awards from AMIA. Dr. Jiang’s mission aligns with advancing healthcare AI, fostering high-quality education, and improving patient outcomes through AI-driven innovations.

Herman Oosterwijk, MSc, MBA

Herman Oosterwijk, MSc, MBA, is a teacher/consultant in Healthcare Informatics. He has published several textbooks in this field, especially about Healthcare communication standards. He has traveled and taught in more than 20 countries to thousands of students. He is currently advising healthcare AI companies on strategy and connectivity.

Joni Padden, DNP

Dr. Joni Padden is a board-certified Clinical Nurse Specialist in Adult Health and in Informatics Nursing. Dr. Padden is a board member for the DFW ANIA Chapter, and a past member of the HIMSS Nursing Informatics Committee. In her current role as a Chief Nursing Information Officer at Texas Health Resources, which she has been in since 2020, Dr. Padden works with front line staff and clinical leadership to develop best practices to support superlative patient care and outcomes. Dr. Padden began her nursing career as a Trauma Intensive Care nurse in 1992.

Carolyn Petersen, MS, MBI, FAMIA

Ms. Petersen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Informatics at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She has master’s degrees in biomedical informatics and in exercise and movement science, and is an American College of Sports Medicine-certified exercise physiologist. Ms. Petersen is a past co-chair of the ONC Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, a former consumer representative on FDA medical device advisory panels, and a former member of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Advisory Panel on Healthcare Delivery and Disparities. She is a member of the American Medical Informatics Association’s Ethics and Journals & Publications Committees, a past chair of AMIA’s Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Working Group, and Senior Editor of Applied Clinical Informatics journal. She is also a senior editor in Mayo Clinic’s Health Education and Content Services group, where she leads a team focused on the consumer health information website MayoClinic.org.

Krish Purushothaman

Krish Purushothaman is the Head of the Implementation Services practice at CitiusTech Healthcare, where he leads the delivery of cutting-edge healthcare solutions using AI based platforms, product implementations, robotic process automation. With over 20 years of leadership experience in health informatics and digital transformation, Krish specializes in the practical application of artificial intelligence to enhance clinical workflows and improve patient outcomes. His work focuses on the responsible and scalable adoption of AI, helping healthcare organizations drive measurable impact and future-ready innovation.

Lightning Talk Abstract Presenters

To Be Announced

Poster Abstract Presenters

To Be Announced