Biomedical Informatics Industry Advisory Group

As chief executive officer, Swati Abbott, MS, is leading the effort for Blue Health Intelligence (BHI®) to leverage data insights to develop innovative analytics solutions. This strategy includes extending the company’s reach to external audiences, while enhancing Blue Health Intelligence’s value to Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies.

Prior to joining Blue Health Intelligence, Abbott served as president of Elsevier/MEDai, an industry leader in predictive analytics, where she provided leadership and strategic vision to position the company at the forefront of the healthcare industry. Before MEDai, Abbott was managing director for the Medical Management Strategic Business Unit at ViPS, where she led strategic solutions development for medical management data warehousing and HEDIS reporting for healthcare payer clients.  Abbott was also involved in leading SoftMed Systems, Inc. to create and provide solutions for hospitals and integrated delivery networks in the key areas of medical chart abstraction, quality assurance, utilization management, risk management, and regulatory reporting.

As a respected industry leader, Abbott is a regular speaker at industry conferences, presenting on topics related to predictive modeling, medical home and healthcare clinical analytics. She is also a contributor and member of the editorial board for Predictive Modeling magazine and has been quoted in notable industry publications regarding the use and future of predictive analytics, the state of healthcare analytics, and quality improvement initiatives. In 2010, Frost and Sullivan recognized Abbott as one of the Movers and Shakers in healthcare.

Abbott holds a Master of Science in computer science and a Bachelor of Science in physics from Delhi University, India.

Truman K. Butler is Vice President, Head of Global Risk and Compliance Assurance at Shire Pharmaceuticals. He is based in Bannockburn, IL. Truman’s responsibilities include International Monitoring and Data Analytics, Global Investigations, Business Continuity Management and Enterprise Risk Management. Truman joined Baxalta (Shire) in June 2015 as Head of Intercontinental Compliance which included responsibilities for Latin and South America, Asia Pacific and Russia and CIS countries. Prior to joining the company, Truman has held several senior legal and compliance positions at Wells Fargo, Wachovia and Lloyds TSB Group.

Truman is an international lawyer with two decades of experience. He is admitted to practice law in England and Wales (Barrister at Law) of the Middle Temple, USA (North Carolina) and The Bahamas.

Truman is a frequent speaker on Ethics, Corporate Governance, Third Party Risk Management and International Anti-Corruption. He is Co-author of The FCPA/UK Bribery Act –A Ready Reference for Business and Lawyers. Truman has earned a LLB (hons) degree from the University of Wolverhampton, England and a Master of Laws degree in International Law from the Dean Rusk Center, University of Georgia.

Prashila Dullabh, MD, is a senior fellow and Health Informatics Program Area Director at NORC at the University of Chicago.  Dullabh is a clinician informatician with more than fifteen years of experience in informatics, healthcare and health services research.

At NORC, Dr. Dullabh directs technical assistance, evaluation and strategic projects for federal agencies and foundations. Dr. Dullabh has a specific interest in health information exchange, consumer e-Health, and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR).  Her project work has involved identifying gap areas and strategic investment opportunities for PCOR data infrastructure for the Department of Health and Human Services and research topic prioritization for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.  Dr. Dullabh also directs large program evaluations for the federal government and foundations. She recently completed a five-year mixed-method evaluation of the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Dr. Dullabh has also led various other evaluations including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Fee-For-Service Personal Health Record Pilot, the Common Ground evaluation for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the EHR-Lab Interoperability and Connectivity Specification (ELINCS) standard for the California Healthcare Foundation, and the CMS electronic prescribing pilots. Additionally, Dr. Dullabh has directed large technical assistance centers, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) National Resource Center for Health IT and the Health Resources and Services Administration Health IT Technical Assistance Center.

Prior to joining NORC, Dr. Dullabh served as the Informatics and Clinical Team Manager at PHNS/Adventist Healthcare where she was responsible for large-enterprise wide clinical implementation projects.

Susan Nedza, MD, MBA, is Senior Vice President of Clinical Outcomes Management. MPA is an analytic health care consultancy that specializes in improving outcomes for patients, physicians, providers, and payers. Dr. Nedza leads the firm’s work in the areas of clinical quality assessment and improvement, bundled payments, and comparative effectiveness.

Dr. Nedza’s broad experience as a board-certified emergency medicine specialist, a chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Senior Executive at the American Medical Association (AMA), and as a health information technology executive has given her a unique vantage point of the confluence of clinical care, health care delivery systems, clinical informatics, and health care policy.

Prior to joining MPA, Dr. Nedza served as the chief medical officer at AIM Specialty Health, a subsidiary of Anthem, where she led the development and deployment of evidence-based clinical algorithms that were utilized to manage appropriate utilization of advanced imaging, cardiology, sleep management and oncology services for over thirty health plans.

Dr. Nedza is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University. She has served as invited faculty at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, the master's program for Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety, and in the Department of Emergency Medicine. Her research includes completed work on behalf of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation studying the role professional organizations play in helping support physician adoption of health information technology.

Dr. Nedza has served as a member of panels at the Institute of Medicine, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, The Joint Commission and participated in the S&I framework activities at the Office of the National Coordinator. She has given numerous national and international lectures on health policy and quality and has published a number of peer-reviewed articles as well as authored textbook chapters in the area of quality and patient safety.

Dr. Nedza is board-certified in emergency medicine and clinical informatics. She received her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Gannon University and her doctorate from Loyola-Stritch School of Medicine. She also completed the Executive Master's Program at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Krishna has been a leader in health care for more than 15 years. He currently serves as a Vice President at Blue Cross Blue Shield, responsible for developing and executing their health data exchange strategy with providers and external partners across five states. Before joining BCBS in November 2017, he served as Chief Administrative Officer of DuPage Medical Group and its subsidiary Boncura Health Solutions. Other roles at DuPage included Chief Information and Transformation Officer. Prior to DuPage, he held leadership roles at Epic Systems Corporation. Krishna teaches in The University of Chicago’s Master of Science in Biomedical Informatics program and is actively involved in healthcare associations and local nonprofits. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (India); a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago; and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Jonathan C. Silverstein currently serves as Chief Research Informatics Officer at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Internationally known for his expertise and research in the application of advanced computing architectures to biomedicine, Dr. Silverstein was Vice President and Davis Family Chair of Informatics at NorthShore University HealthSystem and the associate director of the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.

He most recently served as Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Tempus. Dr. Silverstein is recognized as one of three founding scientific directors of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium. He was an attending general surgeon for seven years while also serving as the lead physician informatician for enterprise EMR deployments at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Silverstein earned his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis and his Master of Science from the Harvard School of Public Health. He is a Fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and of the American College of Medical Informatics. 

Timothy F. Smith, MHA, is the National Leader for Deloitte's Healthcare Information Technology practice focused on all aspects of technology enablement in the health system. He has over twenty years of consulting experience focusing on the healthcare and insurance industries with an emphasis on large scale systems integration and operational redesign projects. His healthcare experience has focused on the implementation of clinical information systems and revenue cycle improvement projects for healthcare providers and underwriting, claims, sales and other functions for health plans. His insurance experience has focused on group insurance (disability, life, accident, long term care), and other individual products. Timothy’s other industry experiences include utilities and the energy industry. His project leadership responsibilities have focused on all aspects of information technology delivery, EAI, custom and package technology implementation and integration, internet/portal strategy and delivery, and a variety of mission critical applications in healthcare and financial services.

Dr. Underwood, an FSA and OB/GYN trained medical informaticist, leads Health Care Service Corporation’s (Blue Cross Blue Shield IL, MT, NM, OK, TX) Clinical Analytics Department where he is responsible for assessing the performance of HCSC's clinical programs, products, and services.  Prior to HCSC he was at Deloitte Consulting where he focused on the use of informatics and analytics to improve health care delivery and efficiency. Prior to Deloitte, he led medical informatics and quality metrics for Aetna and CIGNA where he focused on advanced analytics and predictive modeling in the secondary use of health care observational data. He earned his MD at Temple University School of Medicine; MBA in Finance, Statistics and Health Administration at the Booth Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago; MS in Bioinformatics from the Duke University School of Medicine, and BS Economics with a Major in Actuarial Science from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.