Session Description: BUYSMARTER is a transformative, data-driven initiative leveraging the collective purchasing power ($24B/year) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to secure lower prices, achieve operational efficiencies, and generate cost savings on goods and services.

 
BUYSMARTER ‘s proof of concept used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technology to analyze departmental requirements based on current HHS-wide spend data. This helps identify opportunities to consolidate contract vehicles across agencies within HHS to leverage overlapping requirements at a significant cost savings for the federal government.
 
BUYSMARTER is positive initiative that is driving cultural change in support of HHS Reimagine. It is intended to focus on utilization of new and emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence and robotics, to analyze spend across HHS to make better informed decisions about price conscious purchasing in order to achieve:
•    Collaborative, collective, and coordinated forecasting across HHS that leverages buying power to generate savings through bulk purchasing and effective spend tracking
•    Organizational alignment that eliminates waste and risk through improved transparency and accountability
•    An acquisition organizational structure that is cohesive across HHS and operates in an efficient and effective

Thank you for taking the time to Converge2Xcelerate today. We thank you all and hope the experience you take away is one of value, and one you will share with others, in moving planning and initiatives forward.

The topics covered today spanned an array of themes. Moving forward, let us consider the following to delve deeper to understand:

1. Disintermediation – the effect on clinical trials, the drug supply chain, and moving information  thru a multi-stake holder processes, in real-time, to reduce costs
2. Concepts such as universal basic income, a one party payer system, and how the world can truly transform toward unity and equity
3. Keeping value and benefit to patients at the core of policy and systems initiatives
4. How will we educate patients to be better purveyors of their own health data, and partake in a new ecosystem where they become shareholders and owners

We congratulate the 2nd Annual  Innovation Ignition Competition Winners:

• 1st Place: Happify Health
• 2nd Place: BitMED
• Honorable Mention: WillChain

Thanks to:

William Baker, debate moderator, from NYU Global Debate. Thanks too, student volunteers from Columbia, New York, and Tulane Universities.

Special Thanks to:

Platinum and Blockchain Track Sponsor, Consensys Health

Bronze Sponsor, Boehringer Ingelhiem

Sponsors:  HealthVerity, Izzy, Cadent,Burst IQ, Nonnatech, 1800PR

Partners: Healthcare Informatics, Health Data Management, Pharmacy Podcast, and all our friends

In addition, thanks to:

• John Halamka
• Frank Ricotta, CEO BurstIQ,
• Matt Bird and Stella, at 1800PR
• Tiffany Delorenzo, Conference Director, calm, cool, and perpetually “on it”
• The Charles Group
• John Russo, BHTY Managing Editor, who could not join us today
• Board members, moderators, volunteers, Columbia staff, and most all – panelists and participants with an eye on the future of better health and equity, for all citizens

 
Join us and become part of the dialog.  To subscribe to BHTY, submit a manuscript, or commentary/opinion article, go to https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/user/register

Blockchain in Healthcare Today Peer Review Journal

Building Trust Through Truth...

Session Description: ACCELERATE is a transformative program in support of HHS ReImagine Acquisition.  It is designed to empower the workforce in a decentralized manner and create a flexible capability for HHS to change and implement policy. Accelerate addresses the acquisition workforce process challenges, and improve the value derived from HHS expenditure on acquisition support systems. It is architected to combine the power of four proven emerging technologies to address these fundamental challenges, and to provide a transformational enhancement to HHS Acquisition capabilities.  This program also helps align HHS with the President’s Management Agenda, the Modernizing Government Technology Act and the DATA Act.

The core of this solution is a blockchain based data layer.  This data layer utilizes data from all core HHS acquisition systems, and other external sources of acquisition data (e.g., SAM).  Machine Learning is used to cleanse this data for use by artificial intelligence based algorithms.  These algorithms are used to extract insight from the large volumes of data.  Robotic process automation is then used to power dramatic improvement in acquisition workflow and processes by eliminating repetitive tasks currently performed by the acquisition workforce.  The approach to this program minimizes business and technology risk: an agile framework is utilized to ensure flexibility; human centered design techniques provide full alignment with the OpDivs; microservices are the basis of capability delivery; existing acquisitions systems remain operational while new capability is rolled out. 

Session Description: Privacy laws like GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have created a much more regulated environment in which enterprises need to operate in regards to consumer data permissions. Built on hyperledger fabric, HealthVerity Consent is an enterprise-level platform that allows organizations to aggregate and manage all existing touchpoints across the organization in one central location to comply with evolving privacy requirements.

In this session we'll review what it took to deliver an enterprise blockchain installation where we drove business process change across departments and companies to better manage rights to data access and use. We’ll cover: 

• 5 key lessons learned you can apply to future blockchain implementations
• How to integrate into a non-blockchain ecosystem
• What challenges were faced in order to drive business process change with blockchain
• How to manage existing barriers when migrating from legacy systems and business process to distributed ledger technology

Session Description: Digitalization of Clinical Trials from End-to-End – The Right Time is Now to Jump in - there are many hype words thrown around in the healthcare sector in an effort to place the impetus on the need for change. – “disruptive,” “innovation,” “breakthrough” and more- Put aside the hype – the lukewarm approach to embracing digital technologies for clinical trials is over. The fever pitch of emerging technology applications impacting clinical trials are providing solutions for trial sponsors to combat the mounting challenges of cost and delays in bringing medicine to the market. The time is right to jump in to digitalizing the process if you want to get ahead of the curve in efficiency and efficacy to enhance patient safety and accelerate drug development. The reality is simple - cutting-edge technologies can revolutionize the clinical trials model not only by optimizing the processes but delivering more value for patients and all the critical stakeholders. This session will feature an interactive panel discussion addressing the following key points:

1. What is the roadmap for an end-to-end digitalized clinical trial? What are the limitations? What are the opportunities?

2. Debunking the myth that digitization is digitalization of clinical trials

3. Identifying all potential areas where technologies like Blockchain, Robotic Process Automation, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence can digitize Clinical Trials

4. Can digitalization meet all the expectations of all stakeholders – regulatory, patients, pharma and others?

5. The combination of AI and Machine learning for “data-driven” decision models -what are we looking to solve, what will it change?