The Future of Healthcare: What hope is there?

Healthcare faces many challenges in the coming decade as the population grows, grows older, and uses more healthcare resources. This talk will outline ten large trends at play in healthcare, outline problems and emerging solutions, and the role that IT can play. Time will be devoted to the role of new clinical and information technology, and these topics will be explored in the larger context of health care such as society, facilities, new locales for care delivery, and new models of care.

Presenter(s)

Ravi Nemana is the Executive Director for Services: Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) at the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at the University of California, Berkeley. Services: Science, Management and Engineering is the systematic study of the configurations of people, technology and business that produce value in service businesses. Mr. Nemana is charged with fielding a curriculum and developing research program in SSME to educate a new wave of labor that will contribute to and participate in the services economy.

Prior to joining CITRIS, Mr. Nemana served as the Senior Advisor for Information Technology and as Director of IT Research at the Health Technology Center (HealthTech), a nonprofit "think tank" funded by US and foreign health delivery systems and health plans. He directed HealthTech's efforts to determine the impact of emerging technologies on health care and care delivery using a 10-year time horizon. Mr. Nemana also chaired the Information Technology Working Group, a group of information technology executives from the nation's premier health delivery systems, such as Kaiser, Sutter Health System, Partners Healthcare, and Ascension Health, formed to review technology advances and to explore best practices in technology strategy, adoption, service delivery and service innovation.

Mr. Nemana has served as an Expert Panelist to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Institute of Medicine, and he has advised policy makers, nonprofit organizations, and governments (state, local, foreign) regarding emerging health technologies. He has also worked with research houses and technology development organizations such as Sandia National Laboratories and the National Technology Agency of Finland, and he has helped found the California Regional Health Information Organization (CalRHIO), a nonprofit organization dedicated to statewide health information sharing.

Prior to joining HealthTech, Mr. Nemana served as the Assistant Director for Technology and a founding member of the Center for Health and Technology at the University of California, Davis Health System (UCDHS). Mr.Nemana also served as the technical architect of the UCDHS Telemedicine Program and designed and directed the construction of multimedia networks and systems to provide rural and urban sites with access to medical care and distance education in the US and abroad. His work has included both rural and urban areas, including design and construction of segments of the next-generation Internet (NGI). Mr. Nemana's work has been recognized in national and international circles, profiled a documentary film and the press, and received commendations from public officials and organizations.

Mr. Nemana's interests lie in sustainable, technology-mediated service models, new delivery channels for needed medical services, the role of technology in developing countries, the role of IT in long-term care, and the design of next generation medical delivery systems. He holds degrees from the University of California, Davis and the University of Chicago, and he serves as Senior Advisor at the Health Technology Center and as member of the Technology Advisory Board of Sehda, Inc. Mr. Nemana can be reached at rnemana@eecs.berkeley.edu.