UMD's CHIDS to Host Workshop on Health IT and Economics Oct. 9-10 in D.C.

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Oct. 1, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Experts from academia, industry and government will gather at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 9-10, 2015 to present and discuss the latest findings and practices connected to information technology making healthcare more patient-centered, effective and cost-efficient. The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business hosts this sixth annual Workshop on Health IT and Economics (WHITE).

The summit (8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday and 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday) is open to observers. Register in advance at http://go.umd.edu/white2015. Onsite registration is available until capacity is reached.

The landscape of healthcare is changing dramatically, said WHITE Chair Ritu Agarwal, CHIDS founding director, Robert H. Smith Dean's Chair of Information Systems and senior associate dean at the Smith School. "Continuing digitization of medical information, rapid innovations in technology and Affordable Care Act implementation is driving these changes."

Research sessions will involve faculty from the University of Maryland, Harvard Medical School, Carnegie Mellon, Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins University, University of Arizona, University of Virginia, UTHealth, Northwestern University and other leading institutions. The participants will present their latest findings in areas including:

• Advanced analytics in care delivery
• Health IT's impact of care quality
• EMR and reimbursement
• Health IT adoption
• Information and health services efficiency
• Technology for social good in healthcare
• Mobile health

"New challenges emerge every day regarding the design, management, utilization, and evaluation of health IT to support the mission of improving quality and reducing costs," Agarwal said. "They represent unprecedented research opportunities that have the potential to influence both policymakers and practitioners."

Keynote speakers (full bios here) for the workshop are:

• Kate Goodrich, director of the Quality Measurement and Health Assessment Group in the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
• Jonathan Kolstad, assistant professor for the Haas Economic Analysis and Policy Group at the University of California Berkeley and Chief Data Scientist of Picwell
• Glenn Tobin, CEO of Crimson organization (physician-focused analytics technology and services), The Advisory Board Company

The conference also will include awards presented for Best paper, Best student-authored paper and Young researcher.

WHITE is partially supported by the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES).

About CHIDS
The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) is an academic research center based in the Department of Decision, Operations & Information Technology (DO&IT) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business that collaborates closely with industry, government, and other key health system stakeholders. CHIDS' research seeks to understand how digital technologies can be more effectively deployed to address outcomes such as patient safety, healthcare quality, efficiency in healthcare delivery, and a reduction in health disparities. CHIDS offers the benefit of renowned scholars in healthcare analytics, technology innovation, adoption, implementation, and design. The pool of talent, knowledge and expertise in DO&IT is acknowledged by several publications as a top-5 performer in research production worldwide; the Information Systems group is ranked in the top-10 worldwide by BusinessWeek and U.S. News and World Report. CHIDS pioneers in the study of digitally enabled health system transformation and is widely known for its thought leadership and research collaborations.

Media Contacts: 
Kenyon Crowley, WHITE director and CHIDS deputy director
[email protected] 
301-405-9593

Greg Muraski
[email protected] 
301-892-0973

SOURCE University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business