RFID in Healthcare Education Advisory Board

Dr. Gisele Bennett, Director, Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory, Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Tech Research Institute / Georgia Tech

Dr. Gisele Bennett is the director of the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory, founder of the Logistics and Maintenance Applied Research Center (LandMARC) with the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  As a member of the scientific cadré with Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Laboratoire Optique (CNRS), she collaborated between researchers at CNRS and Georgia Tech Lorraine in the area of optical encryption. Her research interests include coherence theory applications to optical imaging systems, atmospheric turbulence and propagation, and RFID.  She is a topical editor for Applied Optics and associate editor for International Journal of RF Technologies:  Research and Applications. She holds a Patent on Integrated Sensor Radio Frequency Identification (ISRFID) with Location, has numerous patents pending, and a Copyright on a computer model for Wave Propagation through the atmosphere.  She has numerous patents pending on Container Security and led the development of the Advanced Container Security Device, a key cargo R&D initiative sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. She has served as a reviewer for the National Institute of Health and National Science Foundation proposals and a reviewer for numerous referred journals.  She is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the Optical Society of America (OSA), SPIE (International Society for Optics And Photonics), Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, Eta kappa Nu and is currently on the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) RFID Experts Advisory Group (REG).  She is one of ten fellows chosen for Georgia Tech’s University Leadership program.  She has over 85 publications in books or book chapters, refereed journals, technical reports, and workshops. She has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and a certificate in Management of Technology from Georgia Tech.

Linda R. Castro, Research Associate
ePoly Research Centre of Polytechnic School of Montreal

Linda R. Castro is a research associate at ePoly Research Centre of Polytechnic School of Montreal, as well a member of the project management team at Genivar; a consulting engineering firm; leading, in consortium, the construction of a mega hospital in Montreal. Linda holds B.Eng. and M.Eng. in industrial engineering. Currently, she is finalizing her doctorate degree in industrial engineering with orientation in technology management. For the past few years, her work has been oriented towards the optimization of inter-intra enterprise business processes through the integration of emergent technologies such as RFID, particularly within the healthcare industry. Linda specializes in assessing how intelligent products could help hospitals to develop more efficient asset management activities and she had led a project with European and Canadian stakeholders in the field. Linda has written and co-authored RFID related scientific articles, as well as has been speaker on international conferences and invited lecturer in the area of technology management. Linda is an associate editor of the Journal of Technology Management & Innovation.

Dr. Paul Frisch, Chief of Biomedical Physics & Engineering
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York

Paul Frisch is currently an Assistant Attending and Clinical Member in the Department of Medical Physics and Chief of Biomedical Physics & Engineering at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In this role, he is responsible for the investigation of new and evolving technologies and their potential application within the medical center. These investigations focus on the integration of a variety of technologies to enhance clinical care, treatment and patient safety. Additionally he manages existing technology and equipment, providing repair, calibration and preventive maintenance services to ensure regulatory compliance, as well as supporting basic research programs. His specific areas of research include electromagnetic field induced gene expression, robotic surgery, and clinical applications of wireless technology. Dr. Frisch’s previous research experiences include research in human biodynamics investigating human response to transitory acceleration, such as crash-impact and aircraft ejection and robotic applications in pharmaceutical development. Paul Frisch has a Doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering from the State University of New York at Binghamton and Masters and Bachelors degrees in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He currently serves on the technical advisory boards of CISCO, Philips Medical Systems, Health Systems Solutions and acts as the Chief Technical Officer for the RFID Consortium. He has published more than thirty-five reviewed publications and several book chapters.

Dr. William Kearns, Experimental Psychology
University of South Florida

William Kearns received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of South Florida in 1989. He has served on the faculty of the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute from 1990 to the present and was recently the director of the Computer Support Center from 1992 to 2003. He joined the Department of Aging and Mental Health Disparities in October, 2003 and is an Assistant Professor. His interests include using automation to facilitate improved care for elders with dementia and using technology to improve access to mental health services and education. He is an Associate Editor for the international journal Gerontechnology  and is USF's Executive Liaison to the Internet 2 Project , a consortium of over 200 Carnegie Research I institutions nationwide charged with developing enhanced network services supporting research and education.

Dr. Scott Leddy, Medical Director for EHR Physician Engagement
Texas Health Resources (THR)

I am presently the Medical Director for EHR Physician Engagement for Texas Health Resources (THR) and chairman of our Adhoc Technology Committee which evaluates new technologies in healthcare for use at THR. I am directly responsible for many aspects of our electronic health record implementation, and am tasked with finding new technologies and practices that enhance patient care and enhance our cost effectiveness as a system, such as Real Time Location Sensing (RTLS). Family Practice boarded MD with ED training. I also have a B.Sc. in molecular genetics, and have done graduate work in immunology. I have a longstanding interest in computing starting at age 6 when I began programming as a hobby. I then went on to work for IBM and Apple before entering clinical practice. I began to apply my interests in medicine and computing to EHR development in 2003, in the role of CMIO for Allina Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota before transitioning to Texas Health Resources in 2007. While with Allina I successfully implemented new technologies and processes such as the “ProDoc” documentation system, which utilized speech recognition and other input modalities to replace traditional dictation systems, and established Allina’s first ever emergency department scribe program.

Dr.  William H. Maisel, Director of the Medical Device Safety Institute
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Dr. Maisel is Director of the Medical Device Safety Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, MA where he has an active cardiology practice.  Dr. Maisel received his undergraduate degree from MIT, his medical degree from Cornell Medical College, and a Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.  He is an FDA consultant and past chairperson of the FDA’s Circulatory System Medical Device Advisory Panel.  Dr. Maisel’s research interests involve the safe and effective use of medical devices.  His research has received national attention – most recently for investigations concerning the security and privacy of wireless transmissions from implantable medical devices, and electromagnetic interference affecting pacemakers and implanted defibrillators.

Dr. David Parry, director of the AUT Radio frequency Identification (RFID) laboratory (AURA)
AUT School of Computer and Information Sciences

Dave Parry is a Senior Lecturer and director of the AUT Radio frequency Identification (RFID) laboratory (AURA) in the AUT School of Computer and Information Sciences. He was awarded a degree in Physics from Imperial College London, followed by a Masters in Medical Physics from St. Bartholomew’s Medical College. He gained a research MSc. in Computer Science from the University of Otago, New Zealand. His research interests include Health Informatics,  Ontology based information retrieval , and RFID applications for  pervasive computing. Current research projects include the use of of RFID in healthcare, fuzzy ontology development and implementation and information systems to support health care in developing nations. He has has published over 50 refereed articles and conference papers. In the RFID area Dave’s main interests are in deriving activity information from logs of RFID tag detection, and use of RFID to support the disabled. and elderly in their homes. The major projects he is currently involved include the use of RFID to reduce adverse drug events and other areas in operating theatres. This involves both drug-tracking and integration of RFID into a clinical information systems as well as deriving activity from passive and active tag information. In the home care arena, Dave is working with the New Zealand Foundation of the Blind to examine the use of  RFID as an assistive technology, along with work to support compliance with drug regimes and support for people with memory loss. As part of his academic work Dave has supervised a number of graduate students and teaches  papers in  health informatics and ubiquitous computing.  Dave is currently the editor of Healthcare Informatics Review Online, the journal of Health informatics New Zealand. Dave is also a member of numerous editoral boards and programme committees.

Dr. Elliot B. Sloane, clinical engineer, information scientist
Villanova University

Dr. Elliot Sloane has spent over 35 years in a dual career spanning IT and medical technologies that improve healthcare.  He is also an advisor and consultant to several US federal agencies and the World Health Organization. His first 15 years were at ECRI Institute, and, as vice president of laboratory operations he was responsible for medical device evaluations, accident investigations and ECRI’s IT design and development. After leaving ECRI, he was vice president for MEDIQ/PRN for 10 years, where he was responsible for the service, support, regulatory compliance, and quality assurance programs of their nationwide medical device and pharmaceuticals distribution, rental, sales, service and manufacturing programs. In 2000, Dr. Sloane began an academic career that has included research, teaching, and hundreds of publication on topics like Health Systems Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Medical Informatics, Health Information Technologies, Wireless Medical Device Networks, Database Management, eCommerce, eHealth, Service Oriented Architectures, System of Systems Engineering, Verification and Validation of Complex Systems, Telecommunications, Patient Data Privacy and Security, and Business Ethics. Today, Dr. Sloane is the director of Drexel University’s Health Systems Engineering Program in Philadelphia, and is developing courses and research programs in Healthcare Informatics, Medical Device Interoperability, Patient Data and Security, Mobile Healthcare, RFID in Healthcare, and related fields.  He also leads a non-profit Center for Healthcare Information Research and Policy (CHIRP), to assure the next-generation of health IT products and services are truly patient-centric, safe, efficient, and effective. Dr. Sloane is a HIMSS Fellow, an IEEE Senior Member, and a Certified Clinical Engineer.  He has served on numerous non-profit boards and committees for organizations including AAMI, ACCE, HIMSS, HITSP, IEEE, IHE, and the RFID in Healthcare Consortium.

Dr. Samuel Fosso Wamba, lecturer
School of Information Systems & Technology (SISAT)

He earned an MSc in mathematics, from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, an MSc in e-commerce from HEC Montreal, Canada, and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, from the Polytechnic School of Montreal, Canada. His current research focuses on business value of IT, inter-organisational system (e.g., RFID technology) adoption and use, supply chain management, electronic commerce, mobile commerce and electronic government. He published in European Journal of Information Systems, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce
Research, Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS) and Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS). Dr Wamba is organizing special issues on RFID for the Business Process Management Journal and Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems. He has been served as mini-track chair on the same topic for the 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), The 6th, 7th and 8th Workshops on e-Business, A Pre-ICIS Workshop Sponsored by AIS SIGeBIZ. Dr Wamba is CompTIA RFID+ Certified Professional, Academic Co-Founder of RFID Academia and Founder and CEO of e-m-RFID.