RFID in Healthcare Management Team

Dr. Paul Frisch - President and Chief Technology Officer

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.

Harry P. Pappas - Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Harry P. Pappas has been directly involved in the RFID, RTLS and Wireless industries since 1998, with “hands-on” experience in a wide variety of RFID and wireless projects across several industries including: healthcare, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and medical instruments, manufacturing, warehousing, food, and transportation. Harry is an internationally recognized RFID industry spokesperson who has been presenting educational programs around the world since the year 2000 helping to educate end users about the many uses and benefits of RFID and RTLS technologies. In April of 2004, Pappas with support of industry collogues from the USA and Europe  founded the International RFID Business Association (RFIDba), an internationally recognized, not for profit, educational, vendor neutral, trade association serving the educational and business needs of end users from around the globe. He is the Founder, Pres. & CEO of the RFIDba. The RFIDba has affiliates in many countries and is very visible at many vertical industry trade shows and conferences in all regions of the world. The RFIDba, with the support and cooperation of subject matter experts in a number of vertical industries and academicians, produces University Level, Educational Master Classes annually, in all parts of the globe. On Sept. 10, 2008, Pappas with the support of many healthcare industry professionals, RFID, RTLS, and wireless technology industry leaders, along with the support of the FDA, FCC, NIST and the academic community in the USA, co-founded the “RFID in Healthcare Consortium”(RHCC). Mr. Pappas speaks at many healthcare and medical device conferences and trade shows around the world on the many benefits of RFID and RTLS technologies to improve hospital operating efficiencies, improve patient safety and provide real time visibility to patients, staff, and assets. The RHCC provides educational programs to the Healthcare industry as well as the Assisted Living and Nursing Home Industries.

Troy T. Reiff - Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Mr. Reiff brings to RHCC more than 20 years of healthcare experience in, coronary intensive care nursing, cardiac medical nursing and long-term acute care nursing, who has built and operated hospitals and understands the value of technology and its impact on healthcare quality, cost and efficiencies.  Mr. Reiff is a reviewer of new healthcare innovation for companies with a strong emphasis on finding technology for improving quality and efficient outcomes.  He has spoken on a national level to healthcare leaders and developers of RFID/RTLS technology. Mr. Reiff has led the direction of the use of RFID/RTLS technology at St Vincent Seton Specialty Hospital by establishing a Living Lab to evaluate benefits of the technology.

Dr. Suraj Kapa - Vice President and Chief Medical Officer

Suraj Kapa has a background in mathematics and physics, and has incorporated these interests into ongoing research in cardiovascular diseases. He earned his Medical Doctor (MD) from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - New Jersey Medical School, and has since finished his training in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic. He has performed research in electromagnetic interference related to existing wireless and other technologies in the healthcare environment, and is concentrating on the interplay between resource utilization, cost efficiencies, and patient safety, and how these may be improved using existing technologies. He has published several articles and book chapters in cardiovascular disease, and lectures on the use of innovative technologies in cardiology. The University of Pennsylvania currently employs Dr. Kapa.

Dr. Scott Leddy - Vice President Educational Programs

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.

Emily Sopensky - Co-Founder, Executive Vice President

A business consultant, Emily Sopensky is the sole proprietor of The Iris Company, a communications business, specializing in strategies for startups. Her involvement with radio frequency identification began in 1996 with Texas Instruments, where she was a consultant for six years with the RFID group (then called TIRIS). After twenty years working with technology companies in Central Texas, she became the second IEEE-USA Fellow to the U.S. State Department, and relocated to Arlington, Virginia. In March 2007, Ms. Sopensky co-founded The RFID Educational Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable educational organization, to provide educational resources. Ms. Sopensky is an active member of IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.), a worldwide organization of 370,000 professional members. One of three members of the IEEE-USA board of directors elected nationally, her interests are in technology policy and radio frequency identification. She chaired the IEEE-USA Committee on Communications Policy, whose charter includes broadband policy. She was the General Chair of the IEEE RFID 2007 and 2008 technical conferences, and the Publications Chair for the 2009 conference. Additionally, she has been instrumental in IEEE forming a Technical Committee on RFID. Ms. Sopensky represents IEEE on the RFID Technology Council, an ad hoc group that supports the U.S. Senate RFID Caucus formed in July 2006. She has been an officer in several capacities with the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. In response to the growing demands for RFID and wireless technology in healthcare, Ms. Sopensky cofounded the RFID in Healthcare Consortium, and currently serves as the Vice President and Corporate Secretary. Ms. Sopensky received her M.B.A. from The Wharton School (Philadelphia, Penna.) and her B.A. from Lycoming College (Williamsport, Penna.).

Dr. John Zaleski - Vice President for Government Policies

John Zaleski apprenticed in medical device connectivity while a graduate student at The University of Pennsylvania School of  Engineering and Applied Science and while conducting clinical trials in post-operative weaning at The University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. There he developed a post-operative decision support method for weaning coronary artery bypass graft patients from mechanical ventilation. A necessary aspect of decision support was drawing data from mechanical ventilators and bedside monitors attached to live patients. Dr. Zaleski expanded his scope in the field after arriving at Siemens Health Services in Malvern, PA. There he was responsible for medical device connectivity, architecture, and the Director of Siemens’ first Medical Device Integration Research Laboratory charged with medical device and electronic health record integration principally with the Soarian® Clinicals Product Line. He was awarded Innovator of the year three years in a row, was named one of two original Principal Key Experts within an organization of more than 3,000, developed and managed new product lines from concept through FDA approval and market realization, including Siemens Health Services’ first class-2 medical device for bedside vitals collection in medical/surgical wards. Later, he assumed responsibility for Siemens critical care product line. During this time, he also wrote the industry’s first book on integrating medical device data into electronic medical records. Additionally, he has authored numerous articles and holds four issued patents. Presently, Dr. Zaleski heads the Biomedical Informatics Department at Philips Research headquartered in Briarcliff Manor, NY. At Philips, he is responsible for the global research portfolio in medical and clinical informatics related to critical and acute care, imaging oncology informatics related to women’s health, prostate and liver cancer, methylation and epigenomics. He has direct line responsibility and oversight of more than twenty clinical researchers, including physicians and other clinical staff.

Donna Baer - Vice President Membership

Donna is a successful Information Technology Executive with over 20 years experience in hospitals. Donna has held various senior positions at NYU Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Most recently, in her role as a Director in Strategic Projects in Information Technology at Mount Sinai Hospital, Donna has been responsible for the deployment of the GE/Agility RTLS Hospital Optimization Project. Her responsibilities included a in depth research and proof of concept for the RTLS vendor selection, physical inventory of 30,000 assets, RTLS infrastructure design and build, RFID tagging of 15,000 assets and the AgileTrac equipment module application design and build. Reconciliation efforts with the Clinical Engineering department are currently underway. Donna has extensive Leadership, Project Management and Business Analysis experience in the design and implementation of critical hospital applications including Cerner ADT, Scheduling and Registration, McKesson PeriOperative Scheduling and Materials Management,  Eclipsys Clinicals, and SMS/Eagle Patient Billing. Donna's years of varied hospital experience ensures an effective integration of Hospital Operations and technology. Donna earned her Master of Hospital Administration and Bachelor of Science from New York University.

Linda R. Castro - Vice President Communications and Vice President Canadian and South America Operations

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.

Stephane Pique - Vice President EMEA Operations

Stephane Pique is the co-founder, COO and Vice-President EMEA of the RFIDba. Stephane started with RFID in 1993 and was working for several companies such as Philips Semiconductors, Kudelski, Sokymat, Global ID, Seeburger, GS1 and workes since many years as an independent RFID consultant working for several Governments and multi-national companies. His business experience brought him to the position of knowing RFID from all necessary components such as the chip, the transponder and card, the middleware and data management up to the complete RFID solution and processes. Stephane was speaking at more than 80 major RFID shows around the world and is also member of the OSEC pool of experts mandated by the Swiss State Secretary of Economical Affairs (seco). He is also the initiator and project coordinator of several EU funded and EU supported RFID related projects.

Dr. David Parry - Vice President Asia Pacific

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.

Debra Braun - Vice President Conferences and Events

Debra Braun, CEO of Clinical Inservices Solutions, LLC, is a clinical implementation expert with more than twenty years of experience educating clinicians and hospital administrators nationwide. As a leader in the successful deployment of medical technologies in hospitals, she assists clinical end users in adopting new medical technologies to enhance workflow and effect change management. Ms. Braun began her career as a Registered Nurse in highly intense Emergency, Coronary, and Intensive Care units. She transitioned into nursing education and administration, eventually expanding into corporate consulting of clinical technology applications. Realizing there was a growing divide in healthcare between clinicians and implementation training for medical technologies, she combined her talents to build her business, which now serves customers globally. Ms. Braun stays abreast of current industry trends through professional programs including Certification in Emergency Nursing, National Faculty for the Emergency Nurses Association’s Trauma Nurse Core Course and Emergency Nursing Pediatric Course. She is an active member of the Honor Society for Nursing (Sigma Theta Tau International), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (currently serving on the PHR Integration Task Force), International RFID Business Association, RFID in Healthcare Consortium (current Vice President for Special Events), American Trauma Society (current President of the North Carolina Chapter), Emergency Nurses Association and Ad Hoc Member of the NC EMS Advisory Committee. Ms. Braun is a sought-after speaker and educator in the field of emergency medicine and clinical technology implementation. She has written and published numerous articles, white papers and educational curricula.

Kim Raderstorf - Director Professional Services

Kim Raderstorf works with hospitals and healthcare organizations in the role of trusted advisor for RFID and RTLS operational improvement.  As CEO of Partners In Performance LLC, Kim has over twenty years consulting experience, and over time she developed her own philosophy on organizations and technological improvement– she believes that the only way an organization can get a real understanding of what is going on is by concentrating on the system, not the individual. It’s a philosophy that allows information to flow and people feel free to say what is on their minds. Trained as an Industrial Engineer, Kim is both practical and theoretical, and has helped clients work through many challenges. Her specialty is how to successfully adapt business process changed by new technology.  Kim acts a bridge to provide critical attention to detail. She has worked in healthcare since 1990, adding capacity and bandwidth to complex projects such as deploying 46 automated transport vehicles for the Ohio State University Medical Center.   

Dr. Mohammed Maghazil - Managing Director Middle East

Dr. Maghazil is the head of application services in the Information Technology Affairs of King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center (Saudi Arabia). He worked as the clinical computing manager and the project executive for the integrated clinical information system. He has M.Sc. and D.Sc in Engineering Management & Systems Engineering from George Washington University. He is now the project director for the "Building a Smart Hospital using Smart Technology" project as it is one of the strategic projects for the hospital that is using RFID and similar technologies.