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Former Chief Privacy Officer of HHS Office of the National Coordinator to Keynote 3rd Annual PANDAS Conference in Baltimore

Lucia Savage, Chief Privacy Officer of Omada Health to present on innovative strategies to advance digital health while ensuring privacy & security of patient data

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Baltimore, MD --The privacy and security of patient data continues to be increasingly important as access to this data increases and threats to this sensitive information continue to grow. At the same time, several new federal health information policies will make electronic health information about individuals more widely available to individuals and their caregivers and health care professionals. Lucia Savage, Former Chief Privacy Officer of HHS Office of the National Coordinator, will provide the opening keynote for the Privacy and Analytics (PANDAS) conference, focusing on innovation that equips privacy teams to effectively navigate the shift that occurs when organizations begin to more frequently utilize consumer tools to deliver healthcare.

The keynote, “Alexa, why do we need APIs in healthcare,” will focus on how health systems can balance advancing digital health and patient engagement while ensuring the privacy and security of patient data. Savage’s presentation will also highlight best practices healthcare organizations can start using to reduce organizational risk and better protect patient privacy.

"With CMS predicting the increased use of 'common consumer tools' to deliver care outside of traditional brick-and-mortar environments, I hope to bring a tech-forward, HIPAA-expert perspective to hospital privacy officers to help them navigate the shift," stated Savage.

“The volume of health data available electronically has continued to grow with the adoption of consumer-facing applications focused on improving patient care. PANDAS provides our nation’s most innovative privacy officers a forum to address the new and evolving challenges these adoptions bring to healthcare,” said Nick Culbertson, CEO of Protenus, the founding organization of PANDAS. “To that end, we are thrilled to welcome Lucia. Her expertise and experience will provide unique insight as to how the industry can make important strides in protecting patient data as healthcare continues to innovate. We are looking forward to a thought-provoking discussion.”

Savage’s career has spanned healthcare across the private, non-profit, and governmental sectors. Most recently, she served as Chief Privacy Officer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. At ONC, Lucia and her team advised the National Coordinator, HHS offices, and other federal agencies about appropriate electronic health information privacy and security policies and technologies. Issues included HIPAA, state privacy law, research on human subjects, the Privacy Act, and security engineering. In that role, Savage collaborated regularly with other federal and state agencies; independent commissions including the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commissions; and foreign countries.

Prior to joining ONC, Lucia served as the Senior Associate General Counsel at United Healthcare, where she supervised a team that represented United on its work with large data transactions related to health information exchanges, healthcare transparency projects, academic research, and other data-driven health care innovation projects.

Lucia has a B.A. from Mills College in Oakland, CA, and received her Juris Doctor summa cum laude from New York University School of Law in May 1989, where she was awarded the Order of the Coif. She is a Member of the State Bar of California.

PANDAS will take place from May 8-9, 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland. For information on the conference, us the provided link: https://www.pandasconf.com


About Protenus

The Protenus healthcare compliance analytics platform uses artificial intelligence to audit every access to patient records for the nation’s leading health systems. Providing healthcare leaders full insight into how health data is being used, and alerting privacy, security and compliance teams to inappropriate activity, Protenus helps our partner hospitals make decisions about how to better protect their data, their patients, and their institutions. Learn more at Protenus.com and follow us on Twitter @Protenus.

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