Panel 1A

Gaming and Virtual Reality’s Contribution to Healthcare

Name: Michael Fergusson
Title: CEO & Co-Founder
Company: Ayogo Health

Michael is the founder of Ayogo, and the visionary behind Ayogo’s Lifeplan Platform. Lifeplan aims to bridge the gap between clinicians and patients, through structured education, behavioural science-based goal setting, and shared decision making (SDM).

Michael’s leadership has seen Ayogo develop from its early years as a software development service firm to twice being named one of the world’s 100 most innovative mhealth companies with its own product brought to market.

Outside of Ayogo, Michael serves as a Member of the Board for Innovate BC, and is a multi-gold medalist at the Western Canadian Martial Arts Championship.

Name: Kruti Kanojia
Title: CEO & Co-Founder
Company: Healthy Gamer

Entrepreneur with ten years of experience bridging technology and content to create engaging digital strategies for highly targeted audiences.

Name: Suzanne Mitchell
Title: Founder & Associate Professor, Family Medicine and Palliative Care
Company: See Yourself Health LLC

Physician entrepreneur with expertise in redesigning patient engagement with digital health and novel technology solutions.

Winner of Mass Next Gen Award for Women Entrepreneurs at Mass Life Sciences Center.

NIH-funded health services researcher with special interest in solutions for socially vulnerable populations living with serious illness and chronic disease.

Name: Maxim Antinori
Title: VR Software Engineer
Company: Vicarious Surgical

Maxim is currently Senior VR Developer at Vicarious Surgical, a surgical robotics company located in Waltham, Massachusetts. The Vicarious Surgical robot design intends to maximize visualization, precision, and control of instruments in robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery. Maxim’s mission is to use the latest technologies in 3D gaming and XR to realize the modern equivalent of the Fantastic Voyage, virtually transporting the surgeon into the patient’s body.

Before beginning his role at Vicarious Surgical, Maxim spent over twenty years helping educators, museums and other companies bring their projects to life with the latest digital technology. Primarily using the Unity 3D development platform, Maxim’s work spanned a wide variety of content, from mobile citizen science apps that helped users record nature sightings, to VR rock climbing simulations.

Maxim is excited to bring his experience crafting virtual experiences to Vicarious Surgical, helping build its first surgical robot, and realizing its potential to help surgeons and patients all over the world – minimizing the risk of complications, shortening healing time, and enabling safer, more precise surgery.

Panel 1B

Climate Changes Influence on Sustainability on Healthcare

Name: Anthony Michetti
Title: Director Of Sustainability
Company: Cell Signaling
Name: Chip Amoe
Title: Director, System Sustainability
Company: Henry Ford Health

In his role, he oversees the system’s environmental efforts to improve the health of employees, patients, and the community. He assumed the new position in June 2018 after serving over seven years as Henry Ford’s Assistant Director of Government Affairs.

Prior to joining Henry Ford, Chip worked as Legislative Counsel for the American Medical Association and Assistant Director of Federal Affairs for the American Society of Anesthesiologists in Washington, DC where he advocated for a wide array of health policy issues before Congress and the Administration.

Chip holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science in political science and consumer affairs from the University of Rhode Island and a law degree and Master of Public Administration with a concentration in urban and regional affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.

Name: Monica L. Nakielski
Title: VP of Sustainability
Company: Aurora Health

Sustainability and strategy management leader with broad experience in the design and delivery of growth strategies in multiple industries with a focus on health care, program management, change management, research, development, corporate responsibility, sustainability, diversity, environmental preferable purchasing / strategic sourcing (local, diverse, suppliers, and meeting EHS and ESG criteria), communications and reporting (includes ESG disclosures).

Panel 2A

The Media’s Role in Health Education

Name: Tomas Navia
Title: Investigative Producer
Company: ABC News

Tomas Navia is an Emmy Award winning documentary producer based in New York. He is currently producing and filming for ABC News’ Investigative Unit. Tomas was previously a producer for VICE News Tonight where he worked on short and longform documentaries covering topics ranging from the finances of the nursing home industry to the spread of Spanish language disinformation online and its public health impact.

His documentary — Aging, Inc. — was awarded the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Health or Medical Coverage. Tomas is originally from Argentina, and speaks Spanish and Mandarin. He has a masters from Columbia Journalism School.

Name: Katherine Gergen-Barnett
Title: Clinician, Boston Globe Contributor
Company: Boston Medical Center

Serving on the front lines of primary care at New England’s largest safety net hospital for over 17 years while also holding multiple leadership hats including Medical Director, Residency Director, and Vice Chair.

Strong interest and background in research that is community based and focused on health equity. Contributor for the Boston Globe, public radio, and multiple television outlets. Committed to using public voice for public good and using primary care as the engine for health care transformation.

Name: Aneri Pattani
Title: National Correspondent
Company: Kaiser Health News

National correspondent with Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit outlet covering U.S. health care and health policy, where she reports on mental health and substance use.

Her work has appeared in outlets ranging from NPR and Science Friday to the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She was a 2019 recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. She is currently pursuing her master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins, where she has helped create a free online course about how to responsibly report on suicide.

Panel 2B

Consumer-Driven analytics and Behavioral Health

Name: Mia Harris
Title: VP of Growth
Company: Lyssn

As a former therapist and current VP of Growth at Lyssn, Mia is an accomplished, dynamic and results-driven leader with years of experience in high-growth companies providing outreach, sales, resources, business development, and marketing talent to physicians, mental health providers, and community organizations.

Lyssn is the only clinically validated cloud-based software that can monitor and assess every single text, call, or video for the use of evidence-based practices. Built on more than a decade of academic research, Lyssn’s 50+ externally-validated metrics provide organizations with the information they need to continuously improve.

Name: Allen Hodge
Title: Chief Commercial Officer
Company: Zephyr AI

Allen Hodge is the  Chief Commercial Officer at  Zephyr AI.. Hodge brings more than two decades of experience in building commercial organizations to this role. Prior to joining Zephyr AI, Hodge served as Senior Vice President and U.S. General Manager at BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, delivering a successful launch of Orladeyo for patients with hereditary angioedema.

At Zephyr AI, Hodge provides senior leadership and strategic vision to support the company’s commercial efforts. Hodge oversees business development, strategic partnerships, and the commercialization of tools and products.

Name: Weilin Meng
Title: Senior Director of Data Science and Outcomes Research
Company: Merck

Meng’s area of expertise include natural Language Processing, deep learning/machine learning, dig data analytics, Full Stack Software Engineering, and Data Visualizations.

Active researcher, investor, and conservation enthusiast.

Name: Chinar Boolchandani
Title: Senior Data Scientist
Company: CVS/Aetna

Maintains 8 years of professional experience in the IT industry.

Leading teams of data analysts in my last role at IBM, she delivered ETL/data-warehouse solutions to various clients and solved critical data issues using my advanced SQL and BI reporting skills.

Panel 3A

The Future of Fintech in Healthcare

Name: Karyn Becker
Title: Design Strategist
Company: United Health

Karyn is a healthcare Design Strategist who marries human insights with their commercial counterparts.

She’s helped bring new products and services to life at the Mayo Clinic Center For Innovation, Johnson & Johnson, MIT Media Lab healthtech startups, and global design firm Continuum Innovation.

She received a bachelors in Industrial Design from the University of Cincinnati and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Name: Parth Desai
Title: Principal
Company: Flare Capital

Parth is a Principal at Flare Capital Partners. He is a Board Member at SmarterDx, a Board Observer at BeMe Health and Board Observer at Flare Scholar Ventures investments Beaming Health, Birch AI and Poppins Health. Parth also supports or has co-led Flare Capital’s investments into Aetion, HealthVerity and Suki AI. He previously supported Bright Health (IPO) and Healthreveal (acquired by Accolade). Additionally, Parth is on the Advisory Board and Alumni Leadership Council at Boston University School of Public Health.

Prior to joining Flare Capital, Parth was an investor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) Ventures, where he focused on applications of artificial intelligence to healthcare operations, leading investments into Saykara (acquired by Nuance), Syllable AI and Workfusion. In addition to venture investing, he also worked with the hospital’s executive leadership team to commercialize internal innovation and structure strategic partnerships to enhance the hospital’s patient and clinician care experience.

Prior to joining NYP Ventures, Parth was a health care strategy consultant at Deloitte Consulting, responsible for developing corporate growth strategies, advising M&A transactions and supporting operational transformations for leading providers, payers and technology companies. Parth began his career as health policy analyst for the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he primarily worked with the Patrick administration to manage reform of the pharmaceutical compounding industry, authoring legislation signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick and used by the FDA to model national regulations.

Parth earned his B.S. in Biology from Boston College, MPH in Health Policy and Management from Boston University School of Public Health and Masters in Medicine from Boston University School of Medicine

Name: Joseph Lehár
Title: Senior Vice President
Company: Companion-mx (Owkin)

Over 20 years experience as an innovator and executive, focused on using data and digital technologies to transform health care.

Before my current activities at Owkin, venture and board member/advisor to multiple organizations, I led cross-functional teams and drove scientific projects at J&J/Janssen (as VP of Data Science), Google/Verily, Novartis, and CombinatoRx.

Deeply committed to developing others’ professions through mentoring, Boston University, and WEST. Previous career in astrophysics focused on gravitational lensing; at Harvard, Cambridge University, and MIT.

Speak English, German, French, and am a citizen of the UK, Canada, and USA. “Publications” below has a link to my Google Scholar profile.