Dr. Hesham H. Ali, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Hesham H. Ali is a Professor of Computer Science and the Lee and Wilma Seaman Distinguished Dean of the College of Information Science and Technology (IS&T), at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). He is also the deputy director for computational sciences of the Nebraska Informatics Center for Life Center (NICLS), and a member of Nebraska Center for Bio-security. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1988, and his BS and MS from the University of Alexandria, in 1982 and 1985, respectively, all in Computer Science. He has published numerous articles in various areas including scheduling, distributed systems, wireless networks, and Bioinformatics. He has also published two books in scheduling and graph algorithms, and a recent book chapter in Bioinformatics. He is currently serving as the PI or Co-PI of several projects funded by NSF, NIH and Nebraska Research Initiative (NRI) in the areas of wireless networks and Bioinformatics. He has been leading a Bioinformatics Research Group at UNO that focuses on developing computational approaches to identify and classify biological organisms. The research group is also developing a new assessment system for evaluating transcription factor binding sites tools, and a stochastic model for predicting biomarkers associated with tumor cells. He has also been leading two funded projects for developing secure wireless infrastructure and using wireless technologies to address tracking and monitoring problems in medical environments. Currently, he is spearheading or participating in several initiatives to propose innovative ways to integrate Information Technology into various fields of study including health care, community development, and education.
Kevin DeWald, Department of Health
Kevin DeWald, Compliance Officer for the Department of Health (DOH) since 2003, has played an active role in implementation and policy development for the privacy and security aspects of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rule. His experience with HIPAA implementations began in 1998 when he was part of a fast track development team for Catholic Health Initiatives hospitals to create model policy templates and implementation guides. DeWald’s compliance, training, and educational programs not only serve as the basis for general HIPAA education for all State employees of departments considered covered entities, they were also featured in an Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) publication “Information Management for State Health officials, HIPAA Privacy Rule Implementation in State Public Health Agencies”.
DeWald’s current focus of work is as the Senior Director for the South Dakota eHealth Collaborative. He led a statewide assessment in 2006 to begin to gather baseline information of where South Dakota was going with HIT. This work lead to his current task of leading a multidisciplinary cross section of relevant health care professionals, payers, and consumers from private and public sectors who are working to examine and advance HIT in South Dakota. The Collaborative, which was formalized by and Executive Order of the Governor in January 2009, is working to begin implementation of a long range plan working toward a statewide health information exchange. The Collaborative also helps to facilitate the implementation of interoperable information technology to drive improvement in the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare in South Dakota.
DeWald is the Project Director for the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC) Inter-Organizational Agreements (IOA) workgroup that is creating state-to state agreements to exchange live public health immunization registry data. These first-of-their-kind agreements have been endorsed by the American Immunization Registry Association for use nationally. In addition DeWald serves as the South Dakota liaison with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for one of the twelve Electronic Health Record Demonstration projects that CMS is undertaking nationwide.
DeWald serves on the National Governor’s Association Alliance for eHealth taskforce on Privacy, Security, and Health Care Practice. This group is examining regulatory and legal issues relative to maintaining privacy and security and will facilitate appropriate interoperable exchange of electronic health information and the impact on health care practice.
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