Date: Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007; 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Venue: Armenise Building Amphitheater,
Armenise Building, Harvard Medical School
200 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115.
RSVP: www.acteva.com/go/necina. (online registration required)
Co-Organizers: NECINA, CSSA at HMS, MJNE, SAPA-NE

The Conference will discuss how recent information technology has helped to develop scalable informatics framework in healthcare industry, how such informatics frameworks bridging clinical research data and the data banks from basic science research and helping researchers to better understand complex diseases, and what the hotspots will be in the coming years regarding the BioIT or HealthIT. The conference will bring different views from scholars in Harvard Medical School, scientists from top pharmaceutical companies, senior engineers/managers in IT industry and senior IT managers in BioIT domains.
Agenda:
1:00pm - 1:30pm Registration and Networking
1:30pm - 1:40pm Opening Remarks
1:40pm - 2:25pm Keynote speech 1
"Embracing the Emerging Era of High-Content eBiology: Is bioinformatics A Stepping Stone Towards Predictive Medicine?"
Tianhua Niu, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
2:25pm - 3:10pm Keynote speech 2
"Analysis of Cancer Research in E-Era: Biology, Population Science and Biostatistics/Bioinformatics"
Yi Li, Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
3:10pm - 3:30pm Break
3:30pm -4:30pm Panel discussion
Qi Li, Vice President, Clinical Strategies at Carefx
Ken Waldbillig, Director of Clinical Informatics, EMC Corporation
Tianhua Niu, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
4:30pm -5:00pm Networking
Cost: Free to public but online registration is required
Online registration: www.acteva.com/go/necina.

Contact: Jerry Xu (Jerry.Xu@necina.org)
Can Cui (Can.Cui@necina.org)
Yunchu Li (Yunchu.li@neicna.org)
Qian Wang (qian_wang@hms.harvard.edu)

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Yi Li is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics in Harvard School of Public Health and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. He is the Head Statistician for the Head and Neck program and the Population Science program in Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr Li's expertise covers a wide range of Biostatistics, including survival analysis, cure modeling, large dimensional data analysis, semiparametric regression and Bioinformatics. He has published extensively in leading statistical journals as well as in leading medical journals.
Dr Li is the PI or co-PI for various NIH grants and contracts and his methodological work is being supported by a sustained R01 grant. Dr Li was the recipient for a number of prestigious awards, including International Biometric Society John van Ryzin Award, American Statistical Association David P. Byar Young Investigator Award, Janssen Research Foundation Chair in Survival Analysis (Belgium) and Roger L. Nichols Excellence in Teaching Award (Harvard).
Dr. Li is currently serving on the review panel of Mathematical Reviews and is an Associate Editor for Biometrics, the flagship journal of Biostatistics.

Dr. Tianhua (Tim) Niu is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and an Assistant Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at the Dept. of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health. He is the Director of Bioinformatics at the Division of Preventive Medicine, Dept. of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Niu has authored/co-authored 63 original articles and 7 review articles in world's premier peer-reviewed journals, and 5 book chapters. In 2006, jointly with Prof. Kenneth Baclawski (Northeastern University, USA), Dr. Niu has published a book entitled "Ontologies for Bioinformatics" USA, by the MIT Press. Dr. Niu and his colleagues developed novel statistical methodologies for genetic analyses, including POLYMORPHISM, HAPLOTYPER, PLEM, GeneScore, GSEM, CHB, and several visualization bioinformatics software packages such as SeqVISTA. Dr. Niu's major research interests encompass bioinformatics, databases, genomic epidemiology, functional genomics, and mathematics.

Qi Li, M.D., M.B.A., is the vice president of Clinical Strategies at Carefx with headquarter in Scottsdale, AZ. In this role, Dr. Li defines the go to market strategy and leads the effort to evolve the company’s clinical workflow offerings that will bridge the gap between evidence based medicine and information technology for the providers in healthcare organizations. Additionally, Dr. Li works with the industry’s brightest minds to establish the company’s clinical advisory board to help the company focus marketing and development efforts on products that reduce medical errors, improve clinician productivity, and enhance care quality.

Dr. Li has nearly 15 years of healthcare informatics and clinical practice management experience, including significant expertise in informatics design, electronic health record (EHR) development and adoption to support quality improvement and patient safety. In his previous position at Partners HealthCare, Dr. Li led the internal development of the Longitudinal Medical Record (LMR) adopted enterprise-wide by 5,000-plus physician users at all primary care and specialty clinics. The LMR is now the foundation of Partners’ ambulatory clinical data standards, clinical record and workflow toolset. Additionally, as a member of Partners’ Clinical Informatics R&D group led by Dr. Blackford Middleton, Dr. Li spearheaded research efforts measuring the effectiveness of the LMR and new technologies.

Prior to Partners HealthCare, Dr. Li has led product management at several healthcare technology companies including PatientKeeper, a mobile healthcare solution vendor, and McKesson Medical Management Group, a payer analytics solution provider.

Dr. Li is an active speaker at many national healthcare forums including HIMSS, AMIA, and MRI. Dr. Li also serves advisory roles to several Boston based healthcare technology startup companies.

Dr. Li earned his combined M.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Mass and a bachelor’s degree from University of Southern Maine. Dr. Li was also educated in China at Shanghai JiaoTong University

Ken Waldbillig is a leader in healthcare, a fast growing business unit at EMC. The Healthcare unit is central to EMC’s growth strategy. Waldbillig is charged with shaping EMC’s strategy for consolidation of pharmacogenetic and clinical information infrastructure. Waldbillig’s organization works closely with the leaders in drug discovery, clinical trials, and commercial application of diagnostic and therapeutic sciences. His teams focus on reduction of feedback loops and the elimination of friction in the flow of information. Nine years ago, before assuming his position at EMC, Waldbillig had 15 years of healthcare systems experience. He has an extensive background in software systems development and integration of multimedia healthcare IT. Much of his early career was involved with multi-dimensional imaging product development, sales and marketing. More recently Waldbillig was a facilitator of convergence strategies involving enterprise Open Systems Archives and PACS. Waldbillig earned his degree in Radiological Science at Marquette.

“Our mission is to facilitate the healthcare industry’s transition to an information centric business by embedding the EMC offering within application solutions and services provided by leading partners and customers.”

About Event Organizers:
NECINA (New England Chinese Information and Networking Association) is a premier hi-tech professional association founded in 1996 by some of New England's most successful IT industry entrepreneurs such as founders of Cascade Communications, Sycamore Networks, and ArrowPoint Communications. Its mission is to provide a platform to foster entrepreneurship and leadership by combining the leading edge technologies with best business practices. In the past ten years, NECINA has delivered high quality conference programs and networking events to its increasingly diversified members in an effort to maximize their awareness and involvement in new technologies and emerging business opportunities.

CSSA at HMS Chinese Scholars and Scientists Association at Harvard Medical School (CSSA at HMS) was formed in early 2007. The membership of the association is free and open to all Chinese both from Mainland and Taiwan in HMS and affiliated institutes, HSDM and HSPH as well as scholars of other nationalities who are interested in joining in.

MJNE Monte Jade New England is a group of professionals primarily in the science and technology fields who share a common vision that innovation, career and business development opportunities can be created through interchange of information and active collaboration amongst individuals and institutions with different strength and expertise locally and internationally. Together the group works to create functional networks within and outside the organization and to foster connections between North America and Far East by sponsoring conferences, workshops and informal meetings to share insights on new technology, business and
career opportunities, as well as other socioeconomic issues that are of general concern. The organization has wide connections with other professional/business organizations in this region and around the world. It is one of the Monte Jade Global family of associations with over 15 member organizations throughout North America and Asia.

SAPA-NE A major non-profit organization for Chinese-heritage pharmaceutical professionals in the USA. Founded in 1993 and headerquartered in the NJ/NY/CT tri-state area, SAPA grew rapidly and has become one of the most active and well-recognized Chinese-heritage enduring professional organizations in the United States. SAPA is an independent, nonprofit organization with nearly 4000 members in more than 35 states in USA, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan united by a commitment to promoting pharmaceutical science and technology and their essential roles in fostering member's career development. SAPA's New England Chapter, SAPA-NE, aims to promote pharmaceutical exchanges and cooperation in both industry and academia between China and the USA and to assist career opportunities and development for our members in New England area.