The annual PANDAS Live virtual event brings together the premier healthcare compliance professionals from across the country. We come together once a year to exchange best practices in patient privacy monitoring and controlled substance diversion surveillance, participate in discussions and forums at the leading edge of data analytics in healthcare, and build an active community that is the driving force for improving healthcare compliance standards and practices.
Hi PANDAS Member!
Can you believe it? It is already time for our sixth annual PANDAS Live conference. This last year has further proven just how incredible our customers are, and I have been humbled by the continued strength, resilience, and commitment our customers have shown.
While we are once again virtual, we will have plenty of opportunities to connect with each other through sessions, breaks, and breakouts. And, once again, we now have the opportunity for customers across the country to attend and share ideas, further strengthening our community with the ultimate goal of reducing risk to hospitals, health systems, and patients.
Speaking of that, our theme this year is “Reducing Risk. Strengthening Community.” PANDAS - which stands for People and Analytics - was built on the idea that the best way to grow is to grow together. When we combine the power of artificial intelligence with the expertise and leadership of our customers in healthcare compliance analytics, we help ensure that institutions are working efficiently, reducing risk across their organizations, and maintaining the trust of patients who seek care within their organizations.
Once again, the PANDAS community is thrilled to welcome exciting and visionary speakers such as our keynote, Alexis Gilroy, White House advisor on privacy and Practice Leader - Healthcare & Life Sciences at Jones Day. She will focus on various emerging areas, including COVID-waived services, multi-jurisdiction activities, telehealth, information blocking, data ownership, and pricing disclosures. In addition, we are proud to feature presentations from our customers as they recount their journeys with Protenus and the best practices they have implemented to optimize their experiences.
While we have expressed this year over year, the sentiment still remains true: your contributions and valuable insights continue to advance your organizations while leading the industry. We are proud to be part of thought-provoking discussions and innovation with you.
We welcome you to explore this website - it has everything you’ll need to enjoy two days of engaging sessions and community. Please reach out to your customer success manager or PANDAS@protenus.com if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you (virtually) in May. Thanks for joining us!
Stay safe and best wishes,
The Protenus PANDAS Team
Under Nick Culbertson’s leadership, Protenus has grown to become the leading healthcare compliance analytics platform, hired more than 100 team members, and established an innovative community of healthcare compliance professionals, PANDAS.
While serving in the U.S. Army as a Green Beret, Nick specialized in human intelligence network gathering and analysis. This knowledge and expertise play into Nick’s skills in building behavioral profiles to train artificial intelligence, but also to lead teams of experts from diverse disciplines and backgrounds in achieving shared goals. In addition to Protenus being named the 2020 KLAS Category Leader in Patient Privacy Monitoring and a Gartner 2019 “Cool Vendor” in Healthcare Artificial Intelligence, Nick has also been named one of “Healthcare’s Entrepreneurs to Know” by Becker’s Hospital Review and received SmartCEO’s Executive Management Award. He was also named one of Baltimore’s Top 40 under 40. In 2019, Nick was named a finalist in EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Mid-Atlantic region.
Prior to attending medical school and founding Protenus, Nick spent four years as a biomedical researcher at Johns Hopkins University, from which he holds a bachelor's degree in cellular biology. He also helps run The 6th Branch, a veteran-led community service organization in East Baltimore. During his eight years with the U.S. Army veteran, Nick was awarded two Bronze Stars, one for extraordinary valor.
Christa White brings more than a dozen years of leadership and experience in customer engagement, training, and support for software platforms to her work leading Protenus’ Customer Success and Professional Services teams. Her work involves collaborating across the revenue, product, and technical operations teams to streamline and optimize the customer journey. She is also engaged in crafting meaningful customer relationship management initiatives.
Prior to joining Protenus, she spent eight years at Booz Allen Hamilton as a senior technologist. Her experience there ranged from managing a support team for thousands of global users to developing and delivering precision technical documentation for Department of Defense clients.
Christa holds an MBA from the combined University of Baltimore/Towson University program. She received her BS in Applied Mathematics with a minor in Economics from Loyola University in Maryland.
James leads all aspects of product management and product design at Protenus. He brings 10 years of product management experience to Protenus. James leads the cross-functional team that is responsible for improving the Protenus platform; with his team, he sets the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition for our platform and modules.
Before joining Protenus, James was the VP of Product at Klara, a healthcare communications platform, where he focused primarily on their EHR integration and implementation strategy. He previously worked at Cota, a real-world data oncology startup where he led product development for providers and life sciences. During that time he worked with some of the world’s leading cancer minds and institutions, such as Memorial Sloan Kettering, Novartis, and IBM’s Watson for Oncology. He is a graduate of UMass Amherst, majoring in political science and journalism.
Alex has run the gamut of roles at Protenus, from data engineering to customer experience. Recently, Alex has shifted gears and joined James in our product organization as the product manager for privacy. In this role, Alex works with stakeholders across the company to ensure that we continue to provide the level of services that earned our KLAS Category Leader award in privacy monitoring for two consecutive years.
Before joining Protenus, Alex was a Venture For America Fellow, a software engineer at several local tech startups, and the co-founder of SOS4 Cancer, a non-profit organization that supports teens fighting cancer. Alex has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Washington and Lee University, and a master’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins.
Ellen followed her passion for data analysis from experimental science into the data science field. As director of data science, she oversees the research and development of the analytics component of the platform, with a team focused on analyzing user behavior in the EHR to find cases that are delivered to our customers.
After studying math and chemistry as an undergrad, she earned a doctorate in neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University studying how neural activity represents experience in brain systems related to memory formation. Ellen was drawn to Protenus by the enormous potential in healthcare data and the desire to extract meaningful and useful signals from this data.
Ellen is a proud UNC Tarheel and North Carolina native although she’s called Baltimore home for many years. She’s been deeply engaged in the Baltimore community through nearly a decade volunteering with Thread, a program that builds support networks around students and young adults facing significant challenges.
Erika earned her B.S. in math from the University of Chicago and earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University. She is passionate about using quantitative analytics and machine learning to unlock insights from data. She loves working at Protenus because of the people, and the opportunity to positively impact the healthcare industry through data science and AI.
As a Platform Product Manager, Mitch manages the development roadmap for the shared infrastructure that empowers our compliance analytics solutions.
Prior to Protenus, Mitch spent nearly 8 years at Epic, where he supported reporting infrastructure and strategy for several multi-state healthcare organizations. Internally, he led many company-wide initiatives aimed to increase customer adoption of new software features and technology integrations.
Mitch holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University.
Scott is our product manager responsible for the investigation workflow and reporting tools in the application. Prior to starting with Protenus in 2020, he held product roles in both healthcare and hospitality technology. He has overseen the development of business tools that leverage AI and Machine Learning to optimize revenue, reduce costs, and improve patient outcomes.
He loves helping users take advantage of data and technology to streamline their work and make better decisions.
Russell brings more than a decade of pharmacy operations and leadership experience to Protenus, including an emphasis on managing proactive drug diversion programs.
Prior to joining Protenus as a Senior Customer Success Manager, he spent 5 years at Baptist Health as the Special Projects & Indigent Care Coordinator within the inpatient pharmacy. Among his various data driven projects, he led a multidisciplinary team to identify drug diversion and educate staff on the organization’s proactive diversion posture. At Protenus he collaborates with customers and colleagues alike to drive a positive customer experience and deliver value with healthcare compliance analytics.
Russell holds a BS in Biology from the University of Central Arkansas, is a nationally certified pharmacy technician, and is an active member of the board HealthcareDiversion.org.
Janelle Harrison is a Risk Management IS Analyst with Vidant Health as part of the Office of General Counsel – Risk Management. She has 24 years in Healthcare with focus on Physician Billing, Compliance/Auditing (Hospital and Physician), and Data Analytics. In addition, Janelle is a Registered Health Information Technician (RHIT) and Certified Coding Specialist-Physician based (CCS-P) and holds her Associates in Applied Sciences degree from Pitt Community College in Health Information Technology.
Ms. Galbo oversees the business ethics and corporate compliance program, including education and training programs, compliance plan development and reporting mechanisms, compliance investigations, vulnerability and risk assessment and administering the conflict of interest policy and programs. In her role, Ms. Galbo is responsible for planning, oversight, and coordination of activities to drive effective compliance with regulatory requirements and policies, and to foster a work environment where workforce members do the right thing to protect Rady Children’s patients, and the communities we serve. Ms. Galbo joined Rady Children’s in 2013. Ms. Galbo received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Spanish (1991), a Master’s degree in Business Administration (2000) and she is certified in Healthcare Compliance.
Mariana Ojeda serves as the Compliance Auditor/Analyst for Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. In her position, Mariana is responsible for conducting electronic health record monitoring audits to help ensure compliance with applicable statutory and regulatory requirements, as well as participating in other compliance operations for the department. Prior to this position, Ms. Ojeda worked as a Regulatory Compliance Analyst with QMetrics, Inc. in San Diego, California. Ms. Ojeda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology, Law, and Society and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Social Behavior. She is currently working on a Masters in Healthcare Administration.
Joy Vreeland, PharmD, BCPS is the Associate Chief Pharmacy Officer for Inpatient Pharmacy at Boston Medical Center. BMC is a 450 bed safety-net hospital with the largest and busiest trauma and emergency services in New England. Joy directs the Controlled Substance Diversion Prevention program for BMC, overseeing audits for Nursing, Anesthesia, Pharmacy, Boston EMS and Boston MedFlight. Her career at BMC spans over 20 years of experience in pediatric clinical pharmacy and pharmacy operations, with the past 11 years in pharmacy leadership. She received her doctorate in Pharmacy from Northeastern University and completed a pharmacy residency at UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville, FL.
Cindy Meyerhofer is a Privacy Manager at the Mayo Clinic. She has served in a variety of roles at Mayo Clinic in her 40 years including Desk Operations in Urology, Endocrinology, Human Resources, Patient Experience and joined the Privacy Team in December of 2020. She has a Master’s Degree in Business Management and is a Certified Healthcare Privacy Professional.
Kati Shell is a pharmacist with experience in clinical pharmacy staffing and leadership for the past 15 years, with a focus on medication safety and quality. She completed an undergraduate degree at University of Central Florida in Biology, and went on to complete a Doctorate of Pharmacy Degree at University of Florida. Starting her pharmacy career as a retail pharmacy technician, Kati moved to Long Term Care pharmacy upon receiving her PharmD. Since then, Kati has worked with a variety of different pharmacy roles over the last 13 years within Ascension, including Staff Clinical Pharmacist, Quality and Safety Coordinator and Director of Pharmacy. Currently, she serves as the National Clinical Coordinator for the Ascension Opioid and Pain Management Governance in addition to her role as a Clinical Operations Area Manager with a focus on Controlled Substances and Diversion on the Ascension National Pharmacy Team.
Alexis Gilroy, a national leader in the digital health industry, advises on complex transactional and health regulatory issues with an emphasis on virtual health methods, such as telemedicine, telehealth, and mobile health. Alexis is co-leader of the Firm's Health Care & Life Sciences Practice.
Focused on transactions in the digital health and health information technology (HIT) sectors for more than a decade, Alexis pairs practical experience with a keen understanding of often novel federal and state regulatory requirements. Hospitals, health systems and other health providers, virtual health companies, technology organizations, e-commerce, pharmacy and retail leaders, life science businesses, and investors from across the United States seek her legal counsel on various e-health topics, including multijurisdictional business strategy and implementation, state-specific telehealth regulation, corporate practice of medicine, reimbursement, international second opinion and telehealth programs, online prescribing, patient consent, credentialing by proxy, remote supervision, and fraud and abuse considerations. She frequently develops and negotiates telehealth specific services and affiliation contracts and manages health regulatory matters for M&A and equity transactions with both investor/buy-side and company/target-side experience.
Alexis speaks and writes extensively on matters involving digital health, including testimony before legislative and regulatory bodies. She served on the board of directors and as the VP of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) and is a member of the ATA College of Fellows. She was an appointee to the Maryland governor's Telemedicine Task Force, member of the Federation of State Medical Boards' workgroup on telehealth, leader of the American Bar Association's Science & Technology Practice Group, and leader of the American Health Lawyer Association's (AHLA) E-Health and Telemedicine Affinity Group.