2023 STA Board of Directors - Election Voting
Allan Simpao, MD, MBI
Dr. Allan Simpao has been an active STA member for over a decade. He served as STA Treasurer for the past 6 years and has increased member recruitment and engagement and ensured that STA is fiscally sound and in a strong position to support the Society’s growth. He served as the Program Chair of the STA 2015 Annual Meeting and has been a faculty member on multiple STA Engineering Challenge teams, as well as a moderator and mentor for STA research presentations and workshops.
As a pediatric and maternal-fetal anesthesiologist and clinical informatician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Dr. Simpao has a strong track record of innovation and research. He has led projects that have used visual analytics and machine learning models to derive meaningful insights and predict outcomes. Dr. Simpao is the Director of the Biomedical Informatics Program in the CHOP Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine which consists of a team of anesthesiologist-informaticians, PhD informatics researchers, data and computer scientists, statisticians, and support personnel. In summary, Dr. Simpao has a distinguished record of service to STA, and he hopes to continue his service to STA's members and help lead STA’s success and growth into the future.
Treasurer (Vote to Approve)
Robert Freundlich, MD, MS, MSCI, FCCM, FASA
Dr. Freundlich received his undergraduate and graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University, followed by medical school at Baylor College of Medicine. He completed his anesthesiology residency, critical care fellowship, and a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan, followed by a master’s degree in clinical investigation at Vanderbilt. Dr. Freundlich is board certified in anesthesiology, critical care, clinical informatics, and basic perioperative echocardiography.
Currently, he is an anesthesiologist, intensivist, and NIH-funded informatician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he is an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Biomedical Informatics. He is the Medical Director of the Vanderbilt Anesthesiology and Perioperative Informatics Group (VAPIR) and Chief of the Informatics Research Division. Dr. Freundlich is currently funded by an NHLBI K23 career development grant, where he is conducting a pragmatic clinical trial of heated/high-flow nasal cannula oxygen to prevent reintubation after cardiac surgery. He is also funded by the Vanderbilt CTSA to study strategies for improving data collection in large pragmatic clinical trials.
Secretary (Vote for One)
Patrick McCormick, MD, MEng
Dr. McCormick is a neuroanesthesiologist and the Vice Chair for Informatics in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He earned a computer science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as a software engineer at a successful startup company before pursuing a medical career. Dr. McCormick is board certified in anesthesiology and clinical informatics. Dr. McCormick has successfully completed several projects to reduce barriers to perioperative care through improved workflow, processes, and system integration.
Nationally Dr. McCormick is a board member of the Anesthesia Quality Institute, a subsidiary of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. He is a member of several other AQI committees and the ASA Committee on Quality Management & Departmental Administration. He is a leader of the Anesthesia Clinical Reference Group at SNOMED International, the foremost international healthcare terminology organization.
Patrick has just completed his first term as Secretary for STA. He enjoys serving as Secretary and would like to continue making STA a welcoming organization for technology leaders in anesthesiology.
Jonathan Tan, MD, MPH, MBI, FASA
Dr. Jonathan Tan is the Chair of the STA Communications Committee and Editor-in-Chief of Interface, the official newsletter for the STA. He has served as an active and integral member of the STA in this capacity since 2019. His mission has been to increase the membership activity and professional presence of the STA. In addition, he has had the honor of serving as the Program Co-Chair of the STA Annual Meeting in 2018, and as an Annual Meeting Abstract Co-Chair in 2017. Dr. Tan has been actively engaged in supporting STA events, the STA Board, and as a speaker and mentor at the STA Annual Meetings for the past 7 years. His experience, commitment, and familiarity with the STA membership, Board, and larger Society activities positions him well to serve as the next Secretary of the STA.
Dr. Tan is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Spatial Sciences at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the Keck School of Medicine, and the Spatial Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. He is board certified in Anesthesiology, Pediatric Anesthesiology, and Clinical Informatics, and certified in Medical Quality. Dr. Tan has been invited to speak nationally and internationally on spatial data science, social and environmental determinants of health, clinical informatics, and quality improvement. He serves on several technology-focused national committees with the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF). He is a member of the Association for University Anesthesiologists. Dr. Tan has been awarded grant funding from the APSF and FAER for his research on bringing together spatial science, clinical informatics, and environmental health science to better understand the risks of respiratory adverse events with children undergoing general anesthesia.
Michael Scott, MB, ChB, FRCP, FRCA, FFICM
Dr. Scott is an established Attending in Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Critical Care Medicine. He has held National Clinical Leadership roles as well as executive and board positions and Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Scott trained and gained clinical experience in undergraduate and postgraduate medicine in the UK, Australian, and Canadian University health systems becoming boarded in Internal Medicine, Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. His work in basic sciences and quality improvement has led to worldwide acceptance of Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS).
In 2016, Dr. Scott was recruited to the USA to restructure the Surgical Services at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Richmond. He was appointed as Professor and Division Chief of Critical Care Medicine and built a diverse team in critical care and Quality Improvement. In 2019, Dr. Scott was recruited to Penn Medicine as Division Chief of Critical care and Medical Director for the TeleICU.
At Large International Director (Vote to Approve)
Clyde Matava, MBChB, DA, MMed
Dr. Clyde Matava is a Staff Anesthesiologist at SickKids and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. He is the Associate Chief of Perioperative Services for Bioinformatics and the Director of Anesthesia Informatics, Innovation, and Technology in the Department of Anesthesia at SickKids.
Dr. Matava has created and designed several apps, and won several teaching and innovation awards. His current work focuses on the use of 3D printing, Virtual Reality, and machine learning to improve outcomes in medical education and patient care. He is also co-director of the SickKids’ and University of Toronto’s VR lab - CHISIL which is researching the use of large data sets, improving the data quality in EHRs. His clinical interests include airway management and regional anesthesia. He is currently the Past President of the Canadian Pediatric Anesthesia Society and has served on the STA Board. He looks forward to continued contributions to the STA in the post-COVID era.
At Large Industry Director (Vote to Approve)
Justin Adams, BSEE, MBA
Justin Adams is the Chief Executive Officer of AlertWatch, which was recently acquired by BioIntelliSense, Inc. He has overseen all facets of the firm, including the commercialization of its FDA 510(k)-cleared AlertWatch:OR, AlertWatch:OB, and AlertWatch:AC monitoring solutions. Justin co-authored two design patents involving the innovative AlertWatch display, and he continues to code in Objective-C and Swift for fun.
Prior to joining AlertWatch, Justin worked in the automotive, investment banking, and venture capital industries. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the Ross School of Business. Justin has enjoyed collaborating with the STA Board, and he looks forward to helping STA carry out its first post-pandemic in-person annual meeting. He will focus on strengthening STA’s role as the premier organization supporting anesthesia’s critical role in healthcare innovation.
At Large Director (Vote for One)
Jack Neil, MD
Jack Neil, MD is CEO/Founder of Hank.ai and a practicing anesthesiologist at MUSC Midlands in South Carolina. At Hank.ai, a venture-backed Delaware C-Corp founded in 2019 with 40 full-time employees, he is focused on increasing revenue integrity and reducing administrative costs in the revenue cycle by human augmentation and automation while continuing to build towards the vision of AI-measured value-based payment models which encourage shorter documentation and better cost-effective care decisions. As an At-Large Director for the STA he will focus on learning from other Directors representing the STA member body and industries while bringing his experience with RCM and AI in the urban, suburban, and rural settings to the STA. The STA has helped him grow from an idea guy into the CEO of a fast-growing company and he is excited to give back to the STA by helping it grow, adapt, and support the needs of all anesthesiologists - not just those with IT resources in academia and urban settings.
He is a member of the ASA's Committee on Informatics and Information Technology, founding member of the ASA’s working group on Artificial Intelligence, a member of the AAMI’s Health IT Committee, and a member of the APSF’s Committee on Technology. A physician and application developer by training, his passions lie at the intersection of healthcare and technology. He is an active member of the AIMed community and has spoken extensively on the topic of artificial intelligence in healthcare. He has written blockchain health record distributed applications (mymed.udifi.com), medical-device compliance reporting smart contracts (silono.com), acoustic detection and classification neural networks (aud.ai), nursery smart monitors with on-board cry detection and correction (babifi.com), anesthesia information management systems (Neptune), autonomous cryptocurrency trading bots (Cryptifi), remote video-surveillance and trapping systems (HogNet), and web applications (Carousel USA; ClassicCamo) to name a few.
Dr. Neil is a contributor to numerous machine learning and blockchain libraries on GitHub and has filed patents in the fields of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and secure medical device communication utilizing blockchain. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from the University of South Carolina. He worked for a year as a Systems Architect at Premier Environmental Solutions where he developed applications to unify CRM, billing, and asset tracking and surveillance. He received his Medical Doctorate from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in 2009.
He completed one year of pediatric residency at Palmetto Health in Columbia, SC followed by a year of surgery residency at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu, HI. He completed his residency in anesthesiology at the Medical College of Georgia, followed by a fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. He is board certified in Anesthesiology by the American Board of Anesthesiology. In his post-training years, he has held technology positions at Blue9 Systems and MedStream Anesthesia. He still actively practices anesthesiology one day per week. He is married to his lovely wife Kristen (a pediatrician) and they have 3 children - Hank 5yo, Emma 2yo, and Lyla 0yo.
Christopher Connor, MD, PhD
This year, Chris successfully reconstructed and published the key underlying algorithms for the BIS monitor (“Open Reimplementation of the BIS Algorithms for Depth of Anesthesia”, Anesthesia & Analgesia), finally completing what should have been an essential goal for a society of anesthesiologists committed to the rational use of technology in patient care. Chris is particularly known for his work on machine learning and its application to patient monitoring. He has written the chapter on anesthesia monitoring for Barash’s Clinical Anesthesia since 2013 and has been appointed as an Editor for the forthcoming 9th edition.
Chris is an Associate Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Associate Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Anesthesiology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. He completed his PhD in Medical Engineering at MIT and his MD at Harvard Medical School. He is a member of two national ASA Committees: the Committee on Informatics and Information Technologies, and the Committee on Equipment and Facilities. He is seeking an appointment to the BOD of STA because we are entering an era in which attaining professional mastery and control of machine learning and artificial intelligence will become increasingly central to the development of our specialty. Chris is directly involved with this change and can help STA benefit from it.