Dr. Nicholas Marko Chief Data Officer, Geisinger Health System Maximizing the potential applications of an organization’s information and freeing its data from constraints that impede end-user access are the driving forces behind the work of Dr. Nicholas Marko. He is a clinical neurosurgeon who has evolved into a leading healthcare data strategist and executive-level proponent of data-driven innovation. In 2014 Nick was named Geisinger’s first CDO to craft and implement the organization’s comprehensive strategies and standards for data access, integration, maintenance, governance, dissemination, and analysis. He also serves the department head of Data Science and Data Engineering, chair of the Enterprise Data Strategy Steering Committee, co-director of High Performance Computing, and a member of the Institutional Review Board. Through these roles, he strives to create a culture of “yes” around enterprise data. Nick completed undergraduate and medical school at the George Washington University, followed by fellowship training and research at the University of Cambridge Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Cancer Institute, as well as a neurosurgical oncology fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. In addition to his data and informatics responsibilities, he is also a practicing neurosurgeon focused on the surgical management of patients with malignant brain and spine tumors. Named a “young investigator on the rise” by Genome Technology Magazine, a “healthcare hero” by Crain’s Cleveland Business, and one of “healthcare’s top data-driven geeks” by Healthcare IT News, Nick’s data and informatics thought leadership has been featured in the Washington Post, Modern Healthcare, and other leading publications. He has also regularly published and been a featured speaker on clinical and translational neurosurgery topics, as well as topics such as the role of the chief data officer, enterprise data strategy and valuation, data modeling, integration of multi-modality data sets, and practical issues related to healthcare econometrics. Less   View all posts

As former CTO of Sears Holdings, Dr. Phil Shelley has several years experience in helping move a large iconic brand into a near real-time model where digital engagement with customers has become the norm. Like many companies, Sears IT landscape was fragmented, duplicative, heavy use of ETL and batch-oriented. Moving the people, process and systems to align with faster delivery of services, solutions and collapsing systems into single points of truth was a major focus of the CTO role. The use of Open-Source and Big Data technologies was a major enabler for the transformation, along with re-alignment of teams, new skills and data governance. The establishment of an enterprise data architecture was critical and is pivotal to successful Big Data initiatives.Phil has led IT Operations for one of the largest retailers in the world, including Data Centers, Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Enterprise Architecture and System Engineering. Phil led his organization through major changes in retail, such as realtime omni-channel system architecture, design, implementation and operations, including single view of customer, basket, inventory and loyalty systems. Sears enjoyed significant recognition for the innovations in these areas, with many articles using Sears as an example (http://consultnpp.com). In addition to the CTO role, in 2012 Phil was appointed CEO of a Sears startup in Big Data technologies. In 2013, Phil left Sears to form Datametica a Big Data solutions and advisory firm, helping companies design and implement Big Data initiatives. Phil and his team use their significant experience to speed Analytics and Big Data efforts in client companies. Datametica (http://datametica.com/), recently awarded a global top 20 Big Data company status, is an offshore Big Data company offering development, data migration and operational support for companies with Big data needs. Dr. Shelley has a PhD in bio-medical engineering, having worked in the UK, Germany and USA; he has led Research and Development, Quality and IT organizations and held positions in various technical and business leadership roles including CEO, CIO and Chief Technology Officer. Phil has directed IT Operations and focused on innovation, Big Data, Cloud computing and the modernization of IT. Phil has led the innovative migration of batch workload off mainframes to Hadoop, large-scale private open-source cloud computing, Hadoop for Big Data, BI and infrastructure modernization. In addition to co-leading the Datametica business, Phil is an industry expert speaker on Big Data, noSQL and advanced analytics. Less   View all posts