A Conversation with Dr. S. Yin Ho: AI and Improving Data in Healthcare

For decades, healthcare leaders, clinicians and innovators have shared a belief that better access to data and improved health IT would unlock better care, stronger research and more equitable outcomes. Electronic health records, data interoperability efforts and analytics platforms were all meant to move the system forward. Yet the system today feels overly complex and more arduous than ever for patients and the people who care for them.

As generative AI rapidly enters healthcare, we are at another inflection point. This technology carries real potential to transform how data is collected, interpreted and applied. But history raises an essential question: Will AI help improve healthcare in a meaningful way — or will we rush headlong into a new era without learning from what came before?

Join MATTER for a thought-provoking conversation with S. Yin Ho, MD, MBA, a physician, entrepreneur and longtime leader in health IT. From leading eHealth at Pfizer in the early days of health IT, to founding Context Matters (acquired by Clarivate Analytics), to running Veradigm and serving on numerous boards, Dr. Ho brings a deep, multifaceted perspective on how the industry has evolved.

Drawing from her new book, Rushing Headlong: Health IT’s Legacy and The Road to Responsible AI, the discussion will trace the arc of healthcare technology from its early aspirations to today’s AI-driven moment, examining where we stumbled, what we overlooked and what responsible progress could look like moving forward.

Agenda: (all times in Central Time)

3:00pm | Doors open

3:30pm | Program begins

4:30pm | Networking

5:00pm | Event concludes

Praise for the Book:

"Amid the noise of acceleration, Rushing Headlong reminds us that progress without purpose is peril. Its stories are urgent, universal and deeply human — offering clarity for anyone determined not just to keep pace but to shape the future with intention."

- Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna

“Yin Ho brings thirty years of experience in healthcare IT and common sense to the conversation about the impact of AI on healthcare. While providing a realistic survey of the history of healthcare IT, AI and its limitations, she offers a hopeful vision for the engagement of physicians and patients in determining the most impactful applications for AI in healthcare.”

- Nancy J. Brown, MD, Dean, Yale School of Medicine

“A tour de force… a master class on how information technology, policy and the best and worst of intentions can combine to undermine patients and the physicians who care for them. Rushing Headlong should be required reading for doctors, patients and anyone who cares about the future of technology in healthcare.”

- Pauline W. Chen, MD, author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

S. Yin Ho, MD, MBA

A serial entrepreneur and visionary executive in the Health IT and clinical research space, Dr. Ho has been founding, building and leading Health IT companies and initiatives for over 25 years.

Most recently, Dr. Ho was the interim CEO at Veradigm (MDRX) where she led the strategic acquisition of a generative AI company, Science IO. As the first electronic health record firm to have its own proprietary LLM capabilities (in the form of small language models) in-house, she charted a direction to improve the quality of data collection and data abstraction for both clinical care and research. A longtime strategic thinker, Dr. Ho also founded and led Context Matters Inc. — the first data analytics software company focused on global health technology assessments and linking health economics to clinical trial outcomes. Today, Context Matters is part of Clarivate Analytics (CLVT).

Always at the forefront of major health IT developments, Dr. Ho led eHealth at Pfizer (PFE) in the early years of Health IT, and served as the chief product and strategy officer for Aetion in the first years of real-world evidence. She was also the vice president of product and corporate strategy at Medidata, and part of the executive team that led the company through its IPO.

Originally trained as an emergency medicine physician at Yale, Dr. Ho became excited about the potential of eHealth and changed careers quickly by earning an MBA from Harvard just as eHealth/Health IT was emerging. In fact, to help push the Health IT ecosystem along, she co-founded New York City Health Business Leaders (NYCHBL) — now Digital Health New York (DHNY) — to propel NYC into the healthcare innovation juggernaut it is today.

Dr. Ho is currently on the Board of Directors at Segmed (an AI-enabled radiology data aggregator for real-world evidence) and serves as an advisor to Lighten AI (a clinical abstraction AI company) and Novellia (an AI-enabled personal health data company).

Today, she is focusing on how AI can be developed responsibly in healthcare. As AI transforms how we view patient treatments, new research and the role of healthcare professionals, Dr. Ho maintains a humanist perspective. She has written the book Rushing Headlong, which focuses on the history of Health IT and the lessons we should consider as we embark on this uncharted course of AI development.

Dr. Ho earned her BA from Brown University, her MD from Yale University School of Medicine and her MBA from Harvard Business School.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Steven Collens

Steven Collens is CEO of MATTER, the premier healthcare incubator and innovation hub. MATTER helps healthcare innovators achieve their goals faster and more efficiently and increases the odds of their success. MATTER has incubated more than 1,000 healthcare technology ventures and helps leading health systems, life sciences companies, payers and foundations activate innovation to advance their goals.

Prior to assuming his current role, Steven was senior vice president at Pritzker Group, the investment firm led by Tony and J.B. Pritzker. In that capacity, he led the team that created 1871, Chicago’s center for digital startups, which became the top-ranked business incubator in the world in 2018. He previously worked at Abbott in a variety of domestic and international functions, including product management, policy and public affairs. Prior to Abbott, Steven served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun.

Steven holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He chairs the board of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and serves on the boards of 1871 and the Chicago High School for the Arts. He is a member of ChicagoNEXT, the Chicago mayor’s council on technology and innovation, a Leadership Greater Chicago fellow, and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the Commercial Club of Chicago.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Why, in our era of boundless online health information, is it still maddeningly hard to find the right clinical trial or gather your personal medical data from different sources?

If you’re practicing medicine, have you grown frustrated by both the lack of choice of electronic health record systems and the one-size-fits-all nature of hospital IT systems, or even the dependence on IT teams for even basic queries?

And if you work in health tech, do you wonder why so many innovations stall before delivering real clinical or research insight?

Once, we assumed that transparent access to health data would spark innovation, better understanding of disease and a faster path to new treatments. Instead, economic incentives — billing above all — have set the dominant rules and assigned differing values to different kinds of information.

In Rushing Headlong: Health IT’s Legacy and The Road to Responsible AI, Dr. Ho examines the arc from early health IT aspirations to the precarious rise of generative AI in medicine.

Blending personal stories with deep industry experience, she dissects how both public and private leaders have let key opportunities slip away, leaving behind a healthcare system that is often disjointed and frustrating for patients, clinicians and researchers alike.

Dr. Ho does not pull punches as she guides the reader through the damage done by regulatory capture and how generative AI can help transform mountains of medical data into real progress.

Clear-eyed and unapologetic, this book exposes how every healthcare stakeholder in the system shares responsibility for our current predicament — and why fixing it demands intention, collaboration and courage from all of us.

ABOUT MATTER

At MATTER, we believe collaboration is the best way to improve healthcare. The MATTER collaborative includes more than 1,000 current and alumni startups from around the world, working together with dozens of hospitals and health systems, universities and industry-leading companies to build the future of healthcare. Together we are accelerating innovation, advancing care and improving lives. For more information, visit matter.health and follow @MATTERhealth.

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