ICCG CIO Leadership Forum for Healthcare and Life Sciences

SAN DIEGO - March 21, 2016 - PRLog -- The Industry Council for Competitiveness & Globalization, a 501 c(3) nonprofit corporation established to serve as a consortium and advocacy group of industry leaders, held its Quarterly Event on November 7th 2013 at the Montage Hotel in Laguna Beach, CA. The focus of the meeting was to bring the CIO's of the Healthcare and Life Sciences companies based in the Southern California area to formulate what we as a community can do to assure the growth and expansion of the economic ecosystem of Southern California.

Master of Ceremonies Mr. Ashwin Rangan - Co-Chairman of the ICCG CIO Group (for Life Sciences) and Former CIO of Edwards Lifer Sciences, chaired this meeting and defined the mission of the event clearly in his opening message - "Our goal is to leave today with ideas and commitments to improve the local economic eco-system that can assure that my children and your children have the same chance to succeed within our local community".

Founder of ICCG, Ajay Sarkar, mentioned that "Our goal is to create a better local Business eco-system for southern California, something which exits in the Silicon Valley. And we are trying to do this by enhancing the exiting Business eco-systems, by making it more agile, dynamic, and more vertically focused towards southern California economy; so the next generations have a competitive-edge and consistent job growths, in the next decade, in this ever changing highly globalized world".

         Speakers for the day included Mr. Ro Khanna who is the candidate for US House the Representatives from the 17th Congressional District in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Mr. Ro Khanna shared his experiences and insights as the former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Commerce, about job creation and global economy. He is also the author of a book on the state of American manufacturing and how to keep it competitive in the global economy.( Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America's Future; The book has won widespread praise for its strategies to keep the best companies, jobs, and opportunities in America).

         A comprehensive state of the American Healthcare system was provided by the Deloitte Consulting team lead by Dr. Alan Young, MD, with Juli Moran, and Derek Robinson. The thought provoking presentation described the current state of high costs and marginal outcome of the US healthcare system.  They pointed to several reasons for this analysis, including the need for tort reform specifically in the healthcare areas, but also outlined the lack of automated efficiencies that have been aptly applied most all other industries to help lower costs and improve patient outcomes.  The Deloitte team challenged the ICCG members of Southern California to take a leadership role in transforming the US and Global healthcare system.

         Mr. Mike Zill, Co-Chairman of the ICCG CIO Group (for Life Sciences) and CIO of CareFusion - gave an update t on the last meeting of the Security and Privacy Working Group and emphasized the real need within this area.  He said that "Our team has the talent and skills to become the Domain Experts within this critical area of IT Innovation within the Healthcare IT Arena.  All medical processes need to be able to share data among providers, insurers, patients, and even medical devices securely and cost effectively."

         This was followed by a presentation by Mr. Bill Cortez - VP of IT of AMN Healthcare, who is also the co-chair of the ICCG CIO Group (for Healthcare). He lead the IT-Enabled Revenue Generation Working group and detailed how IT can be cost effective, and in addition, take a lead in realizing revenue enhancement throughout the Enterprise by combining Big Data analysis with innovative Business Intelligence design and implementation. These initiatives could further lead to more investment and innovation.

After noon presentation was given by Ms. Heather Finlay - CEO YWCA, San Diego Chapter, who spoke about how San Diego, as a community need to come together to assist troubled youth a core group of the future, to become part of improving our local economy.  Ms. Finlay outlined her ideas for a ICCG "Engaged Internship" group which will work with ICCG members to bring participants from the San Diego YWCA's Becky's House program into a mentored and monitored program to help individuals that have faced domestic violence and other traumatic events, to find a means and experience with local companies, so that they can learn to take ownership of their economic future.

Finally, Congressman Scott Peters - US House of Representative of the 52 District  talked about the issues and opportunities that the Affordable Healthcare Act will affect everyone locally and nationally.  Congressman challenged the ICCG Group to bring "Southern California Ingenuity and Innovation" to help the healthcare system in the US become an effective "outcome-based" system that leverages both highly trained personal combined with technology innovations that Southern California  is well known for.

In the concluding remarks, Mr.Ashwin Rangan reaffirmed the ICCG (http://iccgusa.com) commitment to maintain the forum active for stakeholders in the local community to nurture key industries like life sciences, health care, and medical devices that fuel the economic growth of this region.  He also stated that "ICCG seeks to cultivate, communicate and create networking opportunities for its members that allow them to leverage the collective learning to tackle efficiently and effectively, some of the biggest challenges facing technology executives in this fast paced and highly regulated industry.  He stated that "The collaborative nature of the ICCG lends itself to knowledge sharing, which in turn increases technology adoption and success rates, reduces total cost of technology deployment, and accelerates innovation beneficial for both suppliers and consumers of products and services across the entire Healthcare eco-system".