UPMC Children’s Experts Contributing to 2026 Digital Health Summit – Jan. 29 to 30, 2026

Sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Schools of Health Sciences and UPMC, the 2026 Digital Health Summit (Jan. 29 to 30) is gathering clinicians, researchers, and technology leaders to discuss the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in transforming health care. The program features keynote speakers and panelists from UPMC, Pitt Health Sciences, and industry who are shaping how tools and technologies are being applied in clinical care, research, and health system operations.

Topics at the summit include AI-driven precision medicine, connected and virtual care, emerging digital health technologies, and the evolving regulatory and data governance landscape.

Register.

UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Faculty Participation

Faculty and leaders from UPMC Children's are part of the summit’s Scientific Committee and are participating as panelists. The list includes:

Scientific Committee Members

• Abeer Azzuqa, MD
  Associate Professor of Pediatrics
  Clinical Director, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, UPMC Children’s
  Associate Vice Chair, Clinical Affairs/Telehealth, Department of Pediatrics
  Medical Director, Neonatal Telemedicine, UPMC Newborn Medicine Program
• Andrew R. Buchert, MD
  Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
  Interim Vice President, Medical Affairs, UPMC Children’s
  President, Pennsylvania Pediatric Health Network (CIN)
  Medical Director, Clinical Resource Management, UPMC Children’s
• Mariel Garcia, MBA
  Senior Director, Telemedicine, UPMC Children’s
• Whitney Lerch, PA-C
  Physician Assistant, Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, UPMC Children’s
• Ken K. Nischal, MD, FAAP, FRCOphth
  Professor of Ophthalmology and Chief, Division of Pediatric Ophthalmology, Strabismus and Adult Motility
  Director, Pediatric Program Development, UPMC Eye Center
  Medical Director of Telemedicine Services, UPMC Children's
• Srinivasan Suresh, MD, MBA, FAAP
  Professor of Pediatrics
  Division Director, Health Informatics, UPMC Children’s
  Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Medical Information Officer, UPMC Children's

Panelists/Speakers from UPMC Children’s

• Christopher M. Horvat, MD, MHA
  Associate Professor of Critical Care Medicine, Pediatrics, Biomedical Informatics, and Clinical & Translational Sciences
  Senior Director, Clinical Informatics, UPMC ICU Service Center
  Director, Medical Emergency Response Teams, UPMC Children’s
  Associate Program Director, UPMC Clinical Informatics Fellowship
  Associate Director, Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, University of Pittsburgh
• Kristin N. Ray, MD, MS, FAAP
  Associate Professor of Pediatrics
  Director, Health Systems Improvement, UPMC Children's Community Pediatrics

View the agenda to see the full list of UPMC speakers.

Abstract Presentations from UPMC

AI Scribes in Behavioral Health: Lessons from a Pilot Implementation on a Multisite Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Service
Patrick Buckley and Priya Gopalan
UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital

Evaluation of Mixed Reality for Burn Margin Visualization and Surgical Planning
Christopher Fedor, Griffin Hurt, Edward Andrews, Jacob Biehl, and Francesco Egro
UPMC Department of Plastic Surgery

Outpatient Teledermatology Improves Access, Diagnostic Accuracy, and Management for Patients with Periorificial Dermatitis: A Retrospective Study
Vrusha Shah and Joseph English III
UPMC

Actigraphy versus Real Time Mobile Sensing: Measuring Sleep in Youth with Bipolar Disorder
Adrianna Lopaczynski, Danella Hafeman, Boris Birmaher, and John Merranko
UPMC

Evaluating Large Language Model’s Accuracy in Current Procedural Terminology Coding Given Operative Note Templates Across Various Plastic Surgery Sub-Specialties
Mia Carrarini, Hilary Liu, Catherine Perez, and Francesco Egro
UPMC Department of Plastic Surgery

Teledermatology in Pregnancy and Postpartum: Patterns of Diagnosis and Management
Aniket Asees, Esha Sultana, Natacha Jin-Simon, Jonathan Hwang, and Anuradha Bishnoi
UPMC

Econsults: An Efficient and Effective Digital Healthcare Delivery Tool for Diabetes Care
Esra Karslioglu French and Andie Mappel
UPMC

An Assessment of Data Accuracy: Comparing Physician EHR Vaccine Data to the Pennsylvania Immunization Electronic Registry System
Jordan O'Hara-Scott, Samar Musa, Klancie Dauer, and Raymond Pomponio
UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

An Agile AI-Powered Assistant for Reducing Physician Administrative Burden
Kevin Kindler
UPMC

Advancing Risk Adjustment in Neonatal Critical Care: Development of a Population-Level Machine Learning Mortality Model
Chelsea Bitler, Jesse Klug, Sarah Nutman, Jesse Raffa, Leo Celi, Harry Hochheiser, C. Briana Bertoni, Brian King, Gabriella Butler, Thomas Hooven, and Christopher Horvat
UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

Targeted Automatic Econsults (TACos) Program to Enhance Diabetes Care by Machine Learning Prediction Model
Esra Karslioglu French, Justin Kanter, Mary Winger, and Ellen Beckjord
UPMC

Identifying Predictors of Success in Augmented Reality Clinical Tasks: Insights for Digital Health Education
Amogh Vellore, Shovan Bhatia, Michael Kann, Nicolás Kass, Regan Shanahan, Jacquelyn Jardini, Jayne Miner, Sohail Daulat, Griffin Hurt, Rishi Basdeo, Nicole Don, Jacob Biehl, and Edward Andrews
UPMC Department of Neurosurgery

AI-Assisted Severity Scoring on Chest X-Rays for Acute Respiratory Failure: Development of a Web-Based Clinical Tool
Hafiz Qurashi, Robin Joyce, Swathi Parvathaneni, Anrey Peng, Rachel Sadeh, Song Xiang, Kevin Mitchell, Georgios D. Kitsios, and Ellen Hughes
UPMC

Novel Application of Augmented Reality in Endoscopic Skull Base Streaming
Yujin Choi, Amogh Vellore, Shovan Bhatia, Griffin Hurt, Michael Kann, Rishi Basdeo, Talha Khan, Adam Monek, Harrison Alexander, Brendan Szczepkowski, Anthony Tang, Regan Shanahan, Brock Gjesdal, Kyle Affolter, David Cabral, Georgios Zenonos, Paul Gardner, Jacob Biehl, and Edward Andrews
UPMC Department of Neurosurgery

Novel Approach to Pineal Region Lesions: Supracerebellar Infratentorial Approach Using the 3-Dimensional Exoscope: Case Series
Sydney Scanlon, Amogh Vellore, Arka Mallela, Hussam Abou Al Shaar, Sakibul Huq, and Constantinos G. Hadjipanayis
UPMC Department of Neurosurgery

Leveraging Unstructured Telephonic Data and AI to Enhance Personalized Insights
Ian Price, Corey Mihna, Niko Drake-McLaughlin, and Reuben Daniel
UPMC Health Plan

Learn more about the event.