Robert Putt is Executive Director of the Office of Health Data and Analytics. Robert has been part of Kentucky state government for over 12 years. He served as the Commonwealth’s first Chief Data Officer; CIO of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and Executive Advisor to the Secretary; Deputy CIO of the Judicial Branch and Executive Officer of the Administrative Office of the Courts; and Program Director in the Finance and Administration Cabinet for the Department of Revenue and Commonwealth Office of Technology.

Prior to state government, Robert spent nine years as a vendor to state, local and federal government as Vice President at MAXIMUS; General Manager at ACS; and Director of Project Management at SCT. He began his career as a summer intern at IBM; then programmer analyst at Ashland/Valvoline working in the U.S., Canada and Europe for 18 years in various systems engineering, project and staff management roles, ending as manager of enterprise solutions.

A native of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and high school transplant to Sharpsburg, Kentucky; Robert holds a MBA in Management and BS in Mathematics from Morehead State University. He has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown College and Eastern Kentucky University; and resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

Brett Oliver, MD, is chief medical information officer for Baptist Health. In this role, he works closely with the chief information officer to develop and implement information technology across the health system. In addition to providing clinical expertise to the IT team, he works closely with other physicians to ensure the system’s IT solutions are designed to meet the needs of staff and patients.

Board certified in family medicine, Dr. Oliver joined Baptist in 2012 and has accepted ever-increasing leadership roles, while continuing to see patients in his Georgetown, Kentucky, practice. He most recently served as medical director for Integrated EHR Development, serving as a liaison between practicing physicians and the IT team. As medical director, he provided valuable clinical input throughout the process of building Baptist’s new electronic health record platform.

Dr. Oliver is a member of the Health IT Advisory Committee for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and serves on Kentucky’s Telehealth Board, a position appointed by the governor.
Dr. Oliver earned a bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University and a medical degree from the University of Kentucky. He completed his residency at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and practiced with a Novant Health family practice in Winston-Salem for three years.
In 2000, Dr. Oliver returned to Kentucky to practice in Georgetown, starting a solo private practice in 2003. The practice, Scott County Family Physicians, which now includes three additional physicians and two mid-level providers, joined Baptist Health Medical Group in 2012.
Dr. Oliver is a member of the Christian Medical and Dental Association, the American Academy of Physician Leadership, the Kentucky Medical Association, the American Medical Informatics Association, and the American College of Nutrition. He and his wife Jenny, a pediatrician in Georgetown, have been married for more than 25 years. They have two children, Ben and Erin.

Gary Ozanich is Director of Northern Kentucky University’s Program in Health Informatics. He is the past National Co-Chair of the Interoperability Workgroup and past National Chair of the HIE Committee for HIMSS. He has conducted extensive funded research and consulting projects on health information exchange structure, interoperability, services, and sustainability, as well as projects examining care coordination and transitions in care. He is the co- investigator on two federal projects: The Office of National Coordinator’s Electronic Health Record Reporting Project, and the Assistant Secretary of Program Evaluation (HHS)’s Measuring Interoperability in Value-Based Care.

Gary has a private sector background which includes more than 12 years as a Vice President on Wall Street where he was an analyst of the technology and telecommunications industries. He also worked as a consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton. Relative to other academic positions, he was Associate Director of the Institute of Tele-Information at Columbia University, and has been on the faculties of Michigan State University and University at Buffalo. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Judith Ann Theriot, MD, CPE, is the Medical Director for the Kentucky Department for Medicaid Services and has served in that capacity since May 2019. Prior to that, she was the Commission for Children with Special Health Care Needs’ Medical Director from July 2013 through May 2019. Dr. Theriot attended medical school at the University of Louisville (UofL) then went on to complete her Pediatric residency and a chief resident year before joining the faculty at UofL. Dr. Theriot served as the director of the General Pediatrics Clinical Research Unit and prior to that as the medical director of the Children and Youth Project; a multidisciplinary primary care clinic serving the inner-city high-risk children of Louisville Kentucky. Dr. Theriot is a certified physician executive and is a professor of Pediatrics at UofL. In addition to her administrative duties with Medicaid, she continues to see patients weekly in clinic at UofL and teach pediatric residents.

Dr. Brent Wright is the associate dean for rural health innovation at the University of Louisville School of Medicine where he serves as professor and vice-chair of rural health within the Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine. He is the current board chair of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and the immediate past president of the Kentucky Medical Association. As president of the KMA, Dr. Wright travelled across the state to gain insight from physicians and healthcare leaders prior to focusing on the association’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic. Leadership and service have been the guiding elements of Dr. Wright’s work as he has served as president of the Kentucky Rural Health Association, president of the Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians and board member for Leadership Kentucky. In his professional role of vice chair for rural health, he has helped to educate over 80 board certified family physicians within the University of Louisville/Glasgow Family Medicine Residency. Along with his longstanding work in Glasgow, the University of Louisville/Owensboro Family Medicine Residency welcomed their first class of residents on July 1, 2020. Dr. Wright helped to lead this effort with the University of Louisville School of Medicine and Owensboro Health in an effort to strengthen Family Medicine within this region of the Commonwealth. In his role as associate dean for rural health innovation, Dr. Wright has used his collaboration skills to promote the advancement of HRSA funding targeted toward the needs of the aging population within the commonwealth. Within this work he has helped create and disseminate a unique model for measuring success in treating the elderly within interdisciplinary teams. With the resurgence of interest in telemedicine brought forward by the recent pandemic, Dr. Wright is currently evaluating and guiding development of novel approaches to telehealth. He has spoken nationally regarding work with smartglasse technology for use as a telemedicine delivery tool and continues his investigative and consultative work. As a member of the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst Program, Dr. Wright is an advocate for making a difference with your skillset no matter where you live or work. He remains in constant demand for his creativity, insight, and candor around significant challenges facing healthcare.

In May 2020, Edward (Nat) Louden III, KHIE Program Coordinator graduated from the University of Kentucky, College of Public Health MHA program where he worked as a health services researcher under Dr. Martha Riddell. While at the UK CPH, he developed an interest in population health, social determinants of health, cybersecurity, and patient data interoperability. Nat has applied his healthcare acumen on KHIE’s numerous projects aimed at transforming healthcare delivery in Kentucky.

Tracy Williams is an Executive Advisor with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and is a project manager for kynect resources. She has served the Commonwealth for over five years in a training or communications capacity to further efficiencies and understanding of state offered programs. Prior to her work with the Commonwealth, she served as an instructor during the implementation of the Federally Facilitated Marketplace, as well as various training/instructional positions within the fields of technology and industrial construction.