AI Across Spheres
Challenges and Opportunities
Overview
Besa Bauta, Chief Information Officer at the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services and Adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU, discusses the intersection of AI, healthcare, and human services. Besa shares her journey of combining technology and data with an understanding of the human condition, reflecting on AI's current impact and future potential in healthcare. She emphasizes the importance of modeling AI after human intelligence, the need for rigorous research and regulations, and the ethical considerations in AI development. Besa advises listeners to stay curious, ask questions, and embrace failure as part of their learning process.
About Besa:
Dr. Besa Bauta currently serves as the Chief Information Officer of the Jewish Board where she oversees the technology infrastructure of the organization, including application solutions, data engineering, and manages organizational information, privacy, and cybersecurity. She is also the acting CISO/Chief Information Security Officer for JBFCS and oversees the cybersecurity program for the organization. Previously she was the Chief Data and Analytics Officer for Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Office of Data and System Improvement (ODSI), where she oversaw data, analytics, data science, and digital transformation initiatives, and managed the data assets for a 2.6-billion-dollar state division. In August 2022 the ODSI team under her guidance won the TASSCC Project Excellence Award for Data Sharing and novel implementation of data visualization and analytic tools to support state decision making. Dr. Bauta also served as a key liaison between DFPS and other state agencies and was the DFPS representative to the Texas Department of Information Resources for Data Management and Governance activities.
In addition, she was the Chief Data Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and Information Privacy/Security Officer of MercyFirst, an organization that provides health and mental health services for clients in NYC and Long Island. As the divisional lead for the Research, Evaluation, Analytics, and Compliance for Health (REACH) at MercyFirst, she oversaw data integration technology, infrastructure development, research, evaluation, and analytics. She also served as the Chief Analytics Officer for Precision Human Services and was one of the founders of the Social Impact AI Lab (SIAIL), whose goal is to support the digital transformation of the human service sector. SIAIL won the national Social Determinants of Health Innovation Challenge sponsored by the Robert Wood Jonson Foundation in 2020 and was a finalist in the NYU Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship 2021 challenge under her guidance. Dr. Bauta was also the Research Director for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) community-based education project in Afghanistan and the Senior Director of Research and Evaluation at the Center for Evidence-Based Implementation and Research (CEBIR) at Catholic Guardian Services.
Dr. Bauta is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at New York University and teaches both public health and social work at the graduate and doctoral levels. She holds a Ph.D. from NYU with training in Health Services and Implementation Science, an MPH in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention from NYU College of Global Public Health, and an MSW in Clinical Social Work from NYU Silver School of Social Work. Dr. Bauta has Psychoanalytic training from the Institute of Psychoanalytic Education, NYU Langone School of Medicine, Division of Psychiatry, and a BA from Rutgers University with training in Evolutionary Anthropology, and Biomedical Engineering. She served as the Associate Editor for the journal of Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, for AI in Mental Health from 2019-to 2022. She is the current Editorial Board Member of Telehealth and Medicine Today, Business of Data Global Advisory Board member, and one of the founders and members of Women Leaders in Data and Analytics. In addition, Dr. Bauta was selected as an Ambassador for the AI Time Journal (8/22), and was invited to present at the University of Florida (on 10/22), at the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry’s, Bioethics week on ethical considerations of implementing AI applications in healthcare. In addition, Dr. Bauta provided several keynotes such as the AI in Healthcare, at the Academic Data Science Alliance at the University of Texas San Antonio (Oct 2023), she also provided keynotes for AI in Healthcare and Pharma Summit, at the Rework Conference in Boston, Mass (Oct 23), and the Chevron Human-AI Fusion Shaping Tomorrow, AI-Led Innovations, in Huston, TX (Jan 2024).
Dr. Bauta has extensive expertise in information systems, data/analytics, healthcare services, translational research, evaluation, and global public health. Recently she was recognized by City and State as one of 50 Remarkable Women Improving New York (March 2023). She is nationally and internationally recognized for her work in AI and Healthcare and was selected as The Top 100+ Women Advancing AI in 2023, as playing a leading role in the transformation of healthcare, and as AI First Talent (Aug 2023). Dr. Bauta was also selected as a Changemaker in the Field of Data Finalist (Oct. 2022), Top 25 Women in AI: US Healthcare & Pharma (Sept. 2022), and as a Global Data Power Woman and key influencer in shaping the landscape of business and pioneering the field of data and analytics by CDO magazine for three consecutive years (2022, 2021, and 2020). In addition, she was also selected as the top 100 Data and Analytics professionals in 2021, and by DATAx as New York's top 21 CDOs [2019] advancing the fields of Data, Analytics, and AI. Dr. Bauta is a keynote speaker and published author who has written about mental health, non-communicable diseases, and improving health and mental health systems. She has worked both domestically and internationally on building information technology and advanced analytic systems and implementing health/mental health projects. Her current research focuses on optimizing processes to improve health outcomes, protection of patient health information, including ethical practices in implementing Artificial/Augmented Intelligence technologies in human services and healthcare.
Social Handles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/besabauta
Listen on other platforms and subscribe now!
