- Mek will bring unique HHS cybersecurity, AI and blockchain experience to Equideum Health
- He will apply next generation cybersecurity and trustworthy AI across Equideum Health’s critical infrastructure for healthcare
Today, Equideum Health (formerly ConsenSys Health), a ConsenSys partner and Mesh portfolio company creating Web3 person-centered healthcare and research networks, announced that it has appointed Oki Mek as Chief Information Security Officer. In this role, Mek will ensure that Equideum Health’s critical infrastructure that empowers individuals to own, control and share their private health data is protected with next-generation cybersecurity capabilities and that it is powered by trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.
Mek joins Equideum Health from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where most recently he served as Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO), responsible for establishing a foundation for trustworthy AI adoption based on fair, legal, and ethical principles.
Also as HHS CAIO, Mek led efforts to facilitate effective collaboration on AI efforts across both HHS and the health sector, to enable its workforce to confidently use and scale AI in a responsible manner. He also led the HHS response to AI-related federal mandates, aligning with the White House’s National AI Initiative Act of 2020, which provides for a coordinated program across the entire Federal government to accelerate AI research and application for the Nation’s economic prosperity and national security. Other mandates where Mek led HHS alignment include: Executive Order 13859, Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence; Executive Order 13960, Promoting the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Government by establishing principles for trustworthy use of AI in government and maintaining public trust by ensuring that health solutions are ethical, effective, and secure; and preparing HHS for the Government Ownership and Oversight of Data in Artificial Intelligence (GOOD AI) Act. Mek also led the development of HHS AI Strategy, Trustworthy AI Playbook, and AI framework.
In earlier roles during his more than 11 years service at HHS, Mek architected security for the first two Al/blockchain networks that achieved Authority to Operate in the U.S. Federal space. The architecture was driven by the imperative that in order to deploy the next generation of critical infrastructure for healthcare, next-generation cybersecurity architecture is a necessity. His previous roles include Acting Chief Information Officer (CIO) for HHS Office of the Secretary, Senior Advisor to the HHS CIO, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, Emerging Technology Strategist, and Senior Information Security Manager.
A former infantryman and military intelligence officer in the Army National Guard, Mek also spent nearly eight years at the US Department of Energy in technology and project management positions.
At Equideum Health, Mek will continue to integrate AI tools with cybersecurity tools to deploy next generation security and to align trusted AI architectures with industry best practices, government mandates and guidelines. In particular, he will lead the security design of the company’s next-generation critical infrastructure for healthcare so that it protects individuals’ privacy and civil liberties, and that it protects AI models, their input datasets and output results from tampering.
Included in Mek’s cybersecurity accountabilities are securing the company’s Data Integrity and Learning Network (DILN) implementations and its decentralized Equideum Exchange, which supports the ownership, sharing and monetization of individuals’ private healthcare data. To develop the next-generation critical infrastructure for healthcare, next-generation cybersecurity architecture is essential. AI is built into the core central nervous system of the company’s security program to align with trustworthy principles. To protect both device security and physical security, Mek will focus on safeguarding zero knowledge proofs, compartmentalization of data, cloud-based federated compute models, privacy convergence, self-sovereign identities, and verifiable credentials.
“The pace, frequency, and intensity of cyberattacks are now greater and more sophisticated than ever. We must implement precise, unified, compartmentalized, and well-balanced plans and execution strategies for cyber to protect health data, privacy, and identity,” says Oki Mek, newly appointed CISO at Equideum Health. “These will be necessary to achieve our security objectives and protect American individuals’ freedoms, civil liberties, and privacy rights as guaranteed by our laws.”
“We are extremely excited that Oki Mek is joining our leadership team and are looking forward to tapping into his unparalleled experience at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI and blockchain,” says Heather Leigh Flannery, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Equideum Health. “As we prepare to roll out our next-generation critical infrastructure for healthcare, Oki will play a key role in ensuring that it is provably secure and trusted by all stakeholders.”
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