Becker's Hospital Review 112 Healthcare Entrepreneurs to Know

August 29, 2016  

Published in Becker's Hospital Review, August 26, 2016. Becker's 112 Healthcare Entrepreneurs to Know

112 healthcare entrepreneurs to know

Written by Laura Dyrda (Twitter | Google+) | August 26, 2016

Here are 112 entrepreneurs in the healthcare space who are innovating in the medical, IT, consumer and medical professional fields.

Please contact Laura Dyrda at with any additions, questions or comments on this list.

Sanjeev Agrawal is president of LeanTaaS, a lean and predictive analytics platform for hospital operations, and was Google's first head of product marketing.

Kevin Appelbaum is co-founder, CEO and board director of FareWell, an online behavioral dietary intervention program designed to help people achieve and maintain a healthy weight and reverse chronic weight-related diseases.

Ryan Ashton is president and CEO of Great Basin Scientific, a publicly held molecular diagnostics company that commercializes technologies to improve ease-of-use and deliver better cost per result for sample-to-result molecular diagnostic testing.

Gina Bartasi is the CEO of Progyny, a digital health company. She has more than 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur.

Jeffrey Becker, MD, is the founder of BeckonCall, a secure on-call communications app he developed after becoming frustrated with the gap between cutting-edge patient care technology and back-office technology. Practices can build and manage on-call schedules directly with the app.

Fabien Beckers, PhD, is the CEO and co-founder, along with John Axerio-Cilies, PhD, the CTO, of Arterys, a 4-D flow medical imaging tech company building a precision medicine platform.

Paul Berggreen, MD, founded Smart Clinic, a mobile app that delivers physician-monitored procedure preparation, treatment instructions, appointment reminders and customizable health assessment surveys directly to patients' smartphones and desktop computers.

Jill Bigelow is the founder of PELV-ICE, a medical company with products focused on childbirth, hip replacements and chronic pelvic conditions.

Travis Bond is the CEO and founder of CareSync, a leading provider of software and services for chronic disease management. He has more than 20 years of experience taking companies from idea concepts through product development and into lucrative exits.

Brad Bostic founded hc1.com and now serves as its chairman and CEO. Hc1.com is a site committed to personalizing the healthcare experience for providers and patients. It includes the hc1 Healthcare Relationship Cloud, which is designed to enable healthcare organizations to deliver unified, personalized services.

Aaron Bright, MD, is the CEO and co-founder of Hippo Education, a medical education start-up working on solutions to MOC-based learning to improve physician education.

Brad Brooks is co-founder and CEO of TigerText, a tool healthcare providers can use to keep text messages secure, as well as co-founder of the secret-sharing app Whisper.

Andrew Brooks, MD, is the co-founder and CMO of Cardo Medical, which Arthrex acquired in 2011. He is also in private practice for orthopedic surgery and CMO of TigerText, a tool healthcare providers can use to keep text messages secure.

Michael Burcham is the founder and CEO of Narus Health, a healthcare organization supporting individuals facing serious and life-limiting medical conditions. He previously founded and was president of Theraphysics, a specialty care management firm focusing on orthopedics and rehabilitation.

Joe Caruncho was co-founder and CEO of Preferred Care Partners, a $750 million Medicare Advantage plan sold to United Healthcare in 2013. He has been involved in Genuine Health Group, a startup ACO launched in South Florida with 400 primary care physicians.

John Capobianco is president and chief marketing officer of Healthcare Interactive, a company focused on advanced health planning solutions.

Henry Cha is CEO of Healthcare Interactive, an advanced health planning solution, and the architect of Healthspace, which is based on a web service oriented architecture running in Microsoft Azure.

Prakash Chand, co-founder and CEO of Ask The Doctor, a global platform for patients to seek reassurance, advice and direction about their medical concerns with more than 5 million questions received from every country around the world except North Korea.

Terence Channon is managing director of SaltMines Group, which works with early stage start-ups in the healthcare technology space and delivers high-tech solutions to established healthcare facilities, leveraging mobile technology to improve patient experience and increase HCAHPS scores.

Gopal K. Chopra, MD, is co-founder president and CEO of pingmd, a digital healthcare solutions company using mobile-first technology to improve patient and care team communication.

Kelly Close is the president and founder of Close Concerns, a healthcare information company focused on diabetes and obesity. She is also founder and chair of the board of The diaTribe Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to improving the lives of people with diabetes, and is editor-in-chief of diaTribe, an educational newsletter for people with diabetes.

Mick Correll is CEO of Genospace, a platform helping research institutes, molecular diagnostic labs and pharmaceutical companies run precision medicine initiatives at scale. He was instrumental in launching the Center for Cancer Computational Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Chris Cutter is co-founder and CEO of LifeDojo, a San Francisco-based startup offering comprehensive employee wellbeing platforms for large organizations with one-on-one health coaching plus interactive educational content to help employees discover personal motivations to improve physical and mental health.

James Dias is CEO and founder of Wellbe, a solution offering guided patient journeys for better patient engagement; coordinated care with connected teams; and real-time insights from patient-generated data with an eye toward improving episodes of care and value-driven service lines.

Gaspard De Dreuzy is co-founder and CEO of Pager, a mobile app and service providing high quality, on-demand healthcare through physician house calls. This is the fifth company he has co-founded.

Rick Donlon, MD, is co-founder and CEO of Resurrection Health, the only faith-based, evangelical healthcare provider in Memphis offering both adult and pediatric primary and inpatient care.

Sean Duffy is co-founder and CEO of Omada Health, a digital behavioral medicine company dedicated to empowering people with chronic conditions.

Chuck Dunn is president and CEO of Tru-D SmartUVC, an ultraviolet disinfection system. It was brought to market by Lumalier.

Ali Esmail is the founder and CEO of PopRX, an app for delivering medication to people.

James Bradley Edwards is CEO of Emergent Language Access Network, a video medical interpreting and language service for healthcare facilities. He is also a founder of Carenection, a telehealth market place and unified telehealth platform.

Philip Eytan is co-founder and president of Pager, a mobile app and service providing high quality, on-demand healthcare through physician house calls. He was the founding investor in Livestream.com.

Julia Finkel, MD, is an anesthesiologist, division chief of pain medicine and director of research and development for pain medicine at Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Innovation at Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C., and founder of AlgometRX, a healthcare startup to commercialize technology that can objectively measure pain in premature infants.

Michael Fratkin, MD, is the founder and president of ResolutionCare, the first crowdfunded healthcare start-up B-corporation delivering hands-on and telemedicine palliative care in rural North California.

Scott Friesen is the CEO of Newport Credentialing Solutions which provides cloud-based software and IT-enabled services dedicated to credentialing.

Kunal Ghosh is the founder and CEO of Inscopix, a universal platform for real-time brain mapping that was born out of a research project at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

Mohan Giridharadas is the founder and CEO of LeanTaaS, a lean and predictive analytics platform for hospital operations, and has experience transforming healthcare operations at organizations including Stanford (Calif.) Health Care.

Nate Gross, MD, is co-founder of Doximity, a professional medical network that includes more than 60 percent of physicians in the United States as members. He also founded Rock Health, the first accelerator and full service seed fund for digital health startups.

Ranya Habash, MD, is CMO of Everbridge, a telehealth service that works with 2,700 corporations and communities to assure and simplify the exchange of critical information with an SaaS-based unified critical communication platform.

Shakil Haroon is the founder and CEO of MPIRICA Health, which aims to provide healthcare consumers with simple and transparent insight into surgery outcomes from physician and hospitals with the MPIRICA Quality Score.

Sean Hensler is the founder of Hensler Surgical Products focused on the Hensler Bone Press and Hensler Bone Collector used during orthopedic procedures.

Doug Hirsch is co-founder and co-CEO of GoodRx, which compiles prescription prices at nearby pharmacies for consumers to make more informed healthcare decisions.

Thomas Hitchcock, PhD, is a molecular geneticist who has been involved in several start-up companies in the medical technology space, including Xycrobe Therapeutics, a privately held, early-stage biotechnology company focused on leveraging data generated from the human microbiome research to develop novel therapies. He is founder and CEO of the company.

Nelson Hardiman is an attorney and has led the development of healthcare companies including Compliagent, an independent firm that designs and implements healthy regulatory compliance infrastructure, and RX4 Group, a healthcare innovation consulting group. He is also founder and managing partner at the law firm Nelson Hardiman.

Diane Hayes, PhD, is co-founder and president of InCrowd, which provides real-time intelligence to healthcare firms and others in the life sciences through microsurveys on public health topics including vaccination rates and parent concerns about vaccinations, physician burnout and perceptions on Zika virus.

David Higginson is senior vice president and CIO of Phoenix Children's Hospital where he manages and directs a staff of more than 130 people and develops the hospital IT department's strategic vision.

Heidi Jannenga is co-founder and president of WebPT, an EMR solution for physical, occupational and speech therapists. WebPT employs 300 people and serves more than 55,000 therapy professionals at 8,500-plus clinics.

Paul Johnson is CEO of Redirect Health, which uses a process that quickly identifies the most cost-effective route to address common healthcare needs for healthcare organizations.

Scott Jordon is a co-founder and chief innovation officer of Central Logic, a company that provides health IT solutions that collect all the data in a patient's record for total care coordination, easy follow-up and to reduce errors.

Harold Jonas, PhD, is the founder of FlexDek, an app to help people recovering from opioid addiction by increasing compliance with regulatory measures and reducing relapse and re-hospitalization. He is the president of Client Care Solutions and Sober Network.

George Kalogeropoulos is co-founder and CEO of HealthSherpa, a free tool to make it easy for federal marketplace consumers to identify and compare health plans. Users can purchase federal marketplace plans on the site at the same cost as they would pay on HealthCare.gov.

Jonathan Kaplan, MD, is the founder and CEO of BuildMyBod Health, a price transparency/lead generation platform for consumers and healthcare providers. Through an app, website and embeddable widget on healthcare provider websites, patients and consumers can check the out-of-pocket costs of medically necessary services.

Paul Ketchel is the founder and CEO of MDsave, the first transactional healthcare marketplace that allows consumers to search hospitals and providers with transparent pricing and then pay online before the service is rendered.

Ira Kirschenbaum, MD, is the CMIO of the SwiftPath Program, which helps physicians safely, effectively and profitably execute outpatient or enhanced recovery joint replacement into their practices or ASCs. He is also CMO at DTC healthcom, a medical IT innovation company.

Daniel Kivatinos is COO and co-founder of drchrono where he drives the direction, brand vision and strategy of the company. His goal is to make healthcare simple and bring innovation in healthcare through drchrono's EHR platform for physicians and patients.

Rizwan Koita is CEO of CitrusTech, an international healthcare technology solutions and services provider with more than 2,500 technology professionals worldwide. The company serves 75 healthcare organizations around the world.

Rich Krueger is the president and CEO of Hospital IQ, a platform that allows users to solve the most pressing operational challenges to optimize solutions on a networkwide, hospitalwide and individual clinical service-level basis.

Amit Kulkarni is co-founder and CEO of Cognetyx, a startup focused on providing healthcare organizations with a high-performance solution to safeguard patient health records by leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Eric Langshur is co-founder of Abundant Venture Partners and a private equity investor. He is also co-founder and CEO of AVIA, a provider-formed innovation accelerator focused on helping members identify, select and deploy emerging IT-enabled solutions.

Ryan Larson is a founder of Central Logic, a company with transfer center and bed management software that has expanded to provide health IT solutions, collecting all the data in a patient's record for total care coordination, easy follow-up and reduced errors.

Clarence Lee, MD, medical director for U.S. HealthWorks and persistence coach in Sacramento, is a former U-2 flight doctor in the U.S. Air Force. He now works with first-generation college students at Sacramento State University as well as treats his patients from the inside out.

Jacob Levenson is the founder and CEO of MAP Health Management. He designed the program's algorithmic predictive model to develop a consolidated population health management solution accessible to all healthcare segments.

Stu Libby is CEO of Zipdrug, an on-demand prescription delivery service to help decrease medication non-adherence and provide consumers with convenience when taking prescriptions.

Anne Lodge is the founder of Astarte Biologics, a company that began in 2004 and focuses on providing human immune cells for research.

Michelle Longmire, MD, is a physician and CEO of Medable, which provides a platform for research and healthcare app developers to easily create mHealth applications and research studies that are automatically HIPAA compliant.

Kevin MacDonald, co-founder and CEO of Kit Check, a combination of cloud software and IoT technology to automate the tracking and restocking processes for pharmacy medication kits and OR medication distribution.

Pradip K. Majumder, PhD, is co-founder and chief scientific officer of Mitra Biotech, a company dedicated to personalized cancer care.

William McCarthy is a leader in Emergency Operations Centers, an organization where first responders can safely help disaster victims whether from man-made terrorism or war or natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, fires and storms.

Brendan McCorkle is the founder and CEO of CloudMine, a healthcare technology company based in Philadelphia, where he oversees management practices and drives the company's strategic vision.

John McDonough is the CEO of T2 Biosystems, a company that uses diagnostic technology to reduce sepsis detection time from two to five days to three to five hours.

Richard Merkin, MD, is CEO of Heritage Provider Network, a medical group that services different HMO plans throughout the nation.

Sam Molyneux is a Canadian entrepreneur and cancer genomics researcher and he co-founded Meta, an artificial intelligence company specializing in big data analysis of scientific and technical literature.

Bill Moschella is co-founder and CEO of Evariant, a company that provides SaaS healthcare CRM and big data platform to healthcare providers.

Matt Moulakelis is the co-founder and CEO of DisputeBills.com, a company focused on managing medical debt.

Jake Myers is the co-founder and CEO of MedPilot, a tool designed to make billing and collections departments more efficient and effective.

Laura Niklason, MD, is founder of Humacyte, a biotechnology company that works to bring engineered tissue replacements to patients.

Michael Nusimow is CEO and co-founder of drchrono where he drives the strategic direction. His goal is to make healthcare simple and bring innovation in healthcare with the EHR platform for physicians and patients.

Joseph M. Ojile, MD, is founder and CEO of Clayton Sleep Institute, a sleep medicine clinical and research organization that includes branded and non-branded sleep clinics, an insomnia center and a research center.

Chioma Okeke, RN, is an entrepreneur and founder of choosingnursing.net, and she does informational and health prevention-focused educational sessions online for the general public.

Jonathan Palley is the co-founder and CEO of Spire, a wearable technology company that tracks both movement and state of mind throughout the day as well as develop1ed the first wearable activity and respiration monitor. It has consumer and medical applications.

Rebecca Palm is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Copatient, a company focused on providing cost savings for consumers and businesses through medical bill review, simplification and notification.

Abhilash Patel is co-founder and president of Recovery Brands, a company focused on providing consumers a way to search for treatment online and promote facility marketing. The site includes online directories, facility ratings and reviews, forums and professional communities for patients to make informed decisions about care.

Ira Pastor is the CEO of Bioquark, who has 30 years of experience across multiple sectors of the pharmaceutical industry including pharmaceutical commercialization, biotech drug development, managed care, distribution and retail.

Eric Price is co-founder and CEO of SkyMD, a telehealth platform designed for dermatology that allows patients to photograph their skin problems and send them to evaluators for a quick evaluation.

Stephen Punzak, MD, is the founder and CEO of One Medical Passport, a company focused on providing a platform for hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to streamline online pre-admissions and perioperative workflows for improved patient safety and convenience.

Mazi Rasulnia, PhD, is a co-founder of PACK Health, a business that provides tools, accountability and personalized programs to help patients manage their chronic conditions.

Clay Richards is the founder, president and CEO of naviHealth, a post-acute care management and care transitions company that was created five years ago.

Matthew Rutledge is president and co-founder of MD Labs clinical laboratories, which created Rxight pharmacogenetics and is launching into the world of retail pharmacy.

Oscar Salazar is co-founder and founding CTO of Pager, a mobile app and service providing high-quality healthcare on-demand through physician house calls. He has been part of several other ventures, including serving as CTO of Uber and CEO of CitiVox.

Darren Schulte, MD, is the CEO of Apixio, his third startup, which uses a cognitive computing platform to mine unstructured data in healthcare records to help physicians see a more accurate and holistic view of their patients.

Ilan Sehayek is the co-founder of Jitterbit, an interoperability solution, giving the healthcare industry a single-secure platform to access clinical and workflow data and a way to ease into fee-for-value.

Shelly Sun founded BrightStar Care, where she currently serves as CEO. The company focuses on providing in-home healthcare with 300 units throughout the United States and now has expanded into Canada and the United Kingdom.

Anand Shroff, co-founder and CTO of Health Fidelity, a combination of technology and expertise enabling MA, ACA, ACO and Medicaid health plans to transform the otherwise manual risk adjustment process into an integrated workflow.

Neil Smiley is the founder of Loopback Analytics, which delivers an advanced software-as-a-service platform healthcare providers can use to prevent costly readmissions as well as improve clinical outcomes and reduce total cost of care.

Mallik Sundaram is co-founder and president and CEO of Mitra Biotech, a personalized cancer care company.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, is a surgeon and founder of NantWorks, an ecosystem of companies to create a transformative global health information and next generation pharmaceutical development network. He also founded Cancer MoonShot 2020.

Jeff Tangney is CEO and co-founder of Doximity with the goal of building a free, secure social network for healthcare professionals that now includes 60 percent of all physicians in the United States. He also founded Epocrates from his college dorm room.

Lorne Tritt is the CEO of ASP Global and has expertise on global sourcing to improve quality and reduce costs for self-distributing hospitals and IDNs.

Ari Tulla is the CEO and co-founder of BetterDoctor, a health technology company focused on obtaining accurate data to the healthcare marketplace so consumers can find the right physicians.

David Ricker is the chairman and CEO of BroadJump, which delivers tools to protect providers against price gauging and manage costs on-demand through a non-bias supply chain analysis.

Alan C. Roga, MD, is an emergency medicine physician and serves as senior vice president and general manager of Teladoc, a large telehealth provider. He previously founded StatDoctors.

Darin Vercillo, MD, is a founder of Central Logic, a company with transfer center and bed management software, which expanded to provide health IT solutions that collect all the data in a patient's record for total care coordination, easy follow-up and reduced errors.

Michael Walsh is the CEO of Cariloop, a solution for families to plan and manage the care of their aging loved ones through an online platform to collaborate and receive guidance from qualified healthcare coaches.

Betsy Weaver is the CEO, president and co-founder of TPR Media, a national healthcare content provider and media service company offering internet-based healthcare communication solutions through its proprietary platform.

Nicholas Webb is a healthcare futurist working with brands in healthcare to help develop future-ready enterprises and holds more than 45 patents for technologies, including one for a medical wearable.

John Weiss is founder and CEO of The Audit Group, a company focused on providing accounts payable/purchase audit services to large, complex, multifaceted healthcare IDNs nationwide.

Brandon Welch is the founder of Doxy.me, a telemedicine solution for clinicians to search research and clinical trials as well as connect with patients via telemedicine in a HIPAA-compliant fashion.

Mark Willard is the president of Transcend Insights, a company that creates community-wide interoperability and analytics through cutting-edge but simple-to-use technologies for patients, physicians and health systems to improve outcomes.

J. Brent Williams is the founder and chief technology officer of Verato, which is focused on helping to solve the significant patient matching problems that is limiting the success of EHR and interoperability.

Micah Winklespecht is CEO and founder of Gem Health, which uses Blockchain technology to create a network for developing applications and shared infrastructure for healthcare.

Will Wright is CEO and a co-founder of PACK Health, a business that provides tools, accountability and personalized programs to help patients manage their chronic conditions.

Vinay Vaidya, MD, chief medical information officer at Phoenix Children's Hospital holds the copyright for TPN 2000, a niche computerized physician order entry program for ordering complex intravenous nutrition in critically ill neonates and children which is being used in more than 25 centers across the country.

David Vivero is the CEO of Amino, a consumer healthcare company focused on creating a clear picture of American healthcare with data to help people make confident healthcare decisions.

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