Advisory Board

 

  Alan E. Sokolow, MD

Dr. Sokolow has a unique career in healthcare, having been involved early in the development of healthcare informatics, and program development in demand and care management. His areas of expertise include value-based reimbursement, medical policy, medical management, high risk and condition management programs, provider relations and program implementation.

With Oxford,  Dr. Sokolow was instrumental in the development of ETG based analyses of health care costs, as well as the pioneering design of case based contracting. At Empire Alan was responsible for refining transactional systems alerts, which led to systematic improvement in quality care. He has repeatedly lead teams in various engagements, which implemented high risk case management programs based on predictive models, resulting in significant cost savings and reduction in hospitalization. He is an expert in medical cost management.

Dr. Sokolow graduated from Pomona College and UCLA School of Medicine. He trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Utah, and at the University of Rochester. Board certified in Internal Medicine.

  Vita Cassese

Vita Cassese has over 30 years of operations experience at Pfizer Inc, a $51 billion Fortune 30 company and focuses on investments in the healthcare and technology sectors. Most recently, she held the position of Vice President, Business Development, Strategy and Innovation. She previously served as CIO for Worldwide Pharmaceuticals, leading an organization of nearly 1,000 people in 44 countries and was a member of the Worldwide Pharmaceuticals Leadership Team which was responsible for long term business strategy. Vita has established industry-leading partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Intel, and IBM. She was a key member of the Warner Lambert and Pharmacia acquisitions’ due diligence and integration teams. Previously, she served as Vice President of Business Technology and Market Research for the US Pharmaceuticals Group. In this role, she led many technology initiatives, one of which was honored with Management Science’s prestigious Prism Award.

Vita is a member of the Board of Trustees of the College of Mount St. Vincent. She is a guest lecturer at New York University’s Stern School of Business, MIT Sloan, and Boston University, and is a mentor at Columbia University. Vita holds a BA in Mathematics from the College of Mount Saint Vincent and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Michael B. Packard

Michael Packard is a proven executive with an extraordinary range of experiences in technical and non-technical environments, manufacturing and retail, large organizations and start-ups. His professional background includes leadership positions and responsibilities for consumer and industrial products manufacturing, marketing, merchandising, buying, distribution, facilities construction & maintenance, legal, government relations, human resources, information systems, store operations, and business unit leadership. Michael has led the development of start-up business units in retail concepts, technical products and equipment manufacturing, and managed vision care.

Michael received his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell Univerisity and his MBA from the University of Virginia. Since 1999, he has managed his own consulting firm, TransCat Consulting, helping organizations “make change that matters.”

  Benjamin Rooks

Ben Rooks is the founder of ST Advisors, a consultancy which works with healthcare companies and their financial sponsors on issues regarding strategy, financing and outcomes and exit planning. Rooks spent six years as an investment banker where he closed healthcare and medical technology transactions valued from $40 to $365 million.

Previously he spent close to a decade as a sell-side equity research analyst where he covered healthcare information stocks in addition to e-health, drug information and pharmacy benefit management. He has been a judge for the Microsoft Health Users Group (MS-HUG) Industry Solution Awards since its inception and was named a Zacks Investment Research All-Star Analyst.

Ben earned his MBA in healthcare management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his BA in psychology from Brandeis University.

  Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is actively involved in improving the world’s health, both as an investor and as the publisher on the Internet of her own genome and health records, as part of George Church’s Personal Genome Project. She believes fiercely in the power of information to affect people’s behavior and to improve the quality of health care. She brings to her work insights from economics, information technology, management practice and practical psychology.

As an investor, she was an early investor in and board member of Medscape, now part of WebMD. She was also an investor in Medstory, now part of Microsoft. Currently, she is an investor in and sits on the board of 23andMe. She is also an investor in Contagion Health, HealthEngage, HealthTap, HealthVillage, Keas, Medicalgorithmics, Organized Wisdom, PatientsLikeMe, PatientsKnowBest, Resilient, Tocagen and Voxiva (creator of Text4baby). She has written two monographs on electronic records and health information liquidity, and ran the 2005 Personal Health Information workshop co-sponsored by New York’s New School University.

  John Kamp

Dr. John F. Kamp is Executive Director of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, a drug-marketing group with offices in New York City and Washington, DC. He is also of counsel with the law firm Wiley Rein LLP, and is a well-known advocate for First Amendment rights of individuals and corporations. His professional experience includes 10 years with the Washington, DC office of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and nearly a decade in public policy positions at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Before moving to Washington, Dr. Kamp taught journalism at the University of Iowa and at Tulsa University.

Dr. Kamp is a frequent speaker at industry meetings on ethical, legal and policy issues on medical marketing, and is recognized as an authority on these issues by the trade and consumer press. He serves on the advisory boards of the NYC Health Business Leaders (www.nychealthbusinessleaders.com). He is on the editorial boards of the Rx Compliance Report, Medical Marketing and Media, and the FDA Advertising and Promotion Manual. Dr. Kamp is co-author (with Wayne Pines) of three books on compliance with FDA policy published by FDA News, including DTC Advertising and Promotion: The Changing Environment. He is also a public member of the National Advertising Review Board, the self-regulation body of the advertising industry run by the National Better Business Bureau. He is a member of the bar in the District of Columbia and the United States Supreme Court.

Dr. Kamp earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Notre Dame, his doctorate from the University of Iowa School of Journalism in Iowa City, and his Juris Doctorate at the University of Tulsa School of Law.