Jack Barrette, CEO and Founder, WEGO Health
Jack Barrette is CEO and founder of WEGO Health, the first web site to empower health activists in their mission to help others through the health social web. Previously, he was Category Development Officer for Lifestyle, Health & Medicine at Yahoo!, where he was responsible for guiding Yahoo! strategy for meeting the needs of healthcare consumers and the pharmaceutical, healthcare and healthy lifestyle companies that market to them. Prior to Yahoo!, Jack founded pharma strategy firm Mt. Vernon Partners; acted as COO of pharma sponsored online patient education company HealthBanks; and founded interactive healthcare marketing company Echo Strategies Group (a pioneer in internet health marketing and technology sold to Omnicom in 1997 and taken public as part of Agency.com in 1999). Jack lives in Back Bay with his wife Kelly, an art dealer, and believes fervently in the health benefits of red wine.
Deborah Breen, Director of Medical Market Development, EBSCO Publishing
At EBSCO Ms. Breen is focused on the use and integration of evidence-based medical content throughout the continuum of care across vertical and horizontal market segments.
Ms. Breen has a diverse background that includes senior level roles in product management, systems engineering, and marketing communications. With over 17 years of experience, she has worked extensively in the healthcare technology market and has a strong knowledge of integration, implementation and change management. While serving as Medical Marketing Director for Vedant Healthcare she established and managed marketing and development partnerships with EMR vendors including Cerner, McKesson and Siemens and worked with clients such as Baylor University Medical Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Integris Health. Later she worked with medical equipment manufacturers including iCad, Inc. and Electrolyzer Corporation to develop and conduct market studies in order to inform product development efforts.
She is a member of Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD), The NationalAssociation of Female Executives (NAFE), and served as a judge for the 2007 and 2008 Strategic Healthcare Communications eHealthcare Leadership Awards. In 2007 she was appointed to the URAC Health Website Accreditation Committee where she continues to play an active role.
Lois Drapin, CEO, Drapin & Co.
Lois Drapin is the Founder and CEO of Drapin & Co., her advisory firm based in New York for companies and investors in the pharmaceutical, technology, managed care, and health sectors. Her experience in health is robust and leading edge, and spans both consumer-focused and physician-centric perspectives.
Ms. Drapin has developed several start-ups over her 30 year career in health and technology including a deep consumer insight company measuring emotion in health care purchasing and decision making using the capture of physiological signals from the human body; an office-based physicians’ dispensing company; and an end-stage renal disease company. She also served as the director of innovation at Wyeth, and Sr. VP., Strategic Development for Synetic, CareInsite, Medical Manager, and ultimately at WebMD, after acquisition. She was the first disease management editor for Health Management Technology, and co-founded Healthcare Unbound, a national summit on remote monitoring.
She holds an MPS-Health Services Administration from The New School for Social Research, and an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. Lois Drapin maintains advisory roles in ClinicalCare Options, e-Caring, ThirdAge, Home Preferred, and WEGO Health, among others.
In her other lives, Lois Drapin pioneered college programs in prisons, eventually developing more than 40 programs as a college administrator for the University of Wisconsin and the State University of New York, and published two poems on the Op Ed page of The New York Times. She is a devotee of international film and film festivals.
Danny Ezrol, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development
Danny Ezrol is a thought-leader in the area of health care consumerism and transparency and has more than 15 years of management consulting and industry experience.
In his role at HealthGrades, Mr. Ezrol is at the forefront of the convergence of health care consumerism and the use of outcomes-based quality data. Mr. Ezrol works with major employers, benefit consultants, health plans and TPA’s to incorporate outcomes-based health care quality information into their organization’s broader health care cost-containment strategies. He is also responsible for HealthGrades’ Content Licensing strategy which includes the use of HealthGrades data and tools in conjunction with media companies, portals and member-based organizations.
Prior to joining HealthGrades, Mr. Ezrol was a founding member of ICG Commerce, a consulting and business process outsourcing firm with responsibility for their HR consulting practice. Prior to ICG Commerce, he was a consultant to Fortune 500 clients with IBM Global Services with a focus on business process optimization and cost savings realization. He holds an MBA and BS from the State University of New York.
Mr. Ezrol has spoken at industry association conferences including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the National Conference on Healthcare Consumerism, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), National Association of Healthcare Underwriters (NAHU), Managed Care Executive Group (MCEG) and the Society of Professional Benefit Administrators (SPBA). Mr. Ezrol has been selected as a member of Guidepoint Global Advisors’ Network of Healthcare Advisors and is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Colorado Association of Healthcare Executives.
Nancy Greengold, MD, MBA, Vice President and Medical Director, Hearst Business Media
At Hearst Business Media (HBM), an operating division of The Hearst Corporation, Nancy Greengold, a board-certified internist, is engaged in business development activities with the HBM management group and works closely with 2 of the HBM healthcare properties, First DataBank and Zynx Health. Nancy is also Associate Director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles, and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.
Nancy was one of the co-founders of Zynx Health and worked with the company from 1996 to 2002 when it was a subsidiary of Cedars-Sinai Health System. Prior to joining Hearst, Nancy was VP of Clinical Decision Support for Wolters Kluwer Health where she was involved with the development of clinical information and decision support tools.
Scott Heimes, Senior Vice President, Consumer Solutions, OptumHealth
Mr. Heimes is the senior vice president of Consumer Solutions at OptumHealth, where he leads OptumHealth’s direct-to-consumer media and e-commerce businesses; its interactive health management solutions; and Carrot, the company’s consumer engagement services agency. Previously, Mr. Heimes was group manager of interactive marketing for Target Corporation, where he oversaw marketing strategy and execution for Target’s interactive brand initiatives. Other leadership positions held by Mr. Heimes include president of interactive agency Virtucom Content Solutions, chief content officer for e-catalog services company Pacifiq Technologies, vice president of business development for a live event production consulting company called Event Think, and editor-in-chief of Presentations magazine. He holds degrees in business administration and English literature from the University of St. Thomas.
Helen Hoart, President, StayWell Consumer Health Publishing
Helen Hoart is president of StayWell Consumer Health Publishing, which has a strategic business alliance with Harvard Medical School to market Harvard’s six consumer health newsletters, including the Harvard Health Letter, Harvard Women’s Health Watch and Harvard Heart Letter and its more than 50 condition-specific health reports.
Before joining StayWell, Helen ran R.L. Polk’s newsletter division where she headed marketing and business functions for a variety of consumer publications, including the highly regarded Kovels on Antiques and Collectibles.
She has also held leadership in many other publishing companies, including working for the legendary Ken Callaway at Capitol Publications. She started her career on the editorial side of the business covering Congress and the White House for news services.
She served on the board of the Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Association (now the Specialized Information Publishers Association) from 1996-2001 and was elected president in 1999. She served as president of the Specialized Information Publishers Foundation from 2006-2007.
In 2006, she was given the Founder’s Award from the Hudson Valley Direct Marketing Association in recognition for her outstanding contributions to the field of consumer marketing.
In 2007, she was inducted into the SIPA Hall of Fame.
Dr. Sundeep Karnik, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Development at Elsevier Health Sciences
At Elsevier Health Sciences Sundeep provides leadership and oversight for strategy and development across all of Elsevier’s businesses, worldwide.
Prior to joining Elsevier, Sundeep was at Medtronic Inc. where he served in Strategy, Business Development and General Management roles.
Sundeep came to Medtronic following four years at McKinsey & Company, where he served several Fortune 500 companies across diverse business sectors as well as functions, but with an emphasis on healthcare – Pharma, Payers and Provider organizations.
Sundeep completed his medical training at the University of Bombay, India. He moved to the United States for post-graduate education; earning Masters’ degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Rehabilitation and Molecular Physiology; and doctoral research in CNS neuronal regeneration before moving to McKinsey.
Gary D. Kennedy, CEO and Chairman, RemedyMD
“Evidence-based medicine is the future...and always will be unless we figure out how to aggregate data from multiple systems into a totally flexible, real-time outcomes reporting system. As long as healthcare delivery organizations try to address this problem through data warehouses, evidence-based medicine will always remain an unrealized dream.”
In addition to serving as CEO and Chairman of RemedyMD, the market leader in the use of predictive informatics to recognize patterns, personalize treatment, and measurably improve healthcare outcomes, Mr. Kennedy is also the founder and managing partner of Double Eagle Ventures LLC, a private venture fund targeting seed stage investments. Kennedy has served as president and CEO of TenFold Corporation, a provider of applications development and infrastructure technologies, and PRC, Inc., a systems integration company. Mr. Kennedy served in various management and executive positions at Oracle Corporation from 1982 until 1990. His positions included National Sales Manager, Senior Vice-President Oracle Corporation and President of Oracle USA. He was one of the first few professional employees of Oracle. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Kennedy served as a Marketing Manager for Intel Corporation. Mr. Kennedy holds a B.A. in finance from the University of Utah and a Masters in Business Administration from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
Janice McCallum, Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group and Health Content Advisors
Janice is a respected thought leader in the economics of publishing and has been actively involved in creating and marketing electronic information products for over twenty years. She has held senior-level product management and content development positions in pioneering information companies, including Individual, Inc., Dialog Information Services (now part of Thomson Scientific) and DeepCanyon, a Hewlett-Packard company.
After receiving her MBA from the University of Chicago in 1985, she began her career in online publishing at Dialog where she built a collection of M&A and financial database products, published a series of business and intellectual property CD-ROM titles, and was responsible for licensing content from dozens of publishers. At Individual, Inc., she managed content development and publisher relations for online news and pharmaceutical business intelligence products from PJB, Adis, IMS, and Windhover.
In 1995, Janice launched a consulting practice that specialized in strategic marketing, product positioning, and channel partner strategies for B2B, scientific, and medical publishers. She has consulted as part of the Shore Communications network and with GrandView Insight. Clients include major publishing firms, including Thomson, Reed Elsevier, D&B, McGraw-Hill, Hewlett-Packard, as well as many smaller publishing and technology firms.
Janice is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has published reports on channel strategy (The Channel Partner Handbook, 2004) and publisher revenue models (How Publishers Can Profit from Contextual Advertising Models, 2003), both published by Shore Communications, Inc. Janice served as program chair for ICG’s inaugural Health Content07 conference, and will again chair Health Content08 in November 2008.
She is a member of SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing), Boston KM Forum, and 2008 co-chair of BWIN (Boston Women in Information Network)
“We chose this year’s theme, Incumbents, Innovators, and Intermediaries because it so neatly illustrates the current state of the health content market. Policy shifts and advancements in health IT are providing ample opportunities for innovators to create efficiencies and improvements to professional and consumer healthcare information services. Incumbents have lagged behind in incorporating new technologies into their core publishing properties and are now under the gun to invest in innovations to meet the needs of their customers. New intermediaries that aggregate data, improve access to information, serve as arbiters of quality, and marry content with IT to introduce enhanced content products and services are emerging.
Health Content08 will again serve as the marketplace where these incumbents, innovators, and intermediaries will meet, discuss the most lucrative content opportunities, and identify the best options for collaboration."
Teri Mendelsohn, President, Mendelsohn Consulting, Inc
Teri Mendelsohn is President of Mendelsohn Consulting, Inc., a New York-based practice which specializes in the creation, implementation and launch of online information products. Previously, she was Director of Clinical Markets at Ovid Technologies, a Wolters Kluwer nv company and leading provider of biomedical full-text and citational databases. Also at Ovid, she was Director of Strategic Planning and Business Development. Before that, Ms. Mendelsohn was an Associate in the media practice of the global strategic consulting firm Mitchell Madison Group. At MIT Press, she was Coordinating Editor, Cognitive Science before becoming Assistant Acquisitions Editor, Philosophy. Ms. Mendelsohn received her MBA from Columbia Business School and her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Saroja Mohanasundaram, CEO, Healthbase Online Inc.
Saroja Mohanasundaram co-founded the award-winning, Boston-based medical travel company Healthbase Online Inc., in 2005 with the mission to make high quality healthcare accessible to all. Since then, the company has helped thousands of patients throughout the world receive top class medical care at an affordable price. Her 18-year professional career includes experience and leadership in fields as wide and varied as Health Care, Information Technology and Space Research. Saroja has played entrepreneurial, management and IT development roles in several companies including StorageNetworks Inc. and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). She is a state rank holder, published various technical papers and has won numerous professional and academic awards and accolades.
“Keeping the price tag hidden from the customer until the end of the service has been the norm in the healthcare industry for a long time. This unwillingness and lack of cooperation on the part of providers has even given birth to innovative industries like hospital bill reviewers - also at the expense of the same customer. But with the multitude of options that the Internet has brought to the consumer's doorstep, the savvy shopper can now comparison shop for healthcare services much like he comparison shops his groceries, compelling providers to offer pricing and other value data lest they should be ousted from the marketplace. Other health content such as details of surgical procedures, hospital profiles, success rates, and doctor bios are other value metrics that today’s consumer is demanding to facilitate his decision-making, and which Healthbase strives to provide.”
Tom O’Connor, Managing Director, Berkery Noyes
Tom has over 20 years experience in investment banking and finance. Tom joined Berkery Noyes in 2000 from prior positions for two years at a media buyout fund, controller of a public entertainment company, and an audit manager at Ernst & Young. Tom holds a BS in accounting from State University of New York at Binghamton and an MBA from Fordham University. Tom is also a Certified Public Accountant.
Tom focuses principally on mid-market healthcare M&A transactions and runs the Berkery Noyes healthcare practice. Some of his recent notable transactions include: Sale of Princeton Media Associates to HMP Communications & NACCME; Sale of HCPro Holdings, Inc to Halyard Capital; Sale of CenterWatch/NEIRB, a division of Thomson Healthcare, to Jobson Medical; Sale of HMP Communications to Alta Communications; Sale of Complete Healthcare Communication to MediMedia/Vestar Capital Partners; Sale of American Health Consultants (A Thomson Corporation unit) to The Thompson Group, Current Medicine Group sold to Springer Science+Business (Cinven); Physicians’ Education Resource and Cancer Information Group sold to Providence Equity.
Linda Peitzman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Wolters Kluwer Health
Dr. Peitzman is currently Chief Medical Officer for Wolters Kluwer Health and Executive Vice President of Clinical Development and Informatics for its Clinical Solutions business unit. In these roles she helps direct clinical strategy and oversees the clinical development and informatics for Clinical Solutions products, including structured clinical documentation, coding and reimbursement, evidence based order sets, order set management, evidence based guidelines, clinical decision support, and EMR and clinical systems integration.
From 2000 to the 2006 acquisition of ProVation Medical by Wolters Kluwer, Dr. Peitzman served as Chief Medical Officer for ProVation Medical, where she lead the team of clinicians and coders who defined and developed medical content for the company’s documentation software applications. Prior to joining ProVation she was a practicing physician and a Medical Director with HealthSystemMinnesota/Park Nicollet Clinic, a large, multispecialty integrated care delivery system with hospital facilities and 31 clinic locations.
Russell Perkins, Founder and Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group
Russell Perkins is the founder and managing director of Infocommerce Group Inc., a Philadelphia-based researcher, consultancy and publisher serving the database information industry. Infocommerce Group is also the sponsor of the annual InfoCommerce Conference.
Widely recognized as the preeminent expert on the business of database directory publishing, Russell has over 20 years direct industry experience. He was most recently President and CEO of Dorland Healthcare Information, a venture capital funded healthcare database publisher. Prior to that, he was a Group President at magazine publisher North American Publishing, and previous to that Vice President of a legal news publisher that is now a subsidiary of American Lawyer Media. Russell has also worked at AT&T, and began his career at Thomas Publishing Company. Russell was also the founder of Morgan-Rand, which became widely known in the industry for its consulting and contract database publishing activities.
In addition, Russell is author of two books, Directory Publishing: A Practical Guide, now in its fifth edition, and InfoCommerce: Internet Strategies for Database Publishers. Russell has also served as a director of the organization that is now the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA), and the Directory and Database Publishers Forum & Network (DPFN).
"Infocommerce is the term we use to describe the evolution of the database publishing business, from one focused on presenting users with a fixed (and invariably large) set of information and saying, in effect, “you figure out what to do with it,” to one that provides users with information specifically designed to help them get to answers and actions.
There is no set path to infocommerce – how a publisher evolves his product is a function of both the information and the market served. The core tenet of this evolution, however, is that it moves database content from a passive, reference orientation, to something that is more useful, more integrated and more active. This works to preserve and even increase the relevance and value of the information to the user."
West Shell III, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Healthline Networks
In April 2005, West joined the Board of Directors and assumed the role of chairman and CEO of Healthline. Prior to joining Healthline, West served as CEO and president of Sapias, a leading provider of mobile workforce management solutions for large enterprise customers such as Time Warner, ServiceMaster, and Hudson News. From 1997 to 2001, as chairman and CEO of Netcentives, West created one of the most powerful e-marketing companies, managing over 50 million consumer relationships on behalf of more than 200 blue chip customers in 10 countries. Within three years the company was generating over $70 million in revenues. West successfully led an IPO and, during his tenure, raised more than $150 million in private and public funds from leading investors to a $3 billion market capitalization. West earlier co-founded and served as managing partner of Pacific Marketing Group, one of the largest independent marketing agencies on the West coast, which he sold to D'arcy, Masius, Benton and Bowles. West has also held various product management and marketing positions at Atari, Coopervision, Grey Advertising (P&G) and Johnson & Johnson. He currently also serves on the boards of California Trout and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. He is happily married with four children and is an avid kayaker, skier and fly fisherman.
Nina Sossamon-Pogue, Vice President of Media, BenefitFocus
Nina Sossamon-Pogue, an Emmy award-winning television news anchor, is Vice President of Media for Benefitfocus, the parent company to icyou. With a background in investigative reporting, Nina was a popular on-air talent before joining icyou. Prior to that, she served as press secretary to Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. Nina graduated from Lousiana State University and is a former member of the United States Gymnastics Team.
Megan St. John, Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group
A veteran of the publishing and information business, Megan has run operations for both large and small companies across a wide array of industry specialties and formats. At present she is Managing Director at the InfoCommerce Group (ICG). While the ICG practice covers the whole range of business information, the company's roots and legacy began in the world of data publishing, a fast growing and high value segment of today's information world. For ICG clients, Megan leads engagements focusing on areas such as product development and evolution, market positioning, due diligence and overall corporate strategy.
Megan is the former president of Simba Information, Inc., once recognized as the leading authority for market intelligence and forecasts in the media and publishing industries. Simba is now a unit of Market Research Group LLC.
Prior to Simba, Megan was publisher of PBI Media's Electronic Commerce Group. PBI Media, now renamed Access Intelligence, publishes magazines, newsletters and directories for the aviation, defense, energy and communications industries.
