We've seen a tremendous progress in digital health in the last few years and COVID-19 has only accelerated the pace of change. MIT Startup Exchange is convening the workshop on Friday, March 26, 11 AM ET, to showcase the best of MIT Startups in this topic. This workshop will present perspectives from industry leaders and startups on challenges and opportunities in digital health.
This event will be part of the MIT Health Science Technologies Webinar series.
Richie Bavasso is CEO and co-founder of nQ Medical Inc, a machine learning computational biomarker company leveraging personal devices to manage neuromotor diseases. nQ builds powerful, AI solutions to support the continuum of neurological health. Everyone has a unique typing signature. Research has revealed that the way we interact with our computers and mobile devices reveal with startling accuracy the presence of certain neuromotor diseases. This MIT discovered/Michael J. Fox Foundation validated artificial intelligence tool (neuroQWERTY) has opened a broad opportunity to better diagnose diseases, track disease progression, and monitor medication effectiveness and symptoms.
He is also Senior Executive Consultant, Digital Health and MedTech, Americas, for Scottish Development International. In this role, he supports the Scotland Government advising and assisting Scottish life sciences, MedTech, and digital health start-ups in with expansion into the US market. He also works with Fortune 500 US- based life sciences companies interested in expanding their footprint in the Scottish market and seeking to promote better and more productive UK-US collaborations.
Prior to nQ Medical, he founded and was CEO of RIMEDIO Inc, an eCommerce platform offering regulatory compliant content management and communications tools to consummate transactions between healthcare stakeholders.
Bavasso is also one of the early pioneers of use of digital media, devices and the web as tools to support Pharma/ MedTech sales and marketing strategies and tactics. Since 1999, he worked with top 25 Pharma/ MedTech clients globally to introduce the Closed Loop Marketing (CLM) function. In that role he set procedure and precedent in the areas of sales force effectiveness, business-rule driven content management, multichannel marketing, and mobile technology. As co-founder and former President of Exploria SPS LLC, he became the first major software vendor to introduce business rule controlled content management to Pharma's commercial sales operations. He was recognized as one of the top 100 influential people in Pharma by PharmaVOICE while in this role.
Prior to Exploria SPS, Mr. Bavasso served for sixteen years as CEO of Pharmedica Holdings LLC, and President of its INFLUENT Division, at the time one of the largest medical education companies in the world. He built Pharmedica holdings from its start as a meeting planning company in 1992, doubling its revenues each year until its sale in 2001. This growth included an ACCME accredited entity (Center for Medical Education LLC), a digital content division (Influent LLC), and a call center (ContextMedicus LLC).
Mr. Bavasso is a licensed hospital administrator having served as Vice President at two health systems in New England. A graduate of Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, with a BS in business administration, he received his MBA in health care management and finance from Bryant University.
A frequent speaker at industry conferences and events, Mr. Bavasso serves as an advocate for the industry in promoting digital conversation as integral to the various enterprise functions within the life sciences and the medical community.
Nader Yaghoubi, M.D., Ph.D. is President, CEO and Co-Founder of PathMaker Neurosystems. Dr. Yaghoubi has over 20 years of experience in the creation, operations and financing of life science companies. At PathMaker he serves as PI on a $5M NINDS CREATE Device award from NIH, and is responsible for PathMaker being awarded several international prizes and grants. Prior to PathMaker Neurosystems, Dr. Yaghoubi founded and served as President and CEO of Symbiotix Biotherapies, a biotechnology company emerging from Harvard Medical School developing novel molecular therapeutics based on the human microbiome, and which was awarded over $5 million in NIH funding, did a corporate partnership and raised an equity financing round. Before PathMaker and Symbiotix, he was the first employee at BIND Biosciences (Nasdaq:BIND) and Selecta Biosciences (Nasdaq:SELB), where he worked with the MIT founders to launch the companies and rapidly take them operational. Previously, he was at Zero Stage Capital, a venture capital firm where he was responsible for investing in the life sciences sector, and earlier completed an internship at Advent International. Prior to this, he was a Health Care Entrepreneurship Fellow at Boston University, where he worked with leading physicians to develop new healthcare-related businesses. Before his fellowship, he was a surgical resident in the Department of Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Dr. Yaghoubi received an M.D. and Ph.D. in Molecular Pharmacology from the combined degree program at Boston University School of Medicine. His doctorate work on the development of high-throughput automated electrophysiological systems resulted in five issued patents, received one of the University's highest awards for dissertational research, and was the basis of a venture-backed biotechnology company focused on neuroscience. He is extensively involved in mentoring young companies, and has served as a mentor, advisor and reviewer with MBC’s MassCONNECT program, Mass Life Sciences Center programs, Springboard Venture Capital Forum and numerous university and international business plan competitions.
Thanos Kosmidis received his MEng in Computing from Imperial College (UK), his MS in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University (USA), and has been an Advanced Study Fellow at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (USA).
He has 20 years of experience in the technical and commercial divisions of high-tech companies in USA and Europe. His last post, which he left to build CareAcross, was that of deputy director at a large telecommunications' firm strategic commercial planning department.
He has solid experience in managing multiple local and remote teams, including growing a team of 5 to reach 180 people across three countries and five timezones. He has led multimillion dollar projects from inception to delivery, and is experienced in the full lifecycle of products and services.
Mr Kosmidis is an active member of the international Health 2.0 organisation promoting the application of technology in healthcare, and a frequently invited speaker and presenter at international conferences in digital health.
Finally, Mr Kosmidis is serving as a Assembly Member for the European Commission’s “Mission on Cancer”, and as a technology expert for the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC), and the Quality Assurance Scheme Development Group (QASDG) in particular.
Drew Arenth is the Chief Business Officer at macro-eyes. Drew has extensive experience modernizing global supply chains across sectors. He has built and led teams in maritime logistics, health care, energy, defense contracting, and technology development in more than a dozen countries around the world.
Dr. Jon Bloom is a board-certified physician and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in technology development, patient monitoring, biomedical research, and health care delivery. He is the chief executive officer of Podimetrics, a care management company with the leading solution to help prevent diabetic foot ulcers, one of the most debilitating and costly complications of diabetes.
Dr. Bloom co-founded Podimetrics in 2011 while a student at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Podimetrics combines an FDA-cleared SmartMat™ with wraparound care management to spot signs of ulcers, on average, five weeks before they usually would present clinically. By combining cutting-edge technology with best-in-class care management, Podimetrics earns high engagement rates from patients and achieves unparalleled outcomes saving limbs, lives, and money.
Born on Holloman Air Force Base to a Vietnam War Captain and Pilot, Dr. Bloom served as a Clinical Assistant Professor and staff anesthesiologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He also served as the Director of Global Medical Affairs for Covidien's Respiratory and Monitoring Solutions division in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Bloom is a diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology, completing residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has co-authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications with a primary focus on health care economics and perioperative complications. Prior to his career in medicine Dr. Bloom studied cytochrome P450 drug metabolism at The Scripps Research Institute.
Antonio studied English literature and philosophy at Kenyon College. A self-taught creative who employs passionate curiosity, careful observation, and a playful, sometimes absurdist imagination to iterative, experimental, and learning processes. Antonio’s creativity and understanding comes from standing at the intersection of the humanities and technology. He learns by doing and approaches doing as a series of minimal, iterative experiments.
Antonio designs and creates human systems, new organizations, early stage business models, value propositions, applied health care innovation experiences, and sound in service of helping people. He founded and leads the Humana Digital Health and Analytics Experience Center, an interdisciplinary, human-centered health care applied innovation accelerator and experimental learning institution. In doing so, he introduced the organization to: the application of human-centered design to digital product development, lean digital product management, agile extreme programming, as well as the balanced team model.
These methods have been successfully applied to create the One Medication List platform in addition to other operationalized and scaled digital health offerings. In addition to being helpful to people, he is focused on and is driven to transform Humana into a human-centered, learning entity, at scale. Rather than attempting to predict the future, he creates it.
Antonio’s long term professional interest is to continue to create new organizations, business models, value propositions, experiences, services, products, and opportunities at scale in health care to serve people well.
Anne Kim is cofounder and CEO of Secure AI Labs, which is based on her Media Lab graduate work at MIT with Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland of the Human Dynamics Group. Secure AI offers a federated learning and blockchain solution for accessing siloed data from genomic and clinical trial data to corporate databases. Kim's experience in computer science and molecular biology include genome-wide association studies, natural language processing for EHR, machine learning, and cyberbiosecurity work with the EFF, ACLU, and DEFCON. She sees accessibility to healthcare as a right, and believes that the interface between biology, healthcare policy, and technology is a promising way to achieve that mission.
Disclaimer: MIT Startup Exchange can make introductions that ideally provide open ended discussions in order to share mutual interests and potentially create common ground that incite the parties to collaborate. MIT Startup Exchange introductions may eventually lead to mutual partnerships, but that is not in any way guaranteed by MIT, MIT Corporate Relations, MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) or MIT Startup Exchange, which takes no responsibility for these outcomes and no formal part in such discussions following our introduction. MIT Startup Exchange and its activities and events are not for purposes of soliciting investment or offering securities.