The Beat

About Shannon Klinger:

As Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Shannon Thyme Klinger leads Moderna’s legal, governance, and corporate compliance efforts.

Ms. Klinger joined Moderna from Novartis (NYSE: NVS), serving as Chief Legal Officer and a member of the Novartis Executive Committee since 2018. Previously, she served as Chief Ethics, Risk & Compliance Officer. During her ten-year tenure at Novartis, she held other roles of increasing responsibility, including as Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer and Global Head of Litigation, General Counsel, and Global Head of Legal at Sandoz, a Novartis division.

Throughout her career, Ms. Klinger’s work has focused on driving long-term business performance and building trust with society, including ensuring access to medicine, protecting innovation with intellectual property, championing the responsible use of data, and enabling excellence in product launches. She is also a committed advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Ms. Klinger served on the board of directors of the SIX Group in Switzerland from 2016 to 2020.

Ms. Klinger received her Juris Doctorate with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame. She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia and the District of Columbia Bar.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Moderna has focused on infectious diseases and commits to creating transformative therapies for patients with the power of mRNA.
• The World Health Organization releases a flu strain selection in March or April every year. 
• The Moderna Charitable Foundation was initially endowed with $50 million. 
• The Foundation recently announced $4 million worth of grants in sub-Saharan Africa to organizations focused on clinical training and workforce development on educating about vaccines.
• In 2023, Moderna partnered with the African Union to commit 100 million doses of their most updated variant vaccine for low-middle-income countries. 
• Moderna has a program called mRNA Access, where they partner with researchers and universities worldwide to give them access to their platform, research, and scientific advice, thus tackling public health challenges together.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Shannon Klinger on LinkedIn.
• Follow Moderna on LinkedIn.
• Discover the Moderna Website.
• Check out the mRNA Access Website.
• Visit Moderna’s Charitable Foundation Website.

Topics Covered

• Discover how CivicaScript is disrupting the pharmaceutical industry to provide affordable medications to patients
• The unique approach that CivicaScript is taking to combat the high cost of generics
• How CivicaScript partners with hospitals, payers, and pharmacies to lower drug prices for patients
• Hear how CivicaScript selects the right generic products (overpriced, lacking competition)
• Understand how CivicaScript's transparency has shocked the pharmaceutical industry, leading to push back from entities that have been over-profiting on the backs of sick people
• Gina shares the future of CivicaScript and how it plans to partner with healthcare providers to amplify its impact

Connect with Gina Guinasso

• Gina on LinkedIn

Connect with Dr. Jessica Shepherd & Dr. Gautam Gulati

• Dr. Shepherd on LinkedIn
• Dr. Shepherd on Twitter
• Dr. Gulati on Twitter
• Dr. Gulati on LinkedIn

Resources

• Civica Rx
• CivicaScript
• ViVE

About Crystal Brown:

Crystal Brown is Vice President of Product and Strategy at Benefitfocus, a cloud-based benefits administration technology company serving Health Plans and Employers nationwide.  Crystal is the lead for all aspects of product strategy, roadmap development, and product execution for the full product portfolio of Benefitfocus. In this role, she ensures the viability, feasibility, and desirability of the product offerings, by tapping the expertise of business leaders and keenly knowing the competitive landscape. Crystal brings with her 20+ years of leadership experience spanning deep business acumen, user insights, and technical savvy delivering product designs resulting in a compelling competitive advantage.

Prior to this role, Crystal was the Vice President of Strategic Programs at Florida Blue. There she was responsible for leading enterprise strategy, roadmap development, and program execution for transformational initiatives in Sales, Engineering, Clinical Operations, and Provider Networks. A sampling of strategic initiatives she most recently led includes Provider Interoperability, Cost and Quality Transparency, Population Health Management, and Enterprise Data Governance.

An active member of her community, Crystal has annually served through United Way leading and participating in community service activities focused on supporting local agency programs.  Agencies of support include Clara White Mission, Daniel Kids, Hands on Jacksonville, and Children’s Home Society of Florida.  While in and out of the office, Crystal remains an active mentor providing interview coaching, development plan building, career pathing, and on-the-job competency mentoring. She is most passionate about mentoring individuals in technology as they prepare for progression into management, focusing on coaching, organizational structure, and general management practices.  

Crystal holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of North Florida with a concentration in Marketing and eCommerce. She is a native of Jacksonville and enjoys cheering alongside her husband of 20 years at the various activities of their three children.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Advanced Engagement Services is Benefitfocus’ enhanced automated communication solution to help health plans and employers connect with their customers and employees.
• Disengaged members are often three times more likely to have unmet medical needs and two times more likely to delay medical care.
• Health plans that proactively engage their members can see an increase in overall satisfaction when they try to keep out-of-pocket costs low. 
• It's hard to create personalized and meaningful communications for customers without their complete and accurate information.
• Usher Technology, Benefitfocus’ latest partner, uses a no-code AI-driven platform that delivers a highly personalized digital experience in customer journey automation with a secure, HIPAA-compliant, password-free customer interface.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Crystal Brown on LinkedIn.
• Follow Benefitfocus on LinkedIn.
• Visit the Benefitfocus Website.
• Reach out to Crystal at [email protected]

About David Rhew:

Dr. David C. Rhew is the Global Chief Medical Officer (CMO) & VP of Healthcare for Microsoft. He is Adjunct Professor at Stanford University; holds six U.S. technology patents enabling authoring, mapping, and integrating clinical decision support into electronic health records; and has been recognized as one of the 50 most influential clinical executives by Modern Healthcare.

Dr. Rhew received his Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and cellular molecular biology from the University of Michigan. He received his MD degree from Northwestern University and completed his internal medicine residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He completed fellowships in health services research at Cedars-Sinai and infectious diseases at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He has served as CMO and VP for Samsung; SVP and CMO at Zynx Health Incorporated; clinician/researcher at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and RAND; and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Rhew has served on the National Quality Forum’s Executive Committee for Consensus Standards and Approval, Chaired the Consumer Technology Association Health Technology Board, and sits on the Governing Committee for NESTcc (National Evaluation System for Health Technology coordinating center), the Medical Device advisory group for the FDA, CMS, and NIH.

About Dan Desmond:

Dan Desmond is the health systems architect for the Health Equity Consortium. He focuses on innovations at the nexus of public health, healthcare, payers, pharma, and community-based organizations. Dan has been advancing public health data reporting for over 25 years. Including work with health systems to improve workflows, operational efficiencies, and data quality. During COVID he oversaw the deployment of solutions to bring care to underserved, rural, and hard-to-reach populations. His team is now driving efforts for equitable community engagement leveraging Azure Confidential Computing to improve vaccination and wellness campaigns; public health surveillance; and HEDIS, QIP, and Star measures in a sustainable manner.

About Bela Matyas:

Bela T. Matyas is currently the Health Officer and Deputy Director of Health and Social Services for Solano County in California. He previously served as Chief of the Communicable Disease Emergency Response Branch of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), after briefly serving as Chief of the Disease Investigations Section of CDPH. He also served for thirteen years as the Medical Director of the Epidemiology Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health after serving for four years as the Medical Director of Disease Control and State Epidemiologist for the Rhode Island Department of Health. Dr. Matyas received his medical degree from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and completed a residency in Occupational Medicine/Preventive Medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he also received a Master of Science Degree in Epidemiology and a Master of Public Health.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Data utilization, technology integration, and AI are critical factors in streamlining processes and enhancing healthcare delivery.
• The HEC wants to ensure data security, respect privacy, and build trust with their communities.
• Healthcare, community-based organizations, and the public health sector must work together to tackle current healthcare issues and improve care.
• Data sharing and collaboration have been challenges for healthcare stakeholders so far.
• Too much data is not valuable, but with the help of AI and ML, the data can be cleaned and structured to be leveraged correctly.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow David Rhew on LinkedIn.
• Connect with and follow Bela Matyas on LinkedIn.
• Visit the Health Equity Consortium Website.

About Peter Micca:

Peter Micca is an Audit & Assurance Partner and National Health Tech leader at Deloitte & Touche LLP. He has 30 years of experience serving a broad array of clients in all sectors of the healthcare, technology, and life sciences industries. He has significant experience with health technology organizations, software as a service (SaaS) organizations, pharmacy benefit management, clinical and diagnostic operations, emerging growth, as well as private equity–financed organizations in life sciences and health technology and services. Micca applies a deep knowledge of industry sector business issues regarding the emerging trends surrounding consumerism, convergence, cost considerations, regulatory and compliance issues, and consolidation.

About Navid Farzad:

Navid is a partner with Frist Cressey Ventures. Prior to joining FCV in 2019, he worked with Morgan Noble, an investment firm that focuses exclusively on companies determined to change the future of healthcare. Before Morgan Noble, he was with Enhanced Equity Funds, a healthcare-focused private equity firm based in New York, and has also previously held positions with Lehman Brothers’ healthcare investment banking division, Ernst & Young’s Transaction Advisory group, and Arthur Andersen’s healthcare practice.

Navid has also served as the Chief Strategy Officer of Continuum Health, a physician enablement company providing practice management and population health services to medical groups. He has been an investor and/or served on the board of directors of Mindoula Health, Continuum Health, Captify Health, Privia Health, and Trusted Health Plans.

He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University.

About Marcus Osborne:

Marcus Osborne is the Chief Executive Officer at RightMove Health. He is a leader in healthcare, having served in many positions that include almost 15 years at Walmart, where his last role was senior vice president of Walmart Health. He also served on the board of many companies, including Health Here, ZealCare, WebPT, and many others. Marcus got his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Government from Transylvania University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard. 

Things You’ll Learn:

• Digital health can only be successful with brick-and-mortar knowledge and the legacy of delivery systems.
• Collaboration can’t be inconsistent and variable, as it needs to have a defined process that can be reproduced. 
• Companies that attempt to control another’s innovation get less of its benefit.
• Technology, people, and physician-empowering solutions are the future of health.
• When collaborating, the two parties should be able to bring their best selves to the table.
• Companies should act more and take risks with innovations, as even the things that don't work bring lessons to move forward.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Peter Micca on LinkedIn.
• Connect with and follow Navid Farzad on LinkedIn.
• Connect with and follow Marcus Osborne on LinkedIn.
• Follow Deloitte on LinkedIn.
• Discover the Deloitte Website.
• Read this paper from Deloitte about Reimagining Innovation Systems in Healthcare. 
• Follow Frist Cressey Ventures on LinkedIn.
• Explore the Frist Cressey Ventures Website.
• Follow RightMove Health on LinkedIn.
• Visit the RightMove Health Website.

Topics Covered

• Rebuilding trust with physicians and patients amid the misinformation crisis in America
• The AMA's recovery plan to address decreased buy-in to medicine among physicians
• How to introduce technologies into healthcare to make them work for physicians to help reduce burnout
• The critical issues facing the AMA
• The importance of health equity (and how to achieve it)
• The benefits and risks of technology in healthcare—AI and data privacy concerns
• How to protect patient information
• Discussing burnout and disenfranchisement among healthcare providers during the pandemic
• Addressing issues such as bias and transparency with the Physician Innovation Network
• The key to avoiding reinforcing bias in marginalized communities
• The American Medical Association's core principles for creating effective products

Connect with Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld

• Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld
• Jesse Ehrenfeld on LinkedIn

Connect with Dr. Gautam Gulati & Dr. Jessica Shepherd 

• Dr. Gulati on Twitter
• Dr. Gulati on LinkedIn
• Dr. Shepherd on LinkedIn
• Dr. Shepherd on Twitter

Resources

• American Medical Association
• AMA Physician Innovation Network
• ViVE

About Dale Cook:

Dale is an expert in digital mental health. As co-founder and CEO of Learn to Live, he's part of a member-focused mental healthcare company that provides online programs and 24/7 clinician coaching to empower people to improve their mental health. Learn to Live serves over 33 million people through health plans, employers, and universities across the country.

Dale has been recognized for his innovative approaches to healthcare as a recipient of the (Real) Power 50 award and the Business Leader in Healthcare: Startup award. Dale has been featured in various local and national publications, including Forbes, The Observer, National Public Radio, O, The Oprah Magazine, and others. Dale provides a welcoming and inspiring voice around mental health and the importance of driving engagement with digital healthcare solutions for at-risk populations.

He is an active member of multiple healthcare entrepreneur groups focused on improving healthcare at the state and federal levels and is a member of the Governor’s Taskforce on Broadband in Minnesota, which seeks to ensure quality broadband access for all Minnesotans. Dale is also a Fellow of the fifth class of the Health Innovators Fellowship at the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy programs have been studied for over two decades, and research shows that, when done correctly, digital CBT can be as effective as face-to-face CBT.
• Some necessary psychometric assessments are the PHQ-9 for depression, the GAD-7 for general anxiety, and the SPIN for social anxiety.
• Almost half of the people in the United States will suffer from a mental health problem at any point in their lives, but only one in four will seek care.
• Currently, teen mental health is one of the most important and talked about issues in this space.
• More than half of the counties in the US don't have a mental healthcare practitioner.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Dale Cook on LinkedIn.
• Follow Learn to Live on LinkedIn.
• Visit the Learn to Live Website!

About Julie Lambert:

Julie Lambert serves as the President and General Manager of Inovalon’s Provider business unit. In this role, Ms. Lambert leads the organization that delivers cloud-based SaaS solutions to tens of thousands of provider organizations across the country empowering them to achieve better outcomes and economics for their organizations and the millions of patients that they serve. Ms. Lambert leads and is responsible for the management, product portfolio, sales, customer success, operations, and the overall performance of the provider business. Prior to her role as President and General Manager, Ms. Lambert was the Senior Vice President of the provider division’s customer success and operations team, where her customer-centric approach drove significant improvement to a wide array of operational metrics, customer satisfaction, and customer retention.

Source

Things You’ll Learn:

• About $570 billion annually accounts for wasteful healthcare administrative spending.
• According to 2022’s Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH) index, providers spent more time and money on administrative tasks than on actual patient care.
• The Inovalon ONE® Platform combines national-scale connectivity, real-time primary source data, and advanced analytics to deliver actionable insights that inform and accelerate patient care.
• Clinicians can get burdened with administrative tasks, affecting how they provide treatment.
• Patients expect their provider's full attention during any type of care encounter.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Julie Lambert on LinkedIn.
• Follow Inovalon on LinkedIn.
• Explore the Inovalon Website!

About Kimberly O'Loughlin:

Kimberly joined HRS in March 2022, bringing with her more than 30 years of experience in leveraging talent and technology to drive growth, innovation, and improved business performance and customer experiences across health tech and other industries.  

At HRS, her portfolio includes award-winning Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and telehealth solutions and services that address increasingly important healthcare needs – lowering the cost of care, and improving health outcomes, while delivering better experiences for both consumers and clinicians. 

Prior to HRS, Kimberly was CEO of Therapy Brands where she was responsible for serving the mental, behavioral, and physical therapy market providers with a broad portfolio of software and services including specialty-specific EHR/PMS platforms, patient engagement, telehealth, e-prescription solutions, and revenue cycle management services.  Before this, she was President at Greenway Health; prior to that, she ran two global healthcare businesses at Philips in Connected Care and Health Informatics.  She had solutions for monitoring and supporting the safety, health, and connectedness needs of seniors in the home as well as in long-term and post-acute care settings.  She also expanded access to healthcare in emerging global markets with low-cost continuous monitoring, vital signs monitoring, cardiology, oncology, and women’s health solutions.

Prior to working at Philips, Kimberly held senior leadership roles within AIG, AT&T Wireless, and AT&T. She has demonstrated excellent results in growing revenue and profitability, launching innovative products, transforming operations to six sigma and best-in-class performance, and building stellar teams.

Over the years, Kimberly and her teams have earned a variety of awards including Best Company Culture, Best Company for Diversity, Frost and Sullivan Award for Product Line Innovation, Best in KLAS for RCM, Best in KLAS Most Improved Ambulatory EHR, and Stevie’s People’s Choice Award for Best Customer Service. In 2012 she was inducted into the Executive Women of New Jersey, and in 2013 she was featured in Executive Profile magazine on the Top 25 executive profiles list. In 2019, she was named the number 3 woman in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare, and in 2021 she earned top CEO ratings by Comparably.

Kimberly has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University and a Master of Science degree in Applied Psychology with a concentration in Human Factors Engineering from Steven’s Institute of Technology. She served as class president at Princeton where she currently serves on the Alumni Schools Committee. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Jerry, and their dog Harley.  They have three children and enjoy the beach, skiing, sports, and time with family and friends.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Health Recovery Solutions is the leading provider of remote care delivery.
• Patients are becoming more active in their healthcare.
• Individually tailored care plans with inpatient and virtual care will become more common in the coming years.
• HRS has clinical advisory services. 
• HRS sets up the remote care technologies providers need.
• Promising healthcare industry trends include value-based care, lower-cost care settings, health equity focus, interoperability, the use of AI and ML, and hospital-at-home functionalities.
• HRS provides patients with hardware and software to connect to their caregivers and clinicians with a portal that monitors and supports the patient.
• AI technologies can help harness data to design different treatment pathways and predict which patients will need intervention.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Kimberly O'Loughlin on LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Follow Health Recovery Solutions on LinkedIn.
• Discover the Health Recovery Solutions Website!
• Reach out to Kimberly at [email protected]!

Topics Covered

• The potential of newer technologies like generative AI to eliminate friction in clinical environments
• Overcoming physician apprehension towards technology adoption and introducing ambient experience in healthcare
• The importance of physician adoption coaching and building psychological safety with providers
• The use of simulations and VR in training for medical students
• The need for a pause in healthcare technology implementation to focus on the art of practicing medicine
• The importance of sharing knowledge and ideas among medical institutions
• Why patient-centered care and patient-reported outcomes still need to stand at the center
• The evolving definition of a "good doctor"

Connect with Andrea Daugherty

• Andrea Daugherty on LinkedIn

Connect with Dr. Jessica Shepherd & Dr. Gautam Gulati

• Dr. Shepherd on LinkedIn
• Dr. Shepherd on Twitter
• Dr. Gulati on Twitter
• Dr. Gulati on LinkedIn

Resources

• Dell Medical School
• ViVE