Strategic Advisory Board

David Dimond - Chair

CTO Global Healthcare Business, EMC

Dave Dimond is chief technology officer for EMC’s Global Healthcare Business. He is responsible for the international growth of EMC Federation business across both established and emerging healthcare economies around the world. Dave joined EMC to start-up their Health Sciences Solutions business where he developed national accounts, drove channel strategy, acquired talent and led product development. Before joining EMC, Dave was a strategic advisor to several healthcare ISVs, startups, and investment banks and was also Senior Vice President of Product Innovation at TSC. Dave has a breadth of experience in Management Consulting and was a Vice President, Technical Master V and National Practice Leader with the leading Healthcare and Life Sciences firm First Consulting Group (FCG). He has a MS in Engineering Management from Northeastern University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. He is an Adjunct Professor at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College in the MBA program with a focus on the business of healthcare technology and analytics.

Shaun T. Alfreds

Chief Operating Officer HealthInfoNet

Shaun Alfreds is chief operating officer of HealthInfoNet, the state health information exchange in Maine. He oversees all operational and business activities of the organization, including programs and grants, finance, and implementation and customer services. Previous to joining HealthInfoNet, he conducted research and policy development in the areas of health information technology (HIT) and health information exchange (HIE) with particular emphasis on public sector activities. As HIT program manager at the National Academy for State Health Policy and senior project director at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, he oversaw and supported a number of HIT and HIE projects for the National Governors Association State Alliance for eHealth, the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality National Resource Center for HIT. He holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He received an MBA from the University of Maine and is a Certified Professional in Health Information Technology and Electronic Health Records.

Michael Aspinwall

Managing Partner CCP Equity Partners

Michael Aspinwall is a managing partner of CCP Equity Partners, a leading private equity firm providing growth capital to innovative healthcare services and financial services companies. The firm’s most recent fund is $300 million. He focuses on healthcare services, specialty managed care, disease management, healthcare information technologies, and related outsourcing services. As an active investor, he has served on the boards of over 10 companies serving most major segments of healthcare delivery. Prior to CCP, he was a managing partner of Bear Stearns Health Innoventures, a venture capital fund. Prior to that he was senior vice president and co-head of healthcare investing at GE Equity. Before GE, he spent seven years at Chase Manhattan Bank, where he established and led the Healthcare Financial Services Division, providing financing and information exchange services to healthcare companies.

Kathryn Dawson-Townsend

Healthcare Industry Executive

Kathryn Dawson-Townsend has healthcare executive experience in operations, strategy, and IT system implementations. She is currently studying in a master of health science program in the area of health economics/health services research at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland. She also supports research projects at the newly formed Center for Health, Policy & Economics at the same university. Prior to that she was vice president of service delivery at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. She graduated from the Executive Leadership Program of America's Health Insurance Plans in 2005. In 2011 she was awarded the Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership from MIT. She has served on WPI's Industrial Engineering Advisory Board for several years, and now brings her experience and passion for improving healthcare to the Healthcare Delivery Institute. She is active in her community and was given the BlueCrew Distinguished Leadership Award for community service. She earned her BSE in engineering (industrial and operations) from the University of Michigan and her MBA from the University of Dayton (Ohio).

Everett "Ed" Devaney

President and Chief Executive Officer Visiting Nurse Associations of New England, Inc.

Everett M. "Ed" Devaney, FACHE, serves as President and CEO of the Visiting Nurses Association of New England, Inc., (VNANE), the largest network of home health care and hospice agencies in New England. He has provided executive leadership, holding CEO and COO positions, in premier health care organizations including Hackensack (NJ) UMC Mountainside, St Vincent's Health System (FL)/Daughters of Charity National Health System (now Ascension Health), Inova Fairfax Hospital (VA), Mainline Health/Jefferson Health System, and National Medical Enterprises (now Tenet Health), as well as an executive officer with Blue Cross BlueShield of Florida. He is a distinguished Fellow of the American College of Health Care Executives. He earned graduate degrees in Health Care Administration/Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and in Public Administration from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, and is a graduate of Salem State University (MA). He attended the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine and served as a USAF Aeromedic. He has served on many professional, educational, and community boards including the Board of Visitors, Jacksonville (FL) University, the Dean's Council, College of Health, University of North Florida, and as a Preceptor and Adjunct Faculty in Health Services Administration, George Washington University.

Lawrence Fagan

Co-Director Biomedical Informatics Training Program

Stanford University School of Medicine (retired)

Advisor, Biomedical Data Science Startups

Lawrence Fagan’s research interests have covered a number of clinical informatics areas, including medical expert systems, decision support systems concentrating on temporal reasoning, knowledge acquisition of clinical guidelines, user interface design including spoken and gesture-based interfaces, and semantic information retrieval of medical knowledge. He co-directs the Biomedical Informatics Training Program at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Science from MIT, his PhD in computer science from Stanford University, and his MD from the University of Miami. He was elected to fellowship in the American College of Medical Informatics in 1985.

Denise L. Fletcher

Vice President, Healthcare, Payer & Pharma & Life Sciences, Innovation Center of Excellence LEO-US, Xerox

Denise Fletcher serves as chief innovation officer for Xerox Healthcare, Pharma & Life Sciences. She is responsible for achieving annual group innovation revenue targets, fueling thought leadership strategies, engaging customers in innovation strategies, and driving innovation through a robust research and development pipeline. She has 6 patents pending in healthcare and pharma. She was recognized by Front End Innovation in March 2014, as one of the top 40 women in Innovation. In 2012, she received the National Diversity Council Award for most powerful and influential woman in Connecticut and received two corporate entrepreneur awards for “best new service” in 2014 and “new venture” 2015. Denise is a key strategist and influencer within the Xerox Healthcare Council, a member of Xerox’s University Affairs Council which seeds innovation grants to colleges and universities throughout the world. Denise graduated from Quinnipiac University with a BS in Accounting and obtained her PMP designation in 2005.

Robert R. Friedlander

Principle at Friedlander and Kramer, IP

Robert Friedlander recently retired from IBM as a Master Inventor, Innovation Evangelist, and Healthcare Architect. He has filed more than 150 patents in the U.S., Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Peoples Republic of China in areas ranging from healthcare, homeland security, database management, research optimization, accessibility and retail analytics. He was one of the top 100 US inventors out of 257,000 persons who filed one or more U.S. patent applications in 2008. He has lived and worked internationally supporting industries including healthcare, education, homeland security and police, manufacturing, bio-pharmaceutical, public integrity, retail and research, and was a project manager on the Space Shuttle project. Friedlander’s major contribution throughout his career has been enabling IBM and its customers to reengineer and reinvent their organizations and processes. He is an acknowledged expert in large-scale healthcare data. He is the originating author, certificate of originality holder and patent author for the IBM Clinical Healthcare data model. He has several dozen patents in the healthcare space.

Jay Himmelstein

Prof. of Family Medicine and Community Health &Quantitative Sciences, Chief Health Policy Strategist, Center for Health Policy and Research at UMass Medical School

Dr. Himmelstein's professional career in research, health policy strategy, and service is dedicated to improving health care and outcomes for those served by the public sector. Jay is currently a Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and Quantitative Health Sciences and Chief Health Policy Strategist for the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Health Policy and Research. He places special emphasis on improving health outcomes for people with disabilities and those served by the Medicaid program. Jay’s most recent work has focused on implementation of the ACA, utilizing information technology to transform public policy and health care delivery, enhancing patient engagement and empowerment, and leveraging university partnerships with Medicaid agencies to facilitate health system transformation. Jay has held numerous leadership positions at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, including assistant chancellor for health policy and founding director of the Center for Health Policy Research. He has published well over 100 peer-reviewed articles and technical reports, has been the principal investigator on more than 40 state and federal grants and contracts, and is highly regarded as a public speaker.

Dennis L. Irish

Principle, Dennis L. Irish & Associates

Vice President, Marketing, Government, and Community Relations Vanguard Health Systems, New England Market (retired)

Dennis Irish’s expertise spans marketing, business development, government and community relations and public affairs. As principal at Dennis L. Irish & Associates, he focuses on health care services marketing, municipal government affairs and public/private business development initiatives. He retired as vice president of Vanguard Health Systems in 2013, where he worked with government officials and opinion leaders in targeted expansion markets. In this position, he identified the full range of public financial assistance and incentive programs available at the local, state and federal level, monitored relevant local and state legislation and regulations that impact acute care hospitals, and developed marketing plans aimed at enhancing market share and political support. Prior to Vanguard, Dennis directed managed care and marketing at Saint Vincent Hospital. At Saint Vincent, he managed relationships with third party payers and directed the hospital’s communication activities, including marketing, advertising, and public relations. Previously, he spent nine years with UMass Medical Center and Memorial Healthcare as director of marketing and sales. He earned his BA from Clark University.

Kristina Isakovich

Chief Marketing Officer, GE Life Sciences

Kristina Isakovich has more than 20 years of experience in driving transformational change in companies in the healthcare, life sciences, and high technology industries. Prior to joining GE Life Sciences, she was the chief marketing and strategy officer for Philips Healthcare, a $13 billion provider of medical devices. Prior to that, she was vice president of corporate marketing at Fisher Scientific and vice president of corporate strategy at Thermo Electron. Prior to joining Thermo Electron, she spent seven years at McKinsey & Company, serving clients in the life sciences, aerospace and telecommunications industries. She started her professional career at Advanced NMR Systems, a startup that developed and commercialized a technology for high-speed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Isakovich holds a Ph.D in nuclear physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and dual BS degrees in mathematics and physics from Yale University.

Alice W. Lee

Executive Director, Strategy & Administration

Lean enterprise Institute

As executive director and a member of the Lean Enterprise Institute’s (LEI) executive team, Alice Lee is responsible for leading LEI’s long-range strategic planning and its administration, finance, and HR functions, expanding LEI’s collaboration on studies with university and other research communities, developing educational content, and coaching executives in creating continuous improvement cultures. Prior to joining LEI, Alice served as vice president and special assistant to the president, business transformation, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a major teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, from 2004 to 2014, as the responsible leader for creating an environment of operations excellence and continuous improvement principles throughout the BIDMC community. In 2004, she introduced the Toyota Production System at BIDMC to promote improvement thinking and skills for the organization, proactively manage change, and align systems and structure to support the business direction and goals. Her previous roles at BIDMC include vice president of the Department of Pathology and vice president of clinical information systems.

Robert Oriol

Chief Executive Officer of Oriol Health Care

Bob Oriol heads up Oriol Healthcare, a nearly 50-year old family company that was started by his father Eugene "Gene" Oriol, which includes rehabilitation, extended care, and skilled nursing centers in the greater Worcester area. He was formerly the Administrator of Oriol’s Rehabilitation & Skilled Nursing Center in Holden. Bob graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with an MBA and studied Health Care Administration at Clark University in Worcester. Bob also earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from WPI. Prior to joining his brother and his father in the family’s healthcare business, Bob worked as a computer programmer/analyst/manager/consultant. He is currently on the Board of the Massachusetts Senior Care Association (MSCA). He is also the Vice President of the New England Alliance, the Treasurer and a member of the Intercare Alliances, and a Director of the Worcester Children's Friend.

Dale C. Wiggins

General Manager, HealthSuite Digital Platform, Healthcare Informatics, Solutions & Services, Philips International

As vice president and general manager of Philips HealthSuite Digital Platform, Dale Wiggins is responsible for the core infrastructure for Philips’ open informatics solutions which enables the creation of an ecosystem to enable the health continuum with big data and integrated clinical solutions. Previously, he was general manager of Philips Research North America, leading the laboratory contributing to global research programs in the fields of healthcare and lighting. Prior to Research, Dale was vice president of technology for the Philips Healthcare Patient Care and Clinical Informatics business group. He focused on driving strategic technology plans across the businesses and oversaw activities related to several principal healthcare industry themes including systems integration within the hospital enterprise architecture, clinical decision support, interoperability standards and outcomes improvement studies and other clinical research. Dale joined Philips in 2001 from Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Technologies where he held various management, architecture, and engineering positions in research and development. Dale holds BS and MS degrees in Computer and Systems Engineering.