Advisory
Robert S. Dittus, M.D., M.P.H.
Medical Director and Co-Founder
Dr. Dittus is the Albert and Bernard Werthan Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Vanderbilt Division of General Internal Medicine, and Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Health Services Research. Dr. Dittus has focused his career on the methodology for improving clinical decision making by linking clinical epidemiology, health services research, and quality improvement. He is extensively published in these fields. He has been the principal investigator of 23 grants and an investigator on 40 grants representing over $70 million in funding. He directly manages over 60 full-time and 80 adjunct faculty, oversees the adult primary care education of over 100 residents and 400 medical students and has total current research funding that exceeds $50 million. He earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, M.D. and internal medicine residency and chief residency at Indiana University, and an M.P.H. in epidemiology while a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar from the University of North Carolina.
Robert L. Ohsfeldt, Ph.D.
Health Economist Director
Dr. Ohsfeldt holds the rank of Professor at the Texas A&M University Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health. Dr. Ohsfeldt is a leading researcher in the areas of cost-effectiveness analysis, assessment of potential return on investments for innovative technologies, economics of health behavior, and markets for health care personnel. In his prior position as a Research Scientist with Eli Lilly and Company, he was responsible for developing model-based pre-launch outcomes research strategies. One of his models, built in collaboration with MDM, won a prestigious Lilly Research Laboratories President's Recognition Award. Dr. Ohsfeldt completed his Ph.D. and B.S. degrees in economics at the University of Houston, and completed post-doctoral training in econometrics at the University of Chicago. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Finance at Johns Hopkins University and at the Texas Medical Center.
Michael G. Browning, B.S.
Finance and General Entrepreneurial Advisor
CEO and Chairman of the Board, Browning Investments, Inc., and a member of the Board of Directors of Cinergy Corp., a $12 billion diversified energy company.
David J. Cohen, M.D., M.Sc.
Medical and Health Economist Advisor
Director of Cardiovascular Research, Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute, formerly of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School.
Thomas F. Imperiale, M.D.
Medical Advisor
Professor of Medicine at Indiana University.
Robert M. Lubitz, M.D., M.P.H.
Medical Advisor
Director of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Director of Academic Affairs at St. Vincent Hospital, Indianapolis, IN.
David A. Smolen, J.D., M.A.
Legal Affairs and Strategic Development Advisor
Mr. Smolen is the Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer of Fort Mason Capital, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser in San Francisco. Previously, David was Managing Member of Girvan Capital Management, LLC, a San Francisco-based investment adviser, and President and CEO of Girvan Ventures, Inc., an international technology investment and business development company affiliated with the Girvan Institute of Technology, which was originally funded by NASA to commercialize technology developed at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Prior to Girvan Ventures, he co-founded Latinvalley, Inc., a technology-focused venture capital and private equity firm that invests in Latin America. Between 1997 and 2000, he was an associate with the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, practicing in the securities group. Prior to Sullivan & Cromwell, he was a law clerk to the honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. David is a graduate of Stanford University in law (JD, 1996), political science (MA, 1996) and international relations (BA, 1988).
Reid M. Ness, M.D., M.P.H.
Medical Advisor
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University.
Bruce W. Schmeiser, Ph.D.
Engineering Advisor
Computer simulation and modeling expert, Professor of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University.
Anantha Shekhar, MD, Ph.D.
Medical Advisor
Professor and Raymond E. Houk Chair in Psychiatry, Indiana University.
