Several CIOs from health systems including Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai and SCL Health have signed on as advisors to a new innovation venture focused on growing healthcare and government tech companies, according to a Nov. 18 news release.
Ross Mason, Ricky Caplin and Newton Howard, MD, founded the new venture, dubbed Aurora Forge. The initiative aims to grow seed-stage healthcare and government tech companies and donate the majority of their profits to charities.
"We want to solve the world’s biggest problems by helping great scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs lead translational impact via technological breakthroughs into the marketplace," said Dr. Howard, who serves as a professor at both University of Oxford and Washington, D.C.-based Georgetown University. He is also a resident scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Mr. Mason serves as CEO of Aurora Forge. In 2004, he founded the venture philanthropy High Impact Network of Responsible Innovators. Mr. Caplin is CEO of the HCI Group and is the tech founder and chairman of Caplin Family Offices.
Here are the advisors who have joined Aurora Forge:
- Chad Brisendine, vice president and CIO at St. Luke’s University Health Network (Bethlehem, Pa.)
- Matt Kull, CIO at Cleveland Clinic
- Zafar Chaudry, MD, senior vice president and CIO at Seattle Children’s Hospital
- Lisa Dykstra, senior vice president and CIO at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
- Dustin Hufford, senior vice president and CIO of Cooper University Health Care (Camden, N.J.)
- Kristin Myers, executive vice president, CIO and dean for information technology at Mount Sinai Health System (New York City)
- Craig Richardville, senior vice president and chief information and digital officer at SCL Health (Broomfield, Colo.)
- Tanya Townsend, senior vice president and CIO at LCMC Health (New Orleans)
- Saad Chaudhry, CIO at Luminis Health (Annapolis, Md.)
- Sameer Badlani, MD, chief digital officer and executive vice president for technology services at M Health Fairview (Minneapolis)
- Ricardo Azziz, MD, former CEO at SUNY (Albany, N.Y.)
- Ophir Frieder, PhD, biostatistics, bioinformatics and biomathematics faculty at Georgetown Medical Center (Washington, D.C.)
- Emil Peters, president of Cerner Global
- Mir Imran, chief innovation officer at InCube Labs