Health Catalyst Adds Seasoned Clinicians to Lead Medical Informatics, Patient Safety Initiatives

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Apr 11, 2017, 08:01 ET

SALT LAKE CITY, April 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Catalyst, a leader in healthcare data analytics, decision support and outcomes improvement, today announced the expansion of its leadership team with the addition of Chief Medical Informatics Officer Carolyn Wong Simpkins MD, PhD, and Vice President of Patient Safety Products Stanley Pestotnik MS, RPh.

The hires of Dr. Simpkins and Mr. Pestotnik, a pharmacist, underscore Health Catalyst's commitment to improving patient outcomes as healthcare organizations shift towards value-based care models.

"We are thrilled that Carolyn and Stan have agreed to join the Health Catalyst team," said Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst. "Their presence brings considerable clinical and research expertise to our ongoing effort to develop innovative products that our customers can depend on to improve patient safety and outcomes."

Pestotnik is a clinical pharmacist and medical informaticist with over 25 years' experience in health IT focused on patient safety and infectious diseases. He is the founding CEO of TheraDoc, Inc., a health care informatics company specializing in real-time clinical surveillance and decision support technology. TheraDoc was acquired by Hospira in December 2009. Prior to TheraDoc he was the Director of LDS Hospital Drug Surveillance and Safety Program for Intermountain Health Care's Infectious Diseases Informatics Group.

Pestotnik holds four patents in the area of clinical decision support and electronic surveillance. He has authored over 75 peer-reviewed articles on the clinical use of health IT in top-tier publications including JAMA and New England Journal of Medicine. Pestotnik holds both an RPh in pharmacy and an MS in medical informatics from the University of Utah.

Pestotnik will lead Health Catalyst's efforts to reduce patient harm. He will drive innovation to deliver solutions that go beyond identifying and measuring harm, to alerting clinicians early and even predicting harm events before they happen.

"Avoidable harm is an urgent problem affecting more than one million patients per year in this country," Pestotnik said. "What excites me about Health Catalyst is their commitment to developing the next generation of patient harm measurement and prevention tools to enhance current clinical practice."

Also new to Health Catalyst's leadership team, Dr. Simpkins is a physician, health information executive, and health system transformation leader. She combines frontline clinical experience in diverse settings with an insider's big picture view of federal health policy and its systemic implications, gleaned from her time serving on the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Health subcommittee.

She has led the design and development of digital health products and health system transformation programs, leveraging data and technology to drive better outcomes for patients. She is passionate about data, technology, design and disrupting healthcare paradigms to improve health outcomes for all.

Dr. Simpkins previously held the position of the North American Clinical Director and Global Lead for Patient-Centered Outcomes at the British Medical Journal. She also served as founding medical director for the Barrier Islands Free Medical Clinic, a retiree volunteer-staffed health clinic for the under-insured working poor on Johns Island, South Carolina. Dr. Simpkins holds a B.S. in Biological Sciences, with honors, from Stanford University and a M.D. and Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Cancer Biology from Duke University.

At Health Catalyst, Dr. Simpkins will lead the development of medical content for its next-generation suite of products. She will also help shape machine learning algorithms so they can best be used to influence important care decisions.

"I jumped at the chance to join Health Catalyst, which is at the forefront of deploying data analytics for meaningful clinical decision support," Dr. Simpkins said. "Hospitals and health systems are just beginning to realize the benefits of their own internal data, and Health Catalyst stands ready to partner with them for better, more efficient patient care."

About Health Catalyst
Health Catalyst is a next-generation data, analytics, and decision support company committed to being a catalyst for massive, sustained improvements in healthcare outcomes. We are the leaders in a new era of advanced predictive analytics for population health and value-based care with a suite of machine learning-driven solutions, decades of outcomes-improvement expertise, and an unparalleled ability to integrate data from across the healthcare ecosystem. Our proven data warehousing and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more than 85 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking physician practices. Health Catalyst's technology and professional services help to keep patients engaged and healthy in their homes and workplaces, and to optimize their care when it becomes necessary. We are grateful to be recognized by Fortune, Gallup, Glassdoor, Modern Healthcare and a host of others as a Best Place to Work in technology and healthcare. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Media Contact:
Jenna Warner
Amendola Communications
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SOURCE Health Catalyst