Dr. Ricky Bloomfield, a doctor on the forefront of implementing both Apple HealthKit and Apple ResearchKit in his position as Director of Mobile Strategy at Duke University, will leave Duke to take a position on Apple's health team. A colleague of Bloomfield's broke the news on Twitter yesterday and Apple confirmed the news. The company declined to go into detail about what Bloomfield's role at Apple would be.

Bloomfield was at Duke in 2014 when Apple announced Apple Health and Apple HealthKit. Duke became one of the first hospitals to integrate with Apple HealthKit via Epic, and to use the platform to incorporate patient-generated health data into its EHR. The initial pilot used HealthKit to track blood pressure and weight for patients with cancer and heart conditions. More

Cloud-based EHR and practice management company athenahealth has hired Diane Holman as chief people officer. Holman will report directly to CEO and founder Jonathan Bush, and advise the senior leadership team as the company looks to scale up operations in new regions by overseeing all aspects of human resources for the company across all locations. Previously, Holman was vice president of talent management at TE Connectivity, and held a similar role at Capgemini in Paris. The company has said it is looking to expand in new markets while slowing down in others, and recently cut 146 jobs across its San Francisco and Atlanta offices. 

Online therapy provider Talkspace has hired Lynn Hamilton as the company’s first chief commercial officer. In this role, she will head up Talkspace's commercial strategy for bringing mental health services to employers, providers and insurance companies in the United States as well as new markets in Asia and Europe. Previously, Hamilton served as senior vice president at Magellan Health, where she led the company’s employer segment for behavioral health and employer assistance program. She was also a vice president at Cigna Healthcare.

Electronics manufacturing company Flex has hired Dr. Kal Patel as senior vice president of digital health, where he help lead the company’s continued developed of their Sketch-to-Scale connected health and wellness tools. Patel comes from telemedicine provider Doctor on Demand, where he served as chief commercial officer and oversaw all business and commercial functions. Prior to Doctor on Demand, Patel founded and headed Amgen Digital Health. More

Virtual Health, which makes a population health management platform, has hired three new executives: Tomer Benami will join the company as vice president of finance, Dana Levin-Robinson will serve as vice president of marketing, and Marcus Caraballo was internally promoted to serve as senior manager of accounts.

Benami, who previously served as vice president of finance and operations at the UK company Apploi, will manage Virtual Health’s financial infrastructure. Levin-Robinson will direct key branding and communications initiative, and is bringing her experience from her past post as senior marketing manager at AccentHealth. Caraballo, who has worked with VirtualHealth’s client base for over a year, will continue to manage client relationships as well as oversee implementation efforts. More