Digital health hires news has been on the slow side around the holiday season, but there is at least one big piece of personnel news: Lisa Suennen, a digital health-focused investor, has joined GE Ventures as Managing Director, focused on healthcare.
Suennen invested with Psilos Group from 1998 to 2014 and for the last two years has been doing deals and consulting at her own firm, Venture Valkyrie LLC. She also blogs regularly at VentureValkyrie.com and co-hosts the popular TechTonics podcast with David Shaywitz. In a blog post and an email to contacts, she affirmed that both those projects would continue despite her new role.
"I am very excited to be back on the front lines of venture capital investing in the areas I love: health IT, health services, medical devices (non-invasive in this case) and where they all connect in digital health," Suennen wrote. "I am particularly delighted to join this respected platform and be part of such a great team of people, many of whom I have long known and much enjoyed. With corporate venture capital playing such a significant role in today’s healthcare innovation world and the wealth of assets to be brought to bear, I am particularly looking forward to the good things that can be done through GE Ventures." More.
Austin, Texas-based RxWiki, which offers a medication encyclopedia written and edited by pharmacists as well as tools to help community pharmacists to communicate with consumers, has hired two new directors. Steve Spry will join the company as Director of Mobile Development and Robert Terrell will take on the role of Director of Product Development. Spry is a veteran of Apple and Adobe who most recently served as Director of Mobile Platform SDK Engineering at Austin-based Phunware Inc. Terrell created the PocketRx app at Praeses, a Shreveport, Louisiana software development company.
"We are delighted to welcome Steve and Robert to our rapidly growing company. We look forward to developing exciting new products as our network of Pharmacies continues to expand across North America," Chris Loughlin, CEO of RxWiki, said in a statement. More.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump officially named Tom Price his pick for HHS Secretary. While there is a lot of concern in the industry around Price's strong anti-Obamacare stance and controversial positions on women's health, his experience in and position on Health IT is getting a warmer reception. Health Data Management has a good roundup of health IT groups throwing their support behind Price. Trump also named Seema Verma as his pick to lead CMS. He hasn't yet named an FDA commissioner, though some in the industry are speculating Robert Califf, who was appointed fairly recently with bipartisan support, could actually remain in that role.
