Solucient

Gary Pickens was a founding member of Sachs Group, which merged with HCIA and later with HBSI to form Solucient. He currently directs content development, standards, and research in addition to leading Solucient's research and development group. His areas of expertise include healthcare informatics, consumer research, biostatistics, and mathematical demography. Pickens is credited with creating the first market segmentation system for the healthcare industry, SachsGroups , The Market Planner , a flagship healthcare decision support product, and Solucient's revolutionary Internet information delivery products, Astro Sachs and eSachs . Pickens has been published internationally and has presented key findings to healthcare trade groups and associations. He is a member of several prestigious professional organizations and was on the faculty of the mathematics department at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He holds a doctorate in demography and a master's degree in statistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Kaveh Safavi, M.D., J.D., provides a leadership voice for the organization with customers, government agencies, and the media. He is responsible for the Center for Healthcare Improvement, a Thomson Healthcare research organization focused on healthcare services. Safavi has 20 years of healthcare experience in senior management and in the practice of internal medicine and pediatrics. He has held leadership positions at organizations representing a variety of healthcare sectors, including health system, physician practice management and health plan. He serves on the Board of Directors for NeoPharm, Inc. a publicly traded biotechnology company in Waukegan, Ill. Safavi received his M.D. from Loyola University of Chicago and his J.D. from DePaul University, also in Chicago. He is a fellow of the American College of Law and Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Charlene Bonvissuto has joined Focused Health Solutions as its Vice President of Operations. Charlene is a registered nurse, with an MS in Nursing and Healthcare Administration, Summa cum Laude, from State University of New York at Buffalo, and a healthcare industry expert with extensive experience in clinical, administrative, consulting and corporate executive management. A former Vice President with CHI Systems, a healthcare strategy and operations management consulting company, and Vice President and Partner for CAPGEMINI, a global leader in healthcare consulting, Charlene possesses a proven record of delivering client value, growing organizations and developing strong management talent.

Bill Needham brings more than 20 years of experience in information technology to the company. As vice president of product engineering, Needham is responsible for overseeing product design, development, configuration management and deployment for the full suite of Solucient's provider products. Earlier, Needham served as vice president at Braun Consulting, leading the e-business consulting practice for more than seven years. The practice was focused on helping healthcare organizations better understand and serve their customers. Needham spent the past several years building global enterprise web platforms for major healthcare companies, allowing them to respond quickly to their customers' changing needs. Needham holds a master's degree in business administration from Northern Illinois University, and a bachelor of science in mathematics from Purdue University.

With more than 18 years of experience in sales, marketing and product management, Greg Geracie serves as vice president of business strategy. In this capacity, Geracie leads the efforts of Thomson Healthcare to define and implement the overall business strategy for the provider segment.

Billy Beane is the general manager of Major League Baseball's small-market Oakland A's. For the past three years, Beane has been taking on the big boys in baseball, winning more often than not, and making fools out of the owners who insist that baseball's economics are out of whack. Beane has figured out how to succeed with a limited ($40 million) payroll. He's doing it with computers and statistics wielded by a bunch of college boys who never played baseball. He refuses to pay big stars what they're worth because he's figured out how to replace them for a fraction of the cost, and above all, he refuses to pay big money for marginal players. All by himself, he has changed the game. Beane's story is covered in the best-selling book Moneyball, and is an important and fascinating tale for managers and executives from any industry or profession. Mark B. McClellan, M.P.A., M.D., Ph.D., Senior Fellow, AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and former Administrator for CMS

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