Dr. Nick Terheyden
Last week San Francisco public radio KQED's publication Future of You posted a must-read report on the growing trend of California medical school graduates joining digital health startups instead of continuing their training and pursuing residency programs.
The report was anchored with data from physician network Doximity, which found that medical students from Stanford and UCSF have some of the lowest rates of pursuing residency programs after graduation when compared to schools in other parts of the country.
For example, in 2011, Stanford came in 117th out of 123 medical schools analyzed by Doximity, and it had only 65 percent of its students moving into residencies that year. Doximity points to the allure of digital health startups as one of the main contributing factors to this low number.
It's worth remembering, though, how nascent digital health still was back in 2011 -- Rock Health tracked less than $1 billion in funding that year. So, if the trend is real, it might be that there were many more dropouts in recent years given the influx of funding and ever-increasing number of digital health startups in need of clinical experience.
It's not just physicians who are signing on to digital health jobs though. Companies, organizations, and governments have announced a handful of notable digital health hires, departures and appointments in recent weeks. Here's a quick round-up:
Dell’s Healthcare & Life Sciences group announced that Dr. Nick van Terheyden, formerly of Nuance Communications, has been named Dell’s new Chief Medical Officer. Terheyden will report to Dell’s Healthcare & Life Sciences (HCLS) Services VP And global general manager, Sid Nair.
DreamIt Health, an accelerator created by DreamIt Ventures, recently named Steve Barsh as its new managing director. The former lead Elliot Menschik, who helped create the health tech program, stepped down after running the accelerator for three years.
The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has appointed Martha Lane Fox as the new digital health lead for its National Information Board (NIB), the country's health secretary announced last week.
McKesson has appointed Kathy McElligott as EVP, CIO, and CTO. McElligott previously served as Emerson's CIO since 2010. McElligott is taking over for Randy Spratt, who already announced his retirement earlier in the year. Spratt will retire after a 29-year career with McKesson.
As MobiHealthNews has already reported, Ancestry.com officially launched a new website, AncestryHealth.com, in beta this month, and announced the hire of a Chief Health Officer, Dr. Cathy A. Petti, who has previously held executive roles at HealthSpring Global, TriCore Reference Laboratories, and Novartis.
