Former VP and Chief Strategy Officer for Novartis US Pharmaceuticals joins Innovaccer as Strategic Advisor to help accelerate digital transformation and innovation across healthcare

Today Innovaccer Inc., the Health Cloud company, announced Scott Howell, M.D., head of Blue Line Advisors, a biopharma and health tech advisory, and former Chief Strategy Officer for Novartis US Pharmaceuticals, has joined Innovaccer’s Strategic Advisory Board. Dr. Howell brings 30 years of experience and a broad perspective across multiple healthcare segments, including clinical practice and administration, managed care, pharmaceuticals and biotech, distribution, and specialty pharmacy to Innovaccer.

In this new role, Dr. Howell will help Innovaccer develop and refine strategies that enable biopharmaceutical and medtech companies to accelerate their digital transformation by leveraging the Innovaccer Health Cloud’s new Connected Digital Health solution. This will enable them to deliver next-generation apps that surround therapeutics and devices with engaging patient experiences, improve clinical outcomes, and generate valuable real world evidence (RWE) with unified brand-provider-patient workflows. He will also work with the Innovaccer Research Network to connect researchers with RWD/RWE and digitally fuel challenging studies.

“I look forward to helping our Innovaccer team and customers develop innovative ways for life sciences industries to capitalize on the power of cloud technology, data and analytics, and connected workflows to take patient and provider experiences to the next level, and improve clinical and financial outcomes for all stakeholders—including the advancement of medicine itself through better and more comprehensive RWE,” Dr. Howell said. “I’ve seen healthcare from the perspective of patients as a practicing physician, and through my roles at two health plans, a large pharma distribution and services company, and four biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies over my 30 year career. We must continue to work together—and today that means digitally—to improve our healthcare system for all stakeholders, because no one organization can do it alone. Innovation in health technology and services, and partnering across the care continuum with integrated workflows, is a path to building a better healthcare system.”

Dr. Howell previously served as the vice-president and chief strategy officer for US Pharmaceuticals at Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, where he was a member of the US Pharmaceuticals Executive Committee. Before joining Novartis, he served as vice president of market access at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, where he led a fully integrated pricing, contracting, distribution, reimbursement, and managed care department. Prior to that, he worked for Cardinal Health as senior vice president, clinical services, and spent several years at Genentech where he held a variety of leadership positions in market access.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Howell was the vice-president of pharmacy affairs at Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, where he led the pharmacy program, and also held a variety of managed care leadership roles at SmithKline Beecham/GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Howell began his career as a general internist and spent several years in private practice before working in academic medicine. He earned his undergraduate degree at Notre Dame, his medical degree at Ohio State University, and an MBA at Duke University. Dr. Howell has been lecturing on health policy and industry strategy for many years at UC Berkeley, and has co-authored several industry papers.

"Dr. Howell’s expertise in value-based pricing and value-based access for specialty drugs, and his deep experience working with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, will help us advance our strategic initiatives in life sciences, and across the healthcare markets we serve," said Abhinav Shashank, cofounder and CEO of Innovaccer. "From his unique industry point of view, Dr. Howell understands how healthcare segments must work together to solve the industry’s biggest problems. His expert advisory and vision will help life sciences companies evolve from 'sick care' systems to proactive, end-to-end disease management systems that can improve care quality and patient outcomes by unleashing the power of patient and provider data."

About Innovaccer

Innovaccer Inc., the Health Cloud company, is dedicated to accelerating innovation in healthcare. The Innovaccer® Health Cloud unifies patient data across systems and care settings, and empowers healthcare organizations to develop scalable, modern applications that improve clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. Innovaccer’s solutions have been deployed across more than 1,600 care settings in the U.S., enabling more than 96,000 providers to transform care delivery and work collaboratively with payers and life sciences companies. Innovaccer has helped its customers unify health records for more than 39 million people and generate over $1B in cumulative cost savings. Innovaccer is the #1 rated Data and Analytics Platform by KLAS, and the #1 rated population health technology platform by Black Book. For more information, please visit innovaccer.com.

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