LEXINGTON, Mass., April 30, 2018 – iSpecimen today announced it has established a panel of respected partners and industry experts to counsel the company in its mission of supplying biomedical researchers with the specimens they need from the patients who have them.
The iSpecimen Advisory Board will meet quarterly with iSpecimen’s leadership team and offer insights around strategy and operations.
“Our mission is collaborative, so we naturally are eager to officially enlist these respected advisors to share their ideas, wisdom, and guidance,” said iSpecimen Founder and CEO Christopher Ianelli, MD, PhD. “As a company, we value listening, learning and incorporating good advice in our planning and execution.”
iSpecimen Advisory Board members represent relevant business focus areas across the value chain – including health care, academia, and consumer technology – and offer insights from diverse perspectives to inform the company’s strategic direction.
Members include:
Robert Babkowski, M.D., Chair of Pathology, Stamford Hospital
Dr. Babkowski received his medical degree with honors from University of Rochester School of Medicine. Dr. Babkowski is the Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medical Director at the Stamford Hospital. He serves on its Medical Executive Committee; and Steering Committees for Gastroenterology, Pulmonology, and Breast Center. In 2005, he founded the Stamford Pathology Group PC. He recently earned a master’s degree in medical management from the USC Marshall School of Business.
Andy Brooks, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer of Rutgers University’s RUCDR Infinite Biologics
Dr. Brooks oversees the operations of all laboratories within RUCDR, the world’s largest university-based biorepository, ensuring consistent and superior quality standards for all services. A molecular neuroscientist, he has worked to automate and develop the service infrastructure to provide high-throughput sample management and analysis for DNA, RNA, and protein-based technologies to hundreds of labs globally.
Martin Ferguson, Ph.D., Consultant, National Cancer Institute
Dr. Ferguson is an independent consultant to biopharmaceutical companies, venture capital firms, and federal agencies engaged in translational biomedical research. His expertise is bridging knowledge between the domains of human subjects research, privacy, and data policies to the domains of clinical- and bioinformatics and enterprise-scale data management platforms. Under a consultancy to the NCI’s Center for Cancer Genomics, he is a member of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Genomics Data Commons (GDC) Project Teams.
Bradley Malin, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University
Dr. Malin is Vice Chair for research, department of biomedical informatics, at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and professor of biomedical informatics, biostatistics, and computer science at Vanderbilt University. He co-directs the Vanderbilt Health Data Science (HEADS) Center, the Center for Genetic Privacy and Identity in Community Settings (GetPreCiSe), and the Big Biomedical Data Science Ph.D. program. He is also the director of the Health Information Privacy Laboratory (HIPLab), which was established to address the growing need for data privacy research and development for the health information technology sector.
Bill O’Donnell, former Chief Architect, Kayak
Mr. O’Donnell, now EVP Engineering at Blink Health, served as the chief architect and SVP of mobile products at Kayak.com.
Ed Trautman, Ph.D., VP, Informatics & Analytics, LabCorp
LabCorp is a leading health care diagnostics company. Dr. Trautman earned his doctorate in biomedical/medical engineering, a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, all from MIT.
Jim Vaught, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Biopreservation & Biobanking Journal
Dr. Vaught spent 14 years at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), most recently as the Chief of the Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB). He has been working in the field of biorepository and biospecimen science for over 20 years. He was one of the founding members of the International Society for Biological & Environmental Repositories (ISBER).
iSpecimen growth
Hundreds of biotech, pharmaceutical, and academic institutions have signed on as users of the iSpecimen Marketplace, searching across millions of patients and samples available for research. The iSpecimen Marketplace now provides access to one million banked samples and 25 million clinical remnants annually. iSpecimen offers biofluids, solid tissue, and viable cells and enables procurement of both research-use-only and remnant samples, either banked or prospectively collected.
iSpecimen is also integrating its marketplace with R&D procurement marketplaces such as Science Exchange and Scientist.com, and making it easy for biobanks to quickly connect their systems to the marketplace to offer their specimens to researchers.
About iSpecimen
Headquartered in Lexington, MA, iSpecimen is the marketplace for human biospecimens, providing researchers with the specimens they need from the patients they want. The privately held company has developed the iSpecimen Marketplace, an online platform connecting healthcare organizations that have access to patients and specimens with the scientists who need them. Proprietary, cloud-based technology enables researchers to intuitively search for specimens and patients across a federated partner network of hospitals, labs, biobanks, blood centers, and other healthcare organizations. Researchers easily and compliantly gain access to specimens to drive scientific discovery. Partner sites gain an opportunity to contribute to biomedical discovery as well as their bottom line. And ultimately, healthcare advances for all. For more information about iSpecimen, please visit www.ispecimen.com.
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SOURCE iSpecimen