Vensa Health boosts team to support digital health vision

AUCKLAND, NZ., 22 November, 2018 – Vensa Health, a leading New Zealand digital health company, has boosted its team to support its digital health vision to make primary healthcare more accessible, affordable and convenient via its vensa.com platform which offers a new delivery model for healthcare. Samuel Wong has been appointed as VP Product Innovation, Oliver Young as VP Finance & Strategy and US-based Dr Jason Hwang as a global adviser.

Vensa Health CEO, Ahmad Jubbawey, says: “We’re reimagining the way people connect to their GP and other health services with vensa.com. Our new platform already allows appointments to be booked online in real-time and repeat prescriptions to be ordered and paid for online, and we have a range of other innovative health services under development. Now is the right time to add key new talent to the company as we work to take primary healthcare providers on a digital transformation to enable health systems efficiency and increased access.”

Vensa first demonstrated the success of its innovative technology with TXT2Remind which is used by around 65% of GP practices in New Zealand to deliver health messages and appointments to over 3 million Kiwis a year. Over the past decade more than 50 million messages have been delivered via TXT2Remind. Vensa’s innovative new platform vensa.com, which saw the company win New Zealand’s top Health IT Innovation award last year, is further helping to reduce inefficiencies in healthcare delivery, improve access, reduce costs, and make medicine more personalised and precise.

Wong and Young will join a 20 strong team at Vensa’s Auckland-based headquarters.

Samuel Wong, VP Product Innovations at Vensa, says: “I’m excited to be part of a very future focussed team developing emerging health technologies that improve patient access to health knowledge, services and precision-driven medicine, as well as dramatically improving a clinician’s workload at the same time.”

Wong graduated with a BSc in Biomedical Sciences and a PGDipSci in Medical Sciences from the University of Auckland and a Stanford LEAD: Corporate Innovation Certificate from Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Education. Wong has over 15 years’ experience in the New Zealand health sector and was previously the Senior Clinical and Business Analyst at St John New Zealand. He has also held roles at Procare Health, Auckland District Health Board and Statistics New Zealand and was the founder of health start up AuxiMedic Limited.

Oliver Young, VP Finance & Strategy, says: “I’m really pleased to join the Vensa team which is on a mission to connect the world with access to health services and meaningful information to create better wellbeing. I look forward to contributing to Vensa’s growth and success as the company works to scale up the impact of its technology in New Zealand as well as new markets offshore.”

Young holds a Bachelor of Commerce & Administration from Victoria University of Wellington and is a CPA Australia member. Young joined from Frank Accounting. Prior to that he was a Consulting CEO for VCFO Group and the CFO of Fairtrade Australia & New Zealand.

US-based Dr Jason Hwang, a global expert in healthcare innovation who co-authored The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care with Clayton Christensen, has been appointed as global adviser. He says, “Globally, an increasing number of patients are becoming proponents of new digital health tools that improve and personalise medical care, and Vensa’s disruptive innovation will help meet those needs.”

Dr Hwang, who gained a MD from University of Michigan Medical School and an MBA from Harvard Business School, will also act as Principal Investigator on Vensa Health’s first research initiative with Precision Driven Health (PDH) to automate the retrieval of millions of lab test results from patient management systems (PMS) and other sources, and analyse results patterns for patient notifications on vensa.com.

Dr Hwang says, “There is great value to be gained from using technology to automate and analyse lab results and deliver alerts to patients accurately, inexpensively and in a timely matter."

Jubbawey adds, “We can gain extremely valuable insights from collective clinical best practice and we’re excited to have Dr Hwang joining our team on the first of many new research projects. Our goal is to work the world’s best talents to create an iconic New Zealand headquartered company serving society’s health care challenges around the world.”

Jubbawey recently outlined Vensa’s 10 year vision plan in a blog post published on Medium.com

ENDS

© Scoop Media