Answers Ahead was founded by Jeff Schwartz, a survivor of Cutaneous Lymphoma with 20 years of experience in software design and development. By networking with physicians, hospitals and universities in dealing with his own personal health concerns, the need for the solutions offered by Answers Ahead became clear to him.
Through Answers Ahead, Jeff is reaching out within the medical community to collaborate and aggregate data to improve patient outcomes. Jeff immediately recognized the technological limitations in low cost patient registries and understood the financial obstacles implementing a custom built patient registry. Answers Ahead addresses those limitations.
BACKSTORY
Answers Ahead was conceived to enable successful and robust medical research. The back story that initiated this project is both ironic and compelling. Founder Jeff Schwartz was diagnosed with Mycosis Fungoides by his wife – coincidentally a dermatologist – in 2006. She referred him to Dr. Joan Guitart, Director of the Cutaneous Lymphoma Clinic, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation in Chicago for specialized treatment. Mr. Schwartz was well cared for and wanted to “pay it forward” to help others who are dealing with this and similar challenges. He offered his technical expertise to Dr. Guitart to build software to assist in finding better treatments or better yet – a cure. Their collaboration led to the 2009 release of the CL Tracker. This enabled researchers at the Northwestern Cutaneous Lymphoma Clinic to track, manage and curate all aspects of the disease management and consolidate this data in one place. At the time, Dr. Guitart, said, “CL Tracker provides a complete picture of the results with prior Therapies as well as genetic, molecular, pathology and blood reports. All this information is crucial to make sound decisions about new therapies, tests to be ordered and improved patient management.”
THE TEAM
Jeff Schwartz, Founder & CEO A survivor of Cutaneous Lymphoma with 20 years of experience in enterprise software design, development and architecture. Jeff is married to a board certified dermatologist who diagnosed him with a rare form of Cutaneous Lymphoma. By networking with physicians, hospitals and universities in dealing with his own personal health concerns, the need for the solutions offered by Answers Ahead became clear to him.
Dr. Robert Colton, Advisor Co-Founder and Chairman of ClearlyDerm, providing dermatology care in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties in Florida. A company committed to providing better value in dermatology. Prior to this, Dr. Colton was founder of MDVIP, the largest concierge medicine company in the U.S., which was sold to Procter and Gamble in 2009.
Jeffrey Pheterson, Legal Counsel Managing Partner of Ward Damon Posner Pheterson & Bleau and Chair of Bethesda Hospital, Inc. affiliated with Baptist Health, Inc. Jeffrey Pheterson has practiced law for over 35 years in Florida, focusing on business concerns, labor and employment law, healthcare law, and complex civil litigation.
Mark Fetherolf, Advisor Founder and President of predictive analytics company Numinary Data Science. He has worked as a statistician and analytics database developer in social science research, chemical engineering, information systems performance, capacity planning, cable television, and online advertising applications. Nearly twenty years ago, he developed predictive models to predict performance bottlenecks in distributed networks. His recent work in machine learning includes recommender systems and classifiers for entertainment and advertising, predictive churn analysis for consumer services, and adaptive call routing for CRM applications. He studied mathematics, computer science, statistics, and business at Susquehanna University and Temple University.
Sergio Vergara, Programmer Started programming computers at 16 years old. Graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Universidad Catolica de Brasilia in 2013.
Dr. In Kim, Advisor Uncompensated advisor