Bio
Dr. Jennifer Brokaw
Dr. Brokaw founded Medical Consult and Advocacy Services in 2008 to meet the needs of many people with serious medical illness and the needs of their loved ones. She is a Board Certified Emergency Physician with 14 years of experience. Since moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2001, she has been an Associate Clinical Instructor of Emergency Medicine at San Francisco General/UCSF and has also been on the staff of CPMC/Davies Emergency Department. As a medical advocate she advises clients about medical decision making, coordinates care with both primary doctors and specialists and provides support and advisement to families of patients in the hospital.
Sean Duffy
Sean cares deeply about health care innovation and is dedicating his career to building systems and technologies that bring increased patient-centered value to the US health care system. He is currently on leave from Harvard’s MD/MBA program, has previously worked at Google and IDEO, and writes for Medgadget.com.
Dr. Wayne Pan
Dr. Pan serves as Chief Medical Officer for PPMSI. His background spans clinical medicine as an orthopaedic hand surgeon, basic science research in the field of molecular biology, and executive leadership in managed care and health information technology. As CMO, he is responsible for providing professional medical direction to PPMSI and the IPAs including, but not limited to implementing, maintaining, and refining approved quality improvement and utilization management programs and keeping up to date with and ensuring compliance with federal regulation and NCQA requirements.
Jay M. Tenenbaum
Jay M. Tenenbaum, Ph.D. is the Founder and Chairman of Cancer Commons, a non-profit, open science community that compiles and continually refines information about cancer subtypes and treatments, based on the literature and actual patient outcomes. Dr. Tenenbaum is also Co-Founder and Chairman of CollabRx, a provider of Web-Based applications and services that help cancer patients and their physicians select optimal treatments and trials.
Dr. Tenenbaum's background brings a unique perspective of a world-renowned Internet commerce pioneer and visionary. He was founder and CEO of Enterprise Integration Technologies, the first company to conduct a commercial Internet transaction (1992), secure Web transaction (1993) and Internet auction (1993). In 1994, he founded CommerceNet to accelerate business use of the Internet. In 1997, he co-founded Veo Systems, the company that pioneered the use of XML for automating business-to-business transactions. Dr. Tenenbaum joined Commerce One in January 1999, when it acquired Veo Systems. As Chief Scientist, he was instrumental in shaping the company's business and technology strategies for the Global Trading Web. Post Commerce One, Dr. Tenenbaum was an officer and director of Webify Solutions, which was sold to IBM in 2006, and Medstory, which was sold to Microsoft in 2007.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Tenenbaum was a prominent AI researcher and led AI research groups at SRI International and Schlumberger Ltd. Dr. Tenenbaum is a fellow and former board member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and a former consulting professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He currently serves as a director of Efficient Finance, Patients Like Me, and the Public Library of Science, and is a consulting professor of Information Technology at Carnegie Mellon's new West Coast campus. Dr. Tenenbaum holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. from Stanford.
Sarah Varney
Sarah Varney covers health for KQED's statewide news programs "The California Report" and "Health Dialogues." She began reporting for KQED in 2002 and has covered a range of subjects and stories - from the ethics, politics and science of stem cell research to the religious and legal challenges over gay marriage to the inside workings of baseball park food vendors. As KQED's health reporter, Varney looks at how decisions about immigration, health care coverage and access, the environment, transportation and energy policy, land use, education funding, business and agricultural practices, and other issues affect the health of Californians, especially the state's most vulnerable populations.
Varney reports regularly for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition," "Day to Day," and "All Things Considered." Her work has been recognized by the Society for Professional Journalists, the Northern California Radio and Television News Director Association, and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. In 2003, Varney earned a commission from the Third Coast Audio Festival to produce an experimental soundscape presented in Chicago.
Before joining KQED, Varney was a senior consultant at a San Francisco-based strategy consulting firm, and prior to that led the business development team at a startup market research firm. Varney grew up in rural New Hampshire and earned her B.A. in political science from Brown University. An avid traveler, Varney has trekked through East Africa, the Jammu and Kashmir region of India, and the then-Soviet Union.
