Panel session 3

Innovation in an Evolving Policy Landscape

Industry Sector: Policy & Regulatory

Innovation in the Healthcare industry is evolving incredibly rapidly. How does policy work to help shape innovation, and how do companies think about developing innovative solutions in the face of possible regulation and policy ambiguity?

brad diephuis, m.d., mba | president, thyme care

Dr. Brad Diephuis, MD, MBA, is a primary care physician and the President & Chief Operations Officer at Thyme Care, the leading value-based cancer care partner, collaborating with payers and providers to transform the experience and outcomes for individuals living with cancer. In this role, he oversees operations, commercial growth, finance, and health economics. Before joining Thyme Care, Brad served as a Senior Advisor at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), where he helped lead the development of Medicare’s vision for future total cost of care alternative payment models.  Previously, Brad served as Co-Founder and CEO of Herald Health, an early-stage health IT startup developing customizable clinical alerting solutions, and later as Associate Vice President for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Persistent Systems, a large IT vendor that acquired Herald Health. 

Dr. Diephuis is clinically trained in internal medicine from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and has received an BA/MS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MD/MBA degree from Harvard University. Brad maintains a small primary care practice in Boston, MA.

laura yecies, mBA | ceo, bone health technologies

Laura Yecies is an experienced CEO, Marketer and Strategist with a proven ability to develop and market award-winning products, scale businesses as well as profitably exit. She currently is the CEO at Bone Health Technology, makers of Osteoboost, the first and only FDA-approved non-pharmacological prescription treatment for low bone density. Osteoboost is poised to be the standard of care for postmenopausal women with osteopenia.  Previously she was CEO of NeuroSync a medical diagnostic company, Catch, which she sold to Apple and SugarSync which was acquired by J2Global.  Earlier she led the Browser division at Netscape, was general manager of Yahoo Mail and VP of Marketing at Check Point.  Ms. Yecies has led commercialization and product development programs that have resulted in the use by over 350m customers Laura received her MBA from Harvard, has an MSFS from Georgetown and her AB in Government Magna Cum Laude from Dartmouth.   She has been profiled in the NYTimes, WSJ, Forbes and multiple other periodicals and is a prolific podcaster and speaker and writer on health care and technology. 

bill peine, ph.d. | VP of Surgical Research and Technology, Head of Robotics Technology Development Center, Medtronic

Bill is the Vice President of Research and Technology in Medtronic’s Surgical Operating Unit and leads the company’s Robotics Technology Development Center.  He has been with the company for over 11 years as an innovator driving the development of the Hugo Robotic System for teleoperated minimally invasive surgery.    Before joining Medtronic, Bill worked at several medical device startups and was a tenure track professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, researching novel surgical robotic technology and algorithms for image-guided surgery.  He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.

asaf bitton, m.d., m.p.h. | Executive Director, Ariadne Labs

Asaf Bitton, MD, MPH is the Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a health systems innovation center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He leads Ariadne Labs’ efforts to design, test, and spread scalable solutions that make domestic and global health systems more safe, equitable, and integrated. 

He has served as a senior advisor for primary care policy at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in the US since 2012, helping to design and implement five major primary care initiatives (CPC, CPC+, PCF, MCP, PC FLEX), representing the largest tests of combined primary care payment and clinical practice transformation work in the United States. He was a core founder and vice chair of the steering committee for the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative, an 8-year partnership that included more than 25 countries and the World Bank, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, The Global Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and others, dedicated to improving the global provision of primary health care.

Dr. Bitton practices primary care at Brigham and Women’s South Huntington clinic, a team-based community primary care practice in urban Boston that he helped found in 2011. He currently serves on the boards of the National Committee for Quality Assurance and for Health Leads in the US. He is a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security, the National Advisory Committee for Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin, and is an elected member of the International Academy of Quality and Safety. He formerly served on the National Advisory Council for the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in the US.

ARJUN PRakash | mba class of 2026

Arjun Prakash is a first-year MBA student. He previously led the ACO REACH model at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and served risk-bearing provider groups at McKinsey & Company in New York. He is interested in the potential of payment, technology, and talent to enhance performance of healthcare markets. He graduated from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.