Emerging health IT firm RedBrick Health, which creates corporate wellness programs, announced Monday that it has hired Daniel Ryan as its new chief executive officer.
Ryan replaces Kyle Rolfing, RedBrick’s founder, who will become a board member. Previously, Ryan was president and CEO at Secure Computing, an enterprise security company that was later acquired by McAfee. After the acquisition, Ryan became a senior executive in McAfee’s Network Security Business unit.
On Monday, a RedBrick spokesman said it was time to bring in someone like Ryan who has the managerial experience to lead a fast-growing firm.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
“… it is not uncommon to see an inflection point for younger companies experiencing rapid growth to shift the balance from entrepreneurial leadership to more management style,” said Pat Sukhum, RedBrick’s spokesman, in an email.
He noted that RedBrick has grown by more than 100 percent in each of the past three years, prompting such additions to the corporate team. Sukhum declined to provide revenue details. Customers of RedBrick include agribusiness giant Cargill, food company Sara Lee and medical diagnostic equipment-maker Welch Allyn. RedBrick has around 100 employees.
In fact, RedBrick has been on a bit of a hiring tear this year. In January, the company hired Eric Zimmerman, a former RelayHealth executive and a 20-year industry veteran, to become its chief marketing officer. Less than a month later, it hired Gregg Waldon as CFO and Glen Gunderson as its chief business officer. In March, RedBrick hired its first chief medical officer, Jeff Zobro, to oversee the company’s clinical side, which includes consulting, clinical product development and clinical program oversight.
RedBrick’s corporate wellness program built around its proprietary software is informed by the age-old adage that health is wealth. In other words, by becoming more healthy and reducing their risk profiles, employees can tap into financial rewards such as lower premium contributions while companies such as large self-insured employers can reduce their healthcare-related financial burden.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The popularity of corporate wellness programs and the amount companies spend on them have been growing. Earlier this year, Buck Consultants published a report that found that in 2010, employers worldwide spent 35 percent more on each employee who participated in a wellness program — roughly $220 — than what they spent in 2009. Corporate wellness programs are also the most prevalent in North America, where 74 percent of responding employers offer them. The survey analyzed responses from more than 1,200 organizations in 47 countries that employ 13 million people.
