The One Health Company, a contract research organization startup that recruits sick pets for clinical trials of cancer therapeutics and other drugs, has added to its ranks. It has snapped up Dr. Todd Rothenhaus, who previously served as the chief medical officer with cloud-based EHR vendor athenahealth where he worked for 6 years.
The move comes at a time when the young startup is in growth mode and athenahealth has cut back 500 staff to satisfy a push for fiscal discipline by activist investor Paul Singer, who heads up the hedge fund manager Elliott Management.
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Rothenhaus responded to some questions about his new role via email.
This exchange has been lightly edited.
Todd Rothenhaus
What were some of your career highlights at athenahealth? Why did you leave?
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I was at athenahealth for six years. I wore many hats and loved every one of them. My favorite “job” was being GM of athenaClinicals, athenahealth’s electronic health record service. Leading product teams and working closely with customers is the ultimate balancing act, but also extremely rewarding. The only reason I left athenahealth was to try something new. I’ve been working in or on healthcare IT for nearly my whole career. I was looking for something closer to science. I did not think I’d find a company so unique and potentially disruptive to the status quo.
What are your duties at The One Health Company?
Well, right now I’m kind of a cross between COO and CMO. It’s only been a few weeks so I’m learning mostly: meeting the team, the clients and coming up to speed on the science. The One Health Company is building a network to connect life-science research to naturally sick pets so both can benefit. It may sound weird, but the operations and technology feel quite like what I’m used to.
How has it been transitioning from a large health IT vendor to a startup life science company?
It’s been fun, and a challenge. There are really two dimensions: “known to unknown” and “big to little”. I’d been in health IT for years so that was well-known territory for me at athenahealth. But, I’ve got a ton to learn about drug development and comparative medicine to help make The One Health Company successful.
As for big to little, at athenahealth, I had the good fortune to be asked to launch a few things internally, but there were few resource constraints and failure meant shame but not death. Realizing the promise of The One Health Company will mean making the right strategic bets and executing cleanly – with little margin
for error.
Photo: cnythzl, Getty Images
