We are healthcare leaders, innovators, and clinicians passionate about shaping the future of surgery and democratizing access to high-quality surgical care.
Dr. Wang is a Fellow at Teladoc Health (NYSE: TDOC) where he contributes various R&D initiatives, and the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. He is Co-Founder and Chairman of Sovato, which is working to enable broad-based tele-surgery, and is co-founder and chairman of World Telehealth Initiative, a non-profit that uses volunteer clinicians and telemedicine to deliver sustained healthcare expertise to impoverished areas of the world.
Dr. Wang founded InTouch Health in 2003, and served as Chairman & CEO until 2016, when he assumed the position of Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer. InTouch Health was acquired by Teladoc Health in July 2020.
Previous to InTouch Health, Dr. Wang founded Computer Motion in 1990, the company which pioneered surgical robotics. He was the inventor of the voice-controlled robotic arm called AESOP, the first FDA-cleared surgical robot, as well as the ZEUS robotic surgical system, which performed the world’s first transatlantic surgery. Computer Motion IPO’d in 1997 and merged with Intuitive Surgical (NASD: ISRG) in 2003.Dr. Wang is author to more than 50 technical publications and inventor on over 200 patents.
As Co-Founder and CEO, Cynthia leads a team of clinical innovators and engineers to develop Sovato’s comprehensive remote surgery solution. Cynthia spent 2016 to 2022 as an Executive Vice President at AVIA, helping health system members digitally transform to drive growth, improve patient outcomes, and increase profitability. In her role on the executive leadership team and leader of AVIA’s Insights and Advisory team, she drove the thought leadership agenda and product delivery efforts in the Centers for Consumerism, Operational Transformation and Care Transformation.
Previously, she led the Center for Consumerism and was the regional leader for the west Client Engagement team. As the leader of AVIA’s team in the West, Cynthia assured that AVIA member health systems are achieving the greatest value from the adoption of digital solutions. Before joining AVIA, Cynthia served as the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Business Development at Hoag Health, a regional health system in Newport Beach, California. Cynthia led organizational strategic planning and business development in support of Hoag’s mission to provide the highest quality healthcare services to the communities of Orange County and beyond. From 2000 to 2009, Cynthia served as Vice President of Corporate Development for Premier, Inc., a national alliance of health systems, where she was responsible for corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships, venture investments, and new business formation.
Dennis L. Fowler, MD MPH is a globally known pioneer in the field of endoscopic surgery and was the first to perform numerous innovative minimally invasive surgical procedures. Over the course of his academic/clinical career, he held appointments as Professor of Clinical Surgery and Division Chief for General Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and Professor of Clinical Surgical Science at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. While at Columbia as a clinical surgeon, he held numerous other leadership and management positions including VP-Medical Director of Perioperative Services at the Columbia campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital, Director of the Center for Innovation and Outcomes Research in the Department of Surgery, and Director of the Medical Simulation Center at Columbia University.
Since 2014, he has worked full-time either as a consultant or as an employee of medical device companies. He oversaw aspects of product development as well as leading the clinical and regulatory affairs departments in various roles. He has consulted for both large and small med tech companies to provide expertise regarding Vigilance and Complaint Handling, Medical Device Reports to the FDA, usability testing, and to develop training protocols for surgeons and OR teams for new devices. More recently and just prior to joining Sovato, he was Chief Medical Officer at KARL STORZ Endoskope, a global endoscope and instrument manufacturer, where he established and led the Medical Affairs team.
Blair Whitney is VP of Engineering at Sovato where he leads R&D. Prior to that, Blair joined InTouch Health in 2007, where he was the first Software Director, and built out Software Engineering from a small team of initial startup software engineers into a large software engineering group of multiple teams. This software group built the software for a series of successful telemedicine device products and an integrated telemedicine platform. Blair was VP of Software Engineering at InTouch Health at the time it was acquired by Teladoc Health.
Prior to InTouch Health, Blair was Software Director at unified messaging startup Connected Systems, where he was part of the initial R&D team that developed an integrated telephony product that sold over 30,000 units. Connected Systems was acquired by CTL in 2002. Blair has also worked in the capacity of senior software engineer and architect, primarily on the software in embedded systems connected to a network. Blair earned a BS in Computer Science degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1986 and is the inventor of 8 patents.
