COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Signet Accel announced today that Kimberly Ferguson has joined the company as executive vice president of sales and marketing. As a software and services company specializing in data integration and harmonization, Signet Accel brings true interoperability to healthcare data and increased speed of discovery to translational medicine. With more than 18 years’ sales and business development experience in healthcare and technology, Ferguson will lead Signet Accel in expanding its growing portfolio of national and international clients and further establishing its brand as a leader in healthcare technology. Based in California, Ferguson will also establish a West Coast presence for the company.
“Signet Accel is delivering true interoperability to our industry on a level that wasn’t anticipated for at least another ten years,” Ferguson said. “Physicians and researchers are inundated by incredible amounts of data, and yet, they are unable to fully make use of it or share it with their peers. To join a company that is shifting that reality, today, is a tremendous opportunity.”
Ferguson’s business development, marketing and account management experience includes national leadership positions with research-focused healthcare company Roche Diagnostics, and most recently Illumina, a global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies, where she served as senior business development specialist focusing in clinical bioinformatics. A trained microbiologist, Ferguson transitioned her career from the laboratory to the sales arena nearly 20 years ago.
“Kimberly brings a rare blend of scientific and sales acumen to the role,” said Signet Accel CEO John Raden. “She’s an analyst at heart, with a creative mind and a passion for improving patient lives. With her industry experience and knowledge, we couldn’t imagine a better fit. She’s eager to establish her team and hit the ground running at HIMSS, and I’m confident she’ll produce an even greater level of success and market penetration for our company and our platform.”
Signet Accel will debut its Avec™ platform at the 2016 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference, commencing February 29 in Las Vegas.
Avec™ is the first—and only—commercial federated data integration platform to deliver true interoperability. It connects and harmonizes disparate databases across healthcare verticals, allowing researchers to identify patterns and trends over a large patient population and offering comprehensive insight into both research and patient treatment. Robust repositories of connected data are a key resource in realizing the promise of precision medicine, a research effort aimed at improving health and treating disease by accounting for patients’ individual differences.
“There’s a human element that drives this work. For me, it’s both a professional and personal mission,” Ferguson said. “For example, in a moderately-sized pediatric intensive care unit, 173 medical decisions are made per hour, on average, with less than one percent of the information. We want physicians and researchers to have access to that remaining 99 percent. I, too, have been a patient in a critical environment and because I had a creative care team, I’m still here. Having access to all of the available information is crucial to influencing complex care decisions, and unfortunately, our caregivers aren’t often given that opportunity. I’m anxious to hit the ground running and share how true interoperability can change that.”
In 2015, Signet Accel posted a six-fold increase in sales and added 28 new associates. The company projects a fivefold revenue increase in 2016, along with 20 additional jobs. New clients include The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – The James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, the Alliance of Dedicated Cancer Centers, the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs VINCI initiative in partnership with Hewlett-Packard, and a $21.5 million joint venture between Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals to support healthcare information sharing amongst participating sites.
Ferguson will begin building a five-person national sales team immediately, with plans to complete the team before the close of the second quarter.
About Signet Accel
Signet Accel’s Avec™ platform is true interoperability realized in healthcare. As the sole alternative to traditional, centralized data management solutions, Avec™ delivers the industry's only purpose-built commercial federated data integration platform, developed and refined over 12 years at The Ohio State University. Signet Accel’s software products and services power the work of consortia, institutions, and health professionals around the world with unmatched security, sharing capability and speed of discovery—advancing academic research, achieving meaningful use objectives, and enabling the continuum of care. Learn how to make your data meaningful and achieve true interoperability with SignetAccel.com.
