Mark HT Ridinger, MD
Trans-disciplinarian | Polymath | Autodidact | Aesthete
About me (boring stuff):
For over twenty-five years I have been a physician, entrepreneur, inventor and innovator. In my work, I have striven to combine scientific rigor with creative forward-looking product development and design, while being an articulate, accomplished leader and team builder. I excel at generating novel, useful solutions by cross-pollinating between silos of domain expertise and preventing enculturation. My career experience has ranged from the practice of medicine to co-founding venture capital backed startups to senior management at one of the largest population health management companies, as well as strategic consulting, and serving as an editor-at-large for a medical peer-reviewed journal.
Most recently, I cofounded VIZI Health Solutions, a digital health startup that helps disparate care teams communicate and collaborate on a unified cloud-based platform to better serve patients on their journey from the hospital back home. VIZI operates at the confluence of the most current and disruptive dynamics in healthcare: the shift to value based payment models, digital health solutions, and post-acute care transitions.
Before that, I served as a senior fellow at a DC area think tank and policy center, with a focus on healthcare reform, digital health, and the emerging pandemic of chronic illnesses. I also started my own “think | do” tank, dedicated to promoting the study, development, and implementation of creativity, insight, mindfulness and wisdom. I’ve written and lectured on those topics extensively.
I started my entrepreneurial career as a cofounder and Chief Medical Officer of Caresteps.com, a pioneer in healthcare predictive analytics and web based personalized health information. The company was ultimately acquired by Healthways.
I was awarded several US and foreign patents, have held board certification in both internal medicine and radiology and maintain a license to practice medicine. I received a B.S. with honors from Georgetown University, and graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, also with honors, and was elected to alpha omega alpha, the national medical honor society.
About me (funny stuff): Polymath | Autodidact | Trans-disciplinarian
Almost 40 years ago, one hot July, as my family was about to embark on a storybook family vacation of yore (you know, the ones with the Buick as big as a boat, and a carryall strapped on the top), I had the idea for an invention (out of necessity)! My mother always said I was a “heaty” child–and she was right! I began to dread the idea of six people in a car covering thousands of miles in sweltering humidity. So piled up on my small workbench, next to an autobiography of Thomas Edison, I found a small electric motor, a switch and a battery case. All that was missing was the blade to push the (less hot) air around. A quick trip to the local hobby shop solved that problem, and I mounted a model airplane propeller to the motor, built a rudimentary case, and voila: a battery operated handheld fan. You know, like the ones that are now ubiquitous everywhere. (ugh) Well I never filed a patent (hey I was a kid…), so can’t claim that mine was the first, but if it wasn’t it was darn close!
The point of this story is several fold: 1. to introduce me and my new blog, and give a taste of what I hope will be a fun, thought provoking style of writing that will earn your readership and precious time; 2. share a personal moment in the process of inspiration (it’s a lot of cognitive processing first followed by gestation and epiphany)–and by so doing hoping to show that I try and ‘walk the walk’–and have for most of my life. Thanks for reading.
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/MarkRidinger
The Evolved Generalist 