Who We Are

Eric Isselbacher, MD, MHCDS
Founder & Director

Eric Isselbacher is the Founder & Director of the Healthcare Transformation Lab. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He completed both his medical residency and cardiology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1996 he joined the staff of the Cardiology Division at Mass General. Dr. Isselbacher is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is motivated to innovate by the fact that healthcare providers today are stretched to the limit, if we hope to improve the efficiency, quality, and experience of healthcare, it can’t be by working harder or faster. It will have to be by a willingness to break with tradition and embrace the science of innovation.

LinkedIn >

Julianne Soriano, MHA
Senior Operations Manager

Julianne Soriano is the Senior Operations Manager of the Healthcare Transformation Lab.  Passionate about the intersection of healthcare and technology, Julianne started her career as a consultant with Accenture, where she supported clients in the life sciences industry.  She has also served in corporate strategy and business development for Evolent Health, a DC-based firm that supports provider organizations with the transition to value-based care, as well as Visiant Health, a payer services organization. Julianne graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Business Administration in IT Management, and is enrolled in the Master in Healthcare Administration program at Seton Hall University.

LinkedIn >

Victoria Vacaro
Project Manager

Victoria Vacaro is a Project Manager with the Healthcare Transformation Lab. Victoria graduated from Boston College with a BA in Film Studies, focusing on screenwriting and film production. While working at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute as a Program and Marketing Coordinator, Victoria got the knack for planning and running events while researching and integrating people-centric, time-saving tech solutions. Victoria is motivated to innovate by the desire to democratize processes, to open people up to new ways of thinking, and to help give people greater control over their own healthcare experiences.

LinkedIn >

Jeremy Rosh
Digital Health Manager

Jeremy Rosh is a Digital Health Manager with the Healthcare Transformation Lab. He comes from Deloitte’s Strategy and Operations Consulting practice where he worked on a broad spectrum of healthcare projects serving payer, provider, and life sciences clients. Passionate about the trend towards a value based healthcare system, Jeremy focused on projects aimed at improving the quality and efficiency of care delivery. Prior to working at Deloitte Consulting, Jeremy helped develop a disease management mobile application at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, and is excited about the role technology can play in improving the patient and provider experience. Jeremy completed his undergraduate studies at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Aaron Aguirre, MD, PhD
Cardiologist, Clinical Affiliate

Aaron Aguirre is a cardiologist and critical care specialist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School a clinical affiliate of the Healthcare Transformation Lab. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and his doctoral degree in electrical and biomedical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He trained in internal medicine, cardiology, and critical care at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Aguirre’s graduate work focused on the development of high-resolution optical imaging methods and catheter technologies for clinical applications, and he has significant experience in the creation and preclinical validation of novel medical devices. His current research at the MGH Center for Systems Biology utilizes innovative molecular imaging and microscopy techniques to investigate the biology of myocardial infarction (heart attack) and related forms of heart disease.

Numa Perez, MD
Aetna Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Innovation

Numa Perez, MD, is a 2018-2019 Aetna Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Innovation with the Healthcare Transformation Lab, and the 2018 Claude E. Welch Research Fellow in the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Numa spent his childhood in El Salvador before coming to the United States and joining the U.S. Marine Corps where he worked as an Avionics Technician of the CH-53E Helicopter. From there, he moved onto college and worked as a Research Engineer at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. This diverse background in technology and system design, combined with his Surgical training at MGH, have prepared him well to tackle issues that lay at the intersection between healthcare innovation, outcomes and disparities. Numa’s goal is to rethink and redesign the entirety of the perioperative patient experience, while leveraging technology to make it streamlined and more patient-centered, thus leading to improved patient satisfaction and postoperative outcomes. While hoping to enhance quality for all, Numa’s goal is to simultaneously bridge the disparity gap that affects so many patients at MGH and around the nation. Numa graduated with his BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to earn his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. Outside of work, Numa enjoys spending time with his wife, Rachel, and his daughter, Olivia.

Konstantin Stojanovic, MD
Aetna Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Innovation

Dr. Konstantin Stojanovic is a clinical neurologist, with a strong interest in healthcare innovation. Having witnessed AI ’s impact across countless industries, he was inspired to do the same with healthcare. He is currently focused on using deep learning to improve and simplify diagnostics for sleep and epilepsy. After his HTL innovation fellowship, he will continue his career in neurophysiology, with his long-term research interest being in Brain-Computer Interfaces. 

LinkedIn >

Jocelyn Carter, MD, MPH
2017-2018 Aetna Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Innovation

Jocelyn Carter, MD, MPH is a 2017 Aetna Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Innovation with the Healthcare Transformation Lab.  Clinically prepared in preventive medicine, internal medicine and leadership at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Dr. Carter is passionate about experiential learning, scalable and cost-efficient initiatives, outcomes research, and healthcare information technology driving the redesign of patient-centered care in healthcare innovation. She is an active member across the MGH community, serving as the MGH Center for Diversity and Inclusion Manager of Trainee Affairs, and on the Department of Medicine’s Albright Medicine Service and Internship Selection Committee in addition to being a practicing internal medicine hospitalist. A recent awardee of a 2017 Partners Healthcare Center for Population Health Delivery System Innovation Implementation Grant, Dr. Carter and her team are studying the impact of patient-community health worker pairings upon hospital discharge on health care outcomes in high risk populations. She is an editor of the Society of Hospital Medicine Clinical Quick Talks and is a regular reviewer for esteemed academic journals.

Yanik Bababekov, MD, MPH
2017-2018 Aetna Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Innovation

Yanik J. Bababekov, MD, MPH, is a 2017 Aetna Foundation Fellow in Healthcare Innovation with the Healthcare Transformation Lab and the Marshall K. Bartlett Surgical Research Fellow in the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. A surgical resident at MGH, Dr. Bababekov works with a multi-disciplinary team aiming to bridge health services research with healthcare innovation and has been recognized as Top 40 under 40 Healthcare Innovator by MedTech Boston. Dr. Bababekov received a BA in Neuroscience from Middlebury College and earned medical and public health degrees from Tufts University School of Medicine. He enjoys exploring the outdoors with his wife, Lindsay, and daughter, Noa.

Debra DiMuzio, MBA
Innovator in Residence

Debra DiMuzio is an Innovator in Residence with HTL. She has a strong desire to understand the complexity of the healthcare system from both sides and believes that Innovation is instrumental in the delivery of global, patient-centric, and value-focused care. Passionate about making a difference in the lives of others, Debra began her career as a Surgical Technologist at MGH, where she also gained project management experience while working with multidisciplinary teams in areas of process and performance improvement. Debra has also served in business strategy and development for Arthrex, a Global Orthopedic Medical Device company, and Cora Systems an international Enterprise Portfolio, Program and Project Management Software Company. Debra earned her MBA from Trinity Business School at Trinity College Dublin, and her BS in Health Management from Northeastern University in Boston.

Ami Bhatt, MD
Cardiologist, Clinical Affiliate

Ami Bhatt is the director of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center at MGH, an active clinical cardiologist, investigator and educator and a clinical affiliate of the Healthcare Transformation Lab. She innovates in the cardiology space at the MGH Heart Center in the domains of telemedicine for patient visits, adolescent education, multimodality teleconferences, and adoption of mobile health technologies. Her work has most recently centered on applying design thinking to the multidisciplinary care process creating transparent systems for coordinating and achieving patient and physician centric care, emphasizing that the two are not mutually exclusive. Her interest in digital health strategy stems from her beliefs that state of the art, personalized care can be delivered to individuals in the community and that “concierge” style medicine is possible for everyone. When she’s not busy innovating, she spends time with her husband and two daughters, having dance parties and traveling.

Ashley Pournamdari
Research Fellow

Ashley Pournamdari is a fourth year medical student completing her degree at the University of California, San Francisco. During her time with the Pediatric Device Consortium at UCSF and in Silicon Valley, she became passionate about integrating technology to improve healthcare for patients and providers. Throughout her clinical rotations, she came to appreciate the immense potential to improve patient engagement and value of care by integrating thoughtful design and sound technology. She has joined the Healthcare Transformation Lab as a research fellow to develop tools to bring innovation to the patient and provider interface before returning to complete her medical degree. Ashley earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Los Angeles in Biochemistry and Biomedical Research.

LinkedIn >

Rahul Gandhi, MBChB, MBA, MPH
Innovation Fellow

Rahul used to live in an ashram in India, but now is a resident with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians under their specialty training program in Internal Medicine/Cardiology. He decided to influence the broader determinants of health care outcomes and delivery by reading for an MBA at Oxford, and obtained an MPH at Harvard. He serves as a National Strategy Advisor for Pallium India, helping scale operations within the country to fifteen states, and has founded OnTrackBirths: an endeavor bringing maternal care to vulnerable populations. He sees himself at the interface of evidence-based clinical practice and responsible management — as a social entrepreneur in health. He is a currently a Fulbright Fellow at the HTL, and is working on optimizing Rheumatic Heart Valve disease management in the South Pacific.

Alyssa Donovan
Communications Intern

Alyssa Donovan is a communications intern at the Healthcare Transformation Lab. Alyssa is a junior at MassArt studying graphic design, with hands-on experience in research, development, and marketing. While interning at the Merrimack River Watershed Council, Alyssa realized her passion in design was best utilized in a place where her work could make a positive difference in the world. Alyssa’s design work is derived from real-life immersion in the topic at hand and her goal is to create engaging content with no exclusions. At the Healthcare Transformation Lab, Alyssa is driven to improve digital health through innovative design.

LinkedIn >