Amazon is continuing to bolster its health care game. The company recently hired Dr. Martin Levine, a longtime Seattle doctor and leader of Iora Health‘s Seattle area operations, according to a report by CNBC.
The move is another pointer towards the company’s health ambitions. Amazon has hired several high-profile health leaders in the past months and has shown signs of considering everything from distributing prescription drugs online to a health service from its Alexa voice assistant.
Levine has served as the Seattle market medical director for Iora for the past three years, according to his LinkedIn profile. He specializes in care for older patients and those with chronic conditions.
Iora offers primary care for Medicare patients. It’s among a new generation of primary care companies that are aiming to change how the process works, leveraging technology and new payer systems that focus on value instead of traditional per-service fees.
CNBC reports that Amazon met with several companies working on creative primary care models a year ago, including Iora, Kaiser Permanente, and Qliance, a Seattle startup backed by Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos which shut down suddenly in May.
—Geir Hansen, a Seattle technology veteran, has left Silicon Valley Bank after more than two decades at the firm, GeekWire has learned. Hansen was a fixture in SVB’s Seattle office, serving as managing director of the office and specializing on emerging technology companies. He joined SVB as a banker in 1996, and holds a degree in business administration from Pacific Lutheran University and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Washington.
“SVB recently reorganized to focus on tech sector specialties and my prior role was eliminated in that process,” Hansen tells GeekWire. “I’m now open to new opportunities in the local tech ecosystem where I’ve spent many years helping founders establish and build their disruptive businesses.” Silicon Valley Bank declined to comment.
—Acumatica is bolstering its board, and doing so with the former president of Microsoft’s Business Solutions Division, Kirill Tatarinov. That’s a key win for Acumatica since, Tatarinov ran Microsoft Dynamics, a product that Acumatica competes against. Tatarinov most recently served as president and CEO of Citrix Systems.
Acumatica, which raised $13 million in venture funding in 2014, calls itself the the world’s fastest-growing cloud ERP company.
“Kirill is a very big proponent of advanced technology,” said Acumatica CEO Jon Roskill, a former Microsoft executive, “and his views align well with our intelligent ERP efforts on Machine Learning, Natural User Interfaces, and Blockchain. Having another technology advocate on the Board will continue to inspire our product development.”
—F5 Networks, which reported fiscal first quarter results on Wednesday that included a 14 percent bump in revenue to $523.2 million, announced a series of leadership additions, part of the ongoing wave of new executives who’ve joined the Seattle cloud and security company now being led by president and CEO François Locoh-Donou. More on F5’s earnings and new hires in this report from GeekWire’s Tom Krazit.
—Former eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprises CEO Meg Whitman, who unsuccessfully ran for governor of California, has been named CEO of Hollywood titan Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new entertainment startup, according to a report in Variety. Variety said Whitman was a surprise choice for the new startup, which is focusing on short-form entertainment video content directed at mobile consumers. The new company does not have a name yet, and Recode notes that the new venture is an “ambitious, amorphous video startup.” It is looking to raise as much as $1 billion.
— NanoString Technologies, a Seattle-based company that makes tools for life science research, announced the addition of Thomas Bailey as its chief financial officer. Bailey joins the company from AgaMatrix, a company developing technology for diabetic patients, where he was also the CFO. He has formerly held C-suite positions at a number of pharmaceutical and life science companies in Seattle, including serving as CFO and later CEO of Angiotech Pharmaceuticals.
Bailey replaces Jim Johnson, who served as NanoString CEO for more than five years. Johnson left the company to take on the CFO role at Nohla Therapeutics, a spin out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center developing a leukemia treatment that raised a $43.5 million series A just over a year ago.
“NanoString has built a global business driven by a unique combination of research tools and a powerful diagnostic platform, as well as a pipeline of potentially transformative new products,” Bailey said in a press release. “I am excited to be joining the company at a time of major innovation and a new technology cycle that opens up significant new avenues of growth.”
— David Camp, a longtime Seattle marketing executive, is on to a new project. Camp is one of the co-founders of Metaforce, a new marketing and product consultancy operating out of Seattle, New York and San Francisco. Camp held senior marketing positions at Amazon, Microsoft and Blackberry. His co-founder, Allen Adamson, is a longtime marketing consultant specialist who spent more than two decades as the North America chairman of brand consulting and design giant Landor.
“For over two decades while managing agencies and consultants as an operating company marketing leader, I’ve been struck by how dysfunctional most agency models remain,” Camp said in a press release. “I’ve always wanted a marketing partner who’s walked ten miles in my shoes, with a group of multi-disciplinary experts that operates like a special forces team. This is what we’ve created in Metaforce.”
— Hemant Vashisth, a longtime engineer and program manager with a history at Microsoft, is joining Philips Healthcare as a program manager. Vashisth was most recently a senior program manager on T-Mobile’s digital technology and development team.
