Healthline Medical Advisory Board

The Healthline Medical Advisory Board is comprised of nationally and internationally recognized medical experts who serve to better the Healthline user experience by evaluating our website content, making recommendations on the vision and direction of the site, and providing input into Healthline's Medically Guided Search components, including its taxonomy, navigation and other features. The board also interfaces with customers and partners that use or offer the Healthline search experience.

Chair, Medical Advisory Board:
Paul Auerbach, MD, MS, FACEP

Dr. Paul Auerbach is Clinical Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is former Professor and Chief of Emergency Medicine at Stanford and Vanderbilt Medical Centers. Dr. Auerbach is a former venture partner with Delphi Ventures in Menlo Park, CA, as well as a previous senior corporate officer with KAI Pharmaceuticals, Sterling Healthcare Group, and MedAmerica. He has served as base station medical director for the City and County of San Francisco, as well as medical director for Emergency Medical Services for the Tennessee Department of Health and Environment. Editor of the definitive guidebook Wilderness Medicine and author of Medicine for the Outdoors, as well as founder and past president of the Wilderness Medical Society, Dr. Auerbach is internationally recognized as a leading authority on emergency medicine and outdoor health and safety. He is the recipient of the DAN America Award from the Divers Alert Network for his service to divers and expertise on hazardous marine animals, and the national Outstanding Contribution in Education Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians. Dr. Auerbach has authored or co-authored more than 100 medical articles and textbook chapters in peer-reviewed literature, and is an active blogger, writing Medicine for the Outdoors for the Health Expert Network. He is currently an advisor or board member for Accelere, Isensix, Theranos, LifeScript, and the National Ski Patrol System. Dr. Auerbach has degrees from Duke University, the Duke University School of Medicine, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Medical Advisory Board members:
Colleen Conway-Welch, PhD, RN, FAAN

Dr. Conway-Welch has served as Dean of Vanderbilt University's school of nursing since 1984. Among many other positions, she served on the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare from 1998 to 1999, was named by President Reagan to his Commission on the HIV Epidemic, and is former president of Friends of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Nursing Research. She is the founder and director of the International Nursing Coalition for Mass Casualty Education, an international coalition of representatives of Schools of Nursing, nursing accrediting bodies, nursing specialty organizations and governmental agencies interested in promoting mass casualty education for nurses. She was recently named by President Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be a member of the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, the Healthcare Leadership Council and corporate boards of CaremarkRx, Rehabcare, Ardent Health Services, and Pinnacle Financial Partners and earned her Ph.D. in nursing from New York University, her M.S.N. from the Catholic University of America and her B.S.N. from Georgetown University. She has received honorary doctorates from Cumberland University, Georgetown University and the University of Colorado School of Nursing.

John Halamka, MD, MS

Dr. Halamka is Chief Information Officer of the CareGroup Health System, Chief Information Officer and Associate Dean for Educational Technology at Harvard Medical School, Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network, Chair of the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, Chief Information Officer of the Harvard Clinical Research Institute, and a practicing emergency physician. During medical school and graduate training, he continued his business activities and developed Ibis Research Labs into a 25-person software consultancy, specializing in medical and financial information interchange. During his residency at Harbor-UCLA he developed a hospital-wide knowledge base for policies, procedures, and protocols. Further, he was instrumental in creating an on-line medical record, a quality control system, and several systems for medical education. His research focus during residency was building automated triage tools for patients infected with HIV. Dr. Halamka received his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco and holds a master's degree in bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley .

Beverley Kane, MD

Dr. Kane is a medical informatics specialist who received her medical degree from the University of California San Francisco. She completed a Family Practice Residency at San Francisco General Hospital, where she co-created the Department of Medicine's Alternative Therapies Unit, one of the first programs of its kind in a major US medical center. She became board certified in Family Practice and completed fellowships in Obstetrics and Gynecology and in Sports Medicine. She worked in the private practice of sports medicine in San Francisco, where she was medical director of the San Francisco Marathon; in multiple risk factor intervention at the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention; as the physician at Apple Computer for nearly 10 years; as chief medical officer of Philips Medical Systems' EMR division; and as the consumer-professional portals liaison at WebMD. Passionate about the provider-patient relationship, Dr. Kane chaired the American Medical Informatics Association's Internet Working Group and co-wrote AMIA's Guidelines for the Clinical Use of Electronic Mail With Patients. She now consults at Healthline and teaches, with her equine partners, Medicine and Horses, a doctor-patient communications course at Stanford Medical School.

Kenneth W. Kizer, MD

Dr. Kizer is currently President, CEO and Chairman of Medsphere Systems Corporation, a leading provider of open source technology for the healthcare industry. Previously, he was founding President and CEO of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a Washington, DC-based consensus standards setting body charged with establishing national standards for public reporting of healthcare quality and other purposes. Dr. Kizer has served in other significant roles in both the private and public sectors, including being Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where he was CEO of the veterans healthcare system and the highest ranking physician in the federal government, and Director of the California Department of Health Services—California's top health official. Dr. Kizer practiced emergency medicine and medical toxicology in both academic and private practice settings for 15 years. He has served on numerous private and public boards and task forces, including Health Systems International, Inc., Trinity Health and the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, and he is a Fellow or Distinguished Fellow of 10 professional societies. Dr. Kizer is an honors graduate of Stanford University and UCLA.

James Norman, MD

Dr. Norman is the founder of YourDoctor.com, the company that preceded Healthline. Dr Norman is a visionary in the use of computers in medicine, but is known worldwide as one of the world's foremost experts on parathyroid disease. His surgical practice is limited to the treatment of parathyroid tumors exclusively. He has treated more patients with parathyroid disease than any other doctor in the world. He currently performs nearly 20% of all the parathyroid operations performed in the US every year and is referred patients with this uncommon disease from all over the world. A board certified surgeon and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons; he is also a Fellow of the American College of Endocrinology, one of only 4 surgeons in the US to hold certifications in both fields. Dr. Norman developed minimally invasive parathyroid surgery in the mid 1990s which has dramatically changed the way parathyroid surgery is performed. He has been awarded 10 patents and has received nearly $5MM in research grants to support his development of new surgical techniques and innovative medicines. Dr. Norman has published well over 270 peer-reviewed medical journal articles, over a dozen books/book chapters, and is an invited speaker on parathyroid disease on a frequent basis.

Robert Parry, MD

Dr. Parry is a nationally known pediatric surgeon experienced in engineering, medicine and education. He is a pediatric surgeon at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, and sits on the faculty of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Parry's has served in staff positions at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Walter Reed Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital. From 1999-2002, Dr. Parry served as chief technology officer for YourDoctor.com, the predecessor to Healthline. As a member of the committee on informatics of the American College of Surgeons, and the informatics committee of the American Pediatric Surgical Association, he has served on a number of hospital committees regarding informatics development, telemedicine and surgical education. Dr. Parry is also the co-founder of Lion Reef Software, creator of Vesalius ( www.vesalius.com ), a surgical education website. His academic interests include surgical education, and complex combined gastrointestinal/urologic/genital developmental abnormalities in children. Dr. Parry received bachelor's degrees in biology and electrical engineering from Cornell University, and a medical degree from Cornell Medical School .