The Tolven Leadership Team
Neil Cowles
Chief Executive Officer
Tolven Inc.
Neil Cowles is the Chief Executive Officer of Tolven Inc., an open source healthcare software, services and solutions provider that is changing the existing paradigm of healthcare information systems adoption in the global healthcare marketplace. Cowles believes that much as open source technologies such as Linux, J-BOSS, MySQL and PostgreSQL have transformed the technology marketplace, industry specific open source platforms and applications will dramatically impact the healthcare software marketplace.
Born in Norwich, England, Neil Cowles trained and practiced as a radiographer in England and Australia prior to focusing on healthcare management and information technology.
Between 1994 and 1999, Cowles held a number of executive positions with Shared Medical Systems (SMS) in Europe, joining Torex Plc as Technical Director in 1999, a board position where he was responsible for application development, product strategy and outsourcing. He participated in the acquisition and merger of a number of healthcare businesses across Europe.
In 2002, Neil Cowles joined Oracle EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) where he was responsible for developing healthcare business opportunities across Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2004, Neil Cowles transferred to Oracle Corporation to take responsibility for the global health industries application strategy. Cowles' strategic responsibilities included both the healthcare and life sciences clinical and business systems.
At the beginning of 2006, Neil Cowles left Oracle Corporation to become one of the co-founders and the Chief Executive Officer of Tolven Inc., which is focused on a consumer-centric, industry standards approach to delivering healthcare information solutions.
Neil Cowles is recognized as a thought leader in healthcare business and technology development and has delivered the key note lecture at a number of international healthcare conferences.
Steven Weiner
Chief Operating Officer
Tolven Inc.
Steven Weiner brings to his role as Tolven's Chief Operating Officer an extensive understanding of the healthcare industry gained from over twenty-five years in academic medicine, provider, health plan and consulting organizations within the United States.
Weiner's formal education was completed with the receipt of his MBA from the University of Chicago in 1980. In the 16 years that followed, he served in increasingly responsible management roles within the University's Academic Medical Center, including as the administrator of the University's largest ambulatory care operation, co-founder of the University's health maintenance organization, and for the last 8 years, as the Associate Dean and Principal Business Officer.
From 1996 to 2001, Weiner was Vice President and Division Manager of the Science Applications International (SAIC) Bay Area healthcare consulting practice. At SAIC, Weiner managed more than $100M in technical consulting engagements for internet application development, the development and deployment of distributed computing infrastructures and clinical information system design, development, and testing. His diverse client base included the nation's largest HMO as well as a number of "eHealth" start-up companies.
From SAIC, Weiner joined First Consulting Group (FCG) as Vice President. For four years at FCG, Weiner developed health plan business for FCG's consulting and outsourcing services. His clients ranged from large multi-state for-profit health plan companies to small local non-profit Blues affiliates.
Upon leaving FCG, Weiner joined Tolven as co-founder and Chief Operating Officer.
Dr. Thomas (Tom) Jones
Chief Medical Officer
Tolven Inc.
Following his graduation from medical school at Stanford University, Dr. Jones joined the University of Chicago and was there from 1969 until 1995, first as a house staff officer and then as a member of the faculty of the Department of Medicine. As part of the development of the infrastructure for primary care education and clinical activity, Dr. Jones and his colleagues at the University developed the Centennial Patient Care Workstation, a model for allowing clinicians to enjoy the benefits of new information technology. This project was very important in shaping his beliefs that sensitive deployment of commercially available software could provide great benefit to, and enhance the efficiency of practicing clinicians. Dr. Jones' clinical expertise was recognized when, in 1995, he was named by Chicago area physicians as one of the 35 most outstanding general internists in Chicago (The Best Doctors in America, Woodward and White). His interest in clinical informatics grew out of both his clinical practice experience and his teaching experience. He received the Quantrell award for excellence in teaching in 1992; this award is the nation's oldest teaching award and is given by the students at the University of Chicago.
In 1995, Dr. Jones joined Oacis Healthcare Systems where his role allowed him to focus more deeply on the clinical functionality of applied informatics. During his 5 years at Oacis, he had the opportunity to work closely with some of the founding members of the HL7 organization. Over the course of his years of teaching and subsequently at Oacis, he developed sensitivity regarding how clinicians make critical decisions based on clinical information. Understanding how clinicians communicate with one another led to an appreciation of how the standardization of clinical information fostered more rapid and accurate communication.
In 2000, Dr. Jones joined Oracle where he provided the clinical leadership for Oracle's Healthcare Strategy group, including the development of Oracle's Healthcare Transaction Base. During his 5 years at Oracle, Dr. Jones met with provider organizations, payor organizations, academic institutions, healthcare informatics standards organizations, government representatives and pharmaceutical firms in 34 countries. He has been active in deliberations of the European Commission's Directorate-General Information Society and has written major white papers for the EC.
In 2004, Dr. Jones began his participation in the Interoperability Consortium (IC) where he worked with colleagues from Accenture, CSC, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. He chaired the Technical Committee of the IC and was responsible for the technical and architectural sections (including the discussions of standards) of the IC's response to the ONCHIT RFI. He also participates in the CalRHIO (California Regional Health Information Organization) as a member of the Clinical Working Group.
In February 2006, Dr. Jones left Oracle to become a founding partner and Chief Medical Officer of Tolven Inc., a start-up company dedicated to furthering the development and use of open source software for healthcare.
John Churin
Chief Technology Officer
Tolven Inc.
John Churin is Chief Technology Officer for Tolven. In this role, he is responsible for the design and implementation of the software upon which the Tolven applications are based. His passion to develop healthcare applications led him to the open source community and Tolven's support for open source software development made a good match for Churin's interests.
Churin's skills range from programming to application design, and include backend technologies like Enterprise Java Beans (EJB3), LDAP and relational database and front-end technologies like Java Server Faces, javascript, servlets and HTML. Performance, security, scalability and maintainable software are among his special interests.
Prior to Tolven, Churin worked for Oracle as a Senior Architect in healthcare product development. His contributions to the Healthcare Transaction Base product over five years include the API architecture, sales presentations, technical training and design workshops. Churin has a deep understanding of the new HL7 V3 standard, as well as Java, OOP, SQL, PL/SQL, web and JEE skills. Churin also works on performance issues and tuning.
Prior to Oracle, Churin was Chief Architect for Oacis Healthcare Systems. He developed the Oacis II architecture that supported Physician Order Management and web access to clinical data. He authored a considerable portion of the C++ code for the Oacis project.
Churin joined Oacis from Digital Equipment Corporation where, as Principal Consultant, he was the original developer and architect for the ALL-IN-1 office-automation product suite.
In his 30+ years in the computer industry, Churin has developed software for many industries, including healthcare, finance and publishing. He has consulted on large-scale projects in office automation, healthcare, finance, manufacturing and communications industries. In his consulting role, John has created object designs that include a pricing model for telecom, a highway maintenance system and a research grant administration system.
