Team
HeartCloud's team includes practicing medical doctors, software and information security engineers, and experienced healthcare business executives.
Team
Carter Smyth
Chief Executive OfficerBoard Member
Alex Podobas, JD
Co-Founder & Chief Technology OfficerBoard Member
Britton Arey, MD, MBA
Chief Medical OfficerBoard Member
Ian Cook, MD
Co-Founder (Emeritus)
Laura Bomze
Vice President, Customer Success
Todd Barnes
Vice President , Sales
Jay McNab
Revenue Cycle Management
Daniel Young
Vice President, Native Platform Apps
Jon Healy, Esq.
Fullstack Developer
Nish Gupta, MBA
Interim Chief Financial OffierBoard Member
Neda Hawkins
Customer Success
Medical Advisory Board
Carter Smyth
Chief Executive Officer Member, Board of DirectorsCarter Smyth is the Chief Executive Officer of HeartCloud, Inc. and serves on the company's board of directors.
He was previously the Chief Technology Officer of Silicon Valley Software Group and has held executive technology positions at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, and other startups.
Alex co-founded HeartCloud in response to an ongoing cardiovascular condition that his mother was experiencing. At first, it was just an idea to provide her cardiologist with potentially some useful data from her Apple Watch. The idea then broadened once Dr. Cook, Alex's former boss, left UCLA and went into private medical practice.
Alex spent years developing the platform's web, iOS, and web apps based on a unique combination of skills in software development, legal and regulatory compliance, and information security. Before then, Alex worked for the UCLA Information Security Office from 2008 to 2016 (where he oversaw penetration and vulnerability testing across campus) and then at UCLA Health from 2016 to 2018 (where he developed secure medical records software for physicians).
Information security, data privacy, and compliance are core to Alex's software development work. His experience includes (a) developing customized, enterprise-grade software focused on ensuring the security, privacy, and integrity of electronic healthcare and security records (b) developing or expanding upon open-source software to provide customized information security solutions to detect anomalous patterns in log, netflow, and system-level events, and (c) in conducting both vulnerability and penetration testing against internal applications and networks. He has consulted for private sector clients, including law firms, international distribution companies, and financial services firms, on various systems hardening, audit, and data protection roles, particularly when it comes to automated monitoring tools and precluding unique attack vectors.
Alex earned his undergraduate degree, Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude, from UCLA in 2011 and the UC Irvine School of Law in 2017.
Britton Arey, MD, MBA
Chief Medical Officer Member, Board of Directors Chair, Medical Advisory Boardareymd@heartcloud.io
Dr. Arey is HeartCloud's Chief Medical Officer and serves on its board of directors, in addition to chairing the company's medical advisory board. In that latter role, she works closely with both the medical advisory board and the company's software developers to refine the platform's applications, both clinical and consumer/patient-facing. She regularly engages with clinicians who use HeartCloud's technologies in their own practices across a variety of specialties and sub-specialties.
In her concierge medical practice in Orange County, California, she extensively uses HeartCloud's physician-facing apps, HeartCloud For Health Practices and HeartCloud MD.
Dr. Arey received both her MD and MBA from the University of California, Irvine and completed her residency at UCLA. She double majored in biology and psychology at the University of Southern California. Apart from practicing medicine for 24 years, she also has pharmaceutical industry experience, having worked at Eli Lilly for 5 years.
Ian Cook, MD
Co-Founder Member, Board of DirectorsA Princeton-educated biomedical engineer and Yale-educated physician, Dr. Cook brings decades of experience in clinical medicine, health technology development, and academic and corporate leadership in the life sciences space.
After medical school, Dr. Cook completed his internship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and his residency at the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed a T32 research fellowship at UCLA before joining the faculty there.
Prior to joining HeartCloud, Dr. Cook was a practicing physician, professor, researcher, and academic leader at UCLA. He was the Chief Translational Innovation Officer at UCLA’s Semel Institute as well as a tenured professor in the Schools of Medicine and of Engineering, where he held the Joanne and George Miller & Family Endowed Chair. He also served as Chair of the Faculty of the School of Medicine and founded and led successful research and clinical treatment programs. He raised several million dollars in federal research grant support as Principal Investigator and was an NIMH-funded research fellow. He pioneered online medical education and transformed a financially-losing educational operation into a profit center for his department. Dr. Cook has published peer-reviewed research into interactions between the heart and the brain ("Heart rate variability and treatment outcome in major depression: a pilot study") (2014).
Dr. Cook founded and is the CEO of the Los Angeles TMS Institute, Inc., a healthcare startup providing advanced medical concierge services (reaching profitability in 6 months and with revenue CAGR of over 2000% in the first 12 months of operation).
Dr. Cook received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and computer science, magna cum laude and with high honors, from Princeton University in 1982 and his Doctor of Medicine (MD) from Yale University in 1987.
Todd Barnes
Vice President, SalesDaniel Young is HeartCloud's Vice President of Mobile Engineering. He is the primary developer of HeartCloud MD (iOS, iPadOS, MacOS) and HeartCloud Sync (iOS and Apple Watch).
Jon Healy is a senior developer within HeartCloud's technologies team, primarily focused on delivering physician feature requests across HeartCloud's web applications.
He received his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University in 2013 and his Juris Doctor from the University of California, Irvine in 2017.
After passing the Colorado state bar examination, but before leaving California for Colorado to begin his legal career in early 2018, Jon helped write the code for early versions of HeartCloud.io. From 2018 to late 2022, he was variously a prosecutor, a state Public Defender, and a private criminal defense attorney.
In early 2023, Jon returned to HeartCloud after quitting legal practice in Colorado.
Jay is an analyst who helps practice customers improve revenue cycle management through outpatient claims billing.
Nish Gupta, MBA
Interim Chief Financial Officer Member: Board of Directors Angel InvestorAfter earning his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science in India, Nish entered the distribution world to pursue a career combining technology, innovation, and operations. Currently, Nish is the Chief Information Officer for LK Packaging, where he oversees all information security, applications, data analytics and core business systems. In his 15 years in the manufacturing and distribution industry, spanning the entire value chain, Nish brings an array of operational and managerial skills to advise HeartCloud, Inc.
Nish Gupta was also HeartCloud's first angel investor. He currently serves as the company's interim Chief Financial Officer.
Nish earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from University of Southern California in 2019.
Rushi Parikh, MD
Medical Advisor Interventional Cardiologist, UCLA HealthDr. Parikh is a UCLA interventional and advanced heart failure cardiologist who practices at Ronald Reagan Medical Center and in Torrance, California.
Dr. Parikh’s clinical expertise involves the invasive evaluation and treatment of coronary artery disease, heart failure, and structural heart disease. Specifically, he performs coronary angiography, complex percutaneous coronary intervention, transcatheter aortic valve replacement, and implantation of heart failure monitoring devices such as CardioMEMS. He has a particular interest in leveraging digital healthcare technologies (e.g. CardioMEMS) to remotely monitor patients and improve patient outcomes.
Dr. Parikh is also a productive clinical researcher, having received several prestigious grants including a current one from the American Heart Association that evaluates the mechanisms of coronary artery disease in patients who receive a heart transplant. His complete peer-reviewed bibliography can be found here
As a member of HeartCloud’s Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Parikh draws upon his day-to-day cardiology practice to advise the company on several fronts. His primary focus is guiding HeartCloud’s research efforts, but he is also instrumental in determining what data is clinically meaningful and how to present it in a manner that is both impactful and useful for practicing physicians. He also aids in shaping HeartCloud’s workout functionality and the audience-specific data shown to consumers and optionally their physician. His insights have proved invaluable in furthering a major purpose of HeartCloud’s technologies--to provide a clinical context to an individual’s workout performance.
Board Certifications: | Internal Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine (2013) |
Fellowships: | Cardiovascular Disease, American Board of Internal Medicine (2017) Interventional Cardiology, American Board of Internal Medicine (2018) |
Residency: | Internal Medicine, UCSF Department of Medicine (2010-2013) |
Education: | Bachelor of Arts: Cornell University (2006) Doctor of Medicine (MD): New York University School of Medicine (2010) |
Laura Bomze
Vice President, Customer SuccessComing soon
Ed Gray
Board MemberEd is a seasoned healthcare executive with more than thirty years of diversified senior management experience, including significant tenures at Universal Health Services, Tenet Healthcare and HCA. Ed most recently serves as President and CEO of Healthcare Partners Investments, a multispecialty healthcare company serving patients in Oklahoma City and surrounding markets. Ed has been intimately involved in the operations and financial management of the surgery centers, physician practice management and retail pharmacies, along with community hospitals and academic medical centers. He has experience in health-related valuations and complex equity healthcare finance structures. Ed earned his undergraduate degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters of Science from Duquesne University. Ed sits on several boards, including American Precious Metals Exchange Inc. (APMEX) and Allied Arts. He is also a member of several organizations including the American College of Healthcare Executives and the United States Navy League.