A noted entrepreneur and an innovator of disruptive business solutions, Ravi Ika founded nirvanaHealth in 2013 and serves as President and Chief Executive Officer. He launched nirvanaHealth to address the amount of waste in the healthcare system and to improve care by creating a single integrated platform for payers and PBMs to manage their pharmacy, behavioral health, and medical business—something that has been a dream of every payer.
With this goal, Mr. Ika and the nirvanaHealth team built Aria from the ground up leveraging technology such as robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI). Aria provides comprehensive automated transactional services for all payer and PBM administrative, medical, behavioral, pharmacy, financial, care, quality, cost, & risk management, and compliance management functions across the entire administrative and care continuums of healthcare. Aria facilitates the 3,500+ functions typically fulfilled by payers and PBMs. It does so in a way never before imagined in the payer or PBM industries: by automating each of these functions with a bot and logically deploying these bots into modules to achieve enterprise automation. Among the valuable results of this platform is the opportunity to implement innovative risk models, which means total care can be administered at 75-80% of premium dollars rather than the 90% currently allocated for actual care, and administrative costs which currently range from 10-15% can be reduced by a third to half while also improving member care.
Mr. Ika recognizes the $4 trillion annual healthcare market has long been in need of transformation. Together, payers and PBMs manage the majority of this spend wherein $900+ billion is wasted annually, which is due in large to the lack of cloud platforms built on RPA, ML, and AI to manage the complex multitude of functions fulfilled by these organizations.
More than 20 years ago, Mr. Ika recognized a similar transformational opportunity in health insurance. Industry insiders, challenged to reduce administrative costs by 30% and avoidable medical costs by 20%, saw these goals as unachievable. Mired in paper-based processes, the industry also struggled with a myriad of fragmented, inflexible, and expensive legacy systems. Mr. Ika responded to this opportunity by launching ikaSystems, an enterprise payer platform company. Disrupting obsolete paradigms, he delivered unprecedented change long before passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The ikaSystems platform decreased administrative costs for many health insurers by as much as 50% and significantly reduced avoidable medical costs. With these results, ikaSystems raised more than $120 million capital from Providence Equity and Essex Woodland Ventures. Mr. Ika now seeks to accomplish much bigger transformation across both the payer and PBM enterprises.
Known for building and inspiring world-class teams, Mr. Ika takes a hands-on approach to ensure his clients’ success. Over the years, healthcare industry leaders have come to rely on his vision and talent for creating enterprise platforms that radically disrupt legacy business paradigms and deliver significant value. Mr. Ika has a Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering from Old Dominion University and worked as a research scientist at Harvard University prior to his entrepreneurial career, he also serves on the Board of Trustees at St. Mark’s School.
As a President of Growth Strategy, Anand provides executive leadership, including strategic and operational oversight to drive operating model performance and implement strategic initiatives. He is responsible for implementing short and long-term strategic priorities and business objectives. Anand partners with other leadership teams and stakeholders to define and deploy key performance indicators to monitor past, current, and future performance of business processes. He will help develop, prioritize, and execute business process excellence initiatives to identify and address process and operational inefficiencies. He works to ensure operational compliance with regulatory and accreditation agencies, and internal compliance policies and guidelines.
Anand brings more than 20 years of corporate experience in strategy, leadership, technology execution, and service delivery. Prior to joining, Anand was a senior manager and on a partner track with Deloitte Consulting. While at Deloitte, and as part of the Information Management practice, he provided strategic technology advisory and implementation services to commercial, federal, and state government clients such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Time Warner, and Walmart. Prior to Deloitte, Anand was a product manager at IMS Health and Millennium Pharmaceuticals and was a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Anand began his career at Infosys as a software engineer.
Anand Tati has a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, India, and a master’s degree in technology management from Penn Engineering and the Wharton School.
As Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Jacobsen oversees the financial operations of the company. With 30 years of progressive financial experience he has developed best practices in operational processes. Mr. Jacobsen has spent most of his career assisting software and SAAS companies build structure and account for their operations. Mr. Jacobsen has been involved with multiple corporate transactions including company sales, mergers, acquisitions, and fund raising.
Mr. Jacobsen holds a BS in accounting and finance from Northeastern University and is a certified public accountant.
Mr. Jacobsen Is the proud husband to wife Wendy and father of Christopher, Matthew, Kyle, Cameron and Ashley.
Aruna currently serves as the Chief Administrative Officer and Head of Business Development at nirvanaHealth and is responsible for pharmacy rebate contracting, pharmacy network contracting, and internal financial metrics. Aruna engages with investors and stakeholders to ensure the nirvanaHealth’s strategy for business growth and value creation is well understood. Aruna is responsible for devising, executing and leading nirvanaHealth’s capital raising activities. Aruna provides thought leadership, market intelligence, counsel, recommendations and insight to the CEO, fellow senior management members and the board of directors. Aruna works with internal product and business teams to identify channel partnership opportunities that align on growth priorities to meet the overall strategy of the company.
Aruna brings over two decades of experience in finance, accounting, HR, corporate development and operations. Prior to joining, Aruna worked at ikaSystems Corporation (ika) DBA Visiant Health for over 14 years. He contributed significantly to the growth and success of ikaSystems during his tenure there, initially serving as the CFO from inception through the acquisition of ikaSystems by Providence Equity. He later served as the VP of Operations and VP of Account Management for the company. Aruna was instrumental in creating a smooth transition during the integration of ikaSystems and Visiant using his vast knowledge of the business and his friendly team player approach to supporting staff and clients alike.
Aruna is a CPA and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and is an avid runner.
Prakash Tallabattula, Chief Technology Officer, oversees all technology operations, research and development, both onshore and offshore. Tallabattula is an effective leader and hands-on technology strategist with over 15 years of documented achievements in start-up, turnaround, high-growth, and Fortune 500 corporate environments. He is a driving force behind innovative strategies, processes, and technology solutions delivered collaboratively through strong cross-functional relationships built across the organization.
Prior to joining, Tallabattula worked as a senior enterprise architect at Fannie Mae, where he was responsible for the organization’s technology roadmap. He was also a senior architect at Verizon, where he played a key technical role on Verizon Dialup/DSL/FIOS solutions. In addition, he headed technology teams and was a member of executive teams at Sylvan Learning, Hanleywood, and other companies. Tallabattula earned his bachelor of engineering degree in computer science from the University of Karnataka and has his MBA in international business from Walden University.
Mark W. Owen is currently Chief Transformation Officer. Prior to joining Mr. Owen was President, Government Programs, for Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC).
Previously he served as vice president of the Federal and Individual Business Divisions for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; and vice president and general manager of Medicare products and Commercial Individual products at Medica Health Plans in Minnetonka, Minn. He also held multiple executive positions with Humana in Louisville, KY.
He earlier served as vice president and general manager of Medica Health Plans in Minnetonka, Minn., where he oversaw two business segments – Medicare products and Commercial Individual products. From 1994-2000, he held multiple executive positions with Humana in Louisville, KY.
Prior to starting his career in health care, he spent 18 years in the transportation industry with Schneider National, a large truckload carrier based in Green Bay, WI.
Owen holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., and a master’s degree in business from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
Bijendra Malik, Executive Vice President and Chief Security Officer, is responsible for overall operational infrastructure management and security.
Malik has more than 25 years experience in the insurance, finance, manufacturing and telecommunications industries, including strategic positions with Government Works, Inc., ikaSystems, GE and LG Electronics. His versatile background and experience in creating strategies for disaster recovery and processes to improve and maintain high security and service levels provide nirvanaHealth with the solid foundation necessary for designing, improving and maintaining complex infrastructure and software applications.
Malik holds a BS degree in electrical engineering and numerous certifications including CISA (Certified Information System Auditor), PMP (Project Management Professional), ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), IBM’s Certified Lotus Professional (CLP), Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), Checkpoint Certified Security Administrator (CCSA), Certified Novell Engineer (CNE) and Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA).
Heather Johnson, Chief Compliance Officer, is responsible for creating a vison of effective compliance and leading the implementation of a structure and process that ensures nirvanaHealth is compliant with all applicable federal and state rules/guidelines, as well as all regulations pertaining to Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, and Commercial PBM business. She is accountable for driving the consistent application of nirvanaHealth’s Compliance Program, Code of Conduct, and compliance policies across the enterprise. She works collaboratively with all key stakeholder – clients, team members, customers, regulatory agencies, and other external entities such as accreditation organizations, delegated partners, etc. – to ensure responsive and effective compliance performance. Heather also facilitates and supports the organization for URAC accreditation, NCQA accreditation, SOC audits, and maintains all relevant licensures.
Prior to joining, Heather was VP of Business solutions at Beacon Health Solutions, responsible for overall client engagement including compliance, audits, and CMS deliverables. While at Beacon, Heather led her team to ensure all operational/compliance areas exceeded CMS service levels. Prior to her role at Beacon Health Solutions, as Director of Medicare at ikaSystems, Heather was responsible for overall compliance across all lines of business. In fact, throughout her 20-years professional healthcare career working for TPAs, health plans, and health technology companies, Heather has always been involved interpreting CMS guidance, communicating this interpretation to stakeholders, and automating such regulations by leveraging technology.
She holds a Bachelor of Science from Thomas Jefferson University.
Munaf Kapadia is the President of Managed Care Services at nirvanaHealth. As the President of Managed Care Services, Munaf will now oversee Medicare and other lines of business administrative operations, including consumer services, correspondence, enrollment, billing, claims, and financial cycle management operations.
Munaf is a seasoned healthcare executive with over three decades of industry experience in defining Payer operations, plan benefits design, financial analysis, market research and strategic growth planning with demonstrated and successful exits. He brings a unique blend of experience from the Payer’s and the Provider’s perspectives in the healthcare delivery spectrum. Prior to joining, Munaf was a vice president of operations for Freedom Health & Optimum Healthcare.
Munaf earned his MBA from the University of South Florida, and his Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy from the M. S. University, Baroda, India.
Dr. Robert (Bob) London is the Chief Medical Officer of nirvanaHealth/RxAdvance. His role is thought leadership for applying analytics and machine learning to improve health outcomes, and he leads all clinical activities for both companies. He has been a President, Chief Operating Officer (COO), and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in both private and public rapidly growing companies and has deep expertise in payer operations, pharmacy, managing MLR, biomedical research, healthcare technology, and medical informatics.
Dr. London is a national thought leader in leveraging technology to improve quality and reduce medical costs from the Payer perspective. From 2014 thru 2021, he was the Chief Medical Officer for WellCare’s South Carolina Health Plans. He also worked 2020-2021 as Chief Medical Officer for the SC Centene book of business including all Medicare, Exchange and Medicaid membership. In these roles his span of control included overseeing the medical services and quality results for WellCare Medicaid and Medicare plans in the state: including medical leadership for the effective care integration of pharmacy operations, utilization/case/disease management activities and quality improvement. He reported to WellCare’s state leader for South Carolina. In addition to his market role, Dr. London led a number of corporate projects involving informatics, artificial intelligence, Obstetrics/NICU and IT related RFP’s.
Prior to WellCare, London was the national medical director for Walgreens and led the clinical solutions group in the health and wellness business segment. Preceding to that, he served as the general manager of ikaSystems, a leader in enterprise software for the payer sector. He has also served as the chief development officer for D2Hawkeye, a provider of medical data reporting and analytics solutions, and chief clinical officer for TriZetto, a public health care information technology company. Earlier in his career, London led health care management for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s (WellPoint) Western region. He has also served as corporate chief medical officer at CNA Insurance Company, chief operating officer for United Healthcare’s mid-Atlantic region, and chief medical officer at NYLCare Health Plans. Dr. London did his executive training while at Kaiser Permanente’s Mid-Atlantic Region and was the lead of Maternal-Child Care for the Mid-Atlantic Market.
London has served on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the University of Colorado MBA program, and the South Carolina School of Medicine. He holds degrees from George Washington University and University of Maryland School of Medicine, is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, and is a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Basem Shebli is the Chief Pharmacy Officer of nirvanaHealth/RxAdvance. Basem has more than 20 years of experience in the managed care/PBM space serving Medicare, Medicaid and commercial populations. His expertise is in building and managing high performing teams laser focused on delivering the highest quality output while utilizing the most efficient processes. His previous work in the Medicare Part D includes achieving 5 Stars with CMS, countless program audits as well as medication therapy management, specialty utilization, PA operations and formulary strategy. In addition to that, he has tremendous experience working cross functionally, especially with IT Technology teams, designing and building pharmacy management softwares. Basem holds an MBA degree from Northeastern University and a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) degree from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston, MA. On a personal note, Basem enjoys the outdoors, camping and gardening when the weather permits. He also has a passion for conducting unorthodox chemical experiments in the kitchen (aka fusion cooking).
John Sculley is one of America’s best-known business leaders, with one foot in the storied history of Apple technology and the other planted firmly in 21st century innovations that change the way the world does business. Drawing upon many years of experience as a corporate executive, investor, entrepreneur, mentor, and rainmaker, Sculley has become a sought-after global advisor helping experienced entrepreneurs build a new generation of transformative companies.
In his 10 years as Apple CEO he worked together with Steve Jobs to launch the Macintosh computer, desktop publishing, and the first multimedia computers. By the end of his decade as Apple CEO, the Mac had become the largest selling PC in the world and Apple’s revenue had grown over 1000%.
John Sculley has domain expertise in data science innovation, predictive analytics, consumer brand building, supply chain systems, and growth equity investing.
The companies John has advised cover many industries: health-tech (RxAdvance, Rally Health, MDLIVE, FLEXPharma, SleepMed); fin-tech (Lantern Credit); mobile-tech (MetroPCS); and marketing–tech ( Zeta Interactive).
For 15 years John Sculley was on the Board of Overseers of both the MIT Media Lab and Wharton Business School. He received Wharton’s highest honor, The Joseph Wharton Award for Outstanding Leadership. He was selected as marketing CEO of the Decade when he was Apple CEO. John Sculley received an honorary PhD from Johns-Hopkins University and 10 other universities. In 2015 he was awarded The Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
John Sculley is author of “Moonshot “Game Changing Strategies to Build Billion Dollar Businesses”. He is married to Diane Sculley who is also his partner in Sculley Family Office.
A noted entrepreneur and an innovator of disruptive business solutions, Ravi Ika founded nirvanaHealth in 2013 and serves as President and Chief Executive Officer. He launched nirvanaHealth to address the amount of waste in the healthcare system and to improve care by creating a single integrated platform for payers and PBMs to manage their pharmacy, behavioral health, and medical business—something that has been a dream of every payer.
With this goal, Mr. Ika and the nirvanaHealth team built Aria from the ground up leveraging technology such as robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI). Aria provides comprehensive automated transactional services for all payer and PBM administrative, medical, behavioral, pharmacy, financial, care, quality, cost, & risk management, and compliance management functions across the entire administrative and care continuums of healthcare. Aria facilitates the 3,500+ functions typically fulfilled by payers and PBMs. It does so in a way never before imagined in the payer or PBM industries: by automating each of these functions with a bot and logically deploying these bots into modules to achieve enterprise automation. Among the valuable results of this platform is the opportunity to implement innovative risk models, which means total care can be administered at 75-80% of premium dollars rather than the 90% currently allocated for actual care, and administrative costs which currently range from 10-15% can be reduced by a third to half while also improving member care.
Mr. Ika recognizes the $4 trillion annual healthcare market has long been in need of transformation. Together, payers and PBMs manage the majority of this spend wherein $900+ billion is wasted annually, which is due in large to the lack of cloud platforms built on RPA, ML, and AI to manage the complex multitude of functions fulfilled by these organizations.
More than 20 years ago, Mr. Ika recognized a similar transformational opportunity in health insurance. Industry insiders, challenged to reduce administrative costs by 30% and avoidable medical costs by 20%, saw these goals as unachievable. Mired in paper-based processes, the industry also struggled with a myriad of fragmented, inflexible, and expensive legacy systems. Mr. Ika responded to this opportunity by launching ikaSystems, an enterprise payer platform company. Disrupting obsolete paradigms, he delivered unprecedented change long before passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The ikaSystems platform decreased administrative costs for many health insurers by as much as 50% and significantly reduced avoidable medical costs. With these results, ikaSystems raised more than $120 million capital from Providence Equity and Essex Woodland Ventures. Mr. Ika now seeks to accomplish much bigger transformation across both the payer and PBM enterprises.
Known for building and inspiring world-class teams, Mr. Ika takes a hands-on approach to ensure his clients’ success. Over the years, healthcare industry leaders have come to rely on his vision and talent for creating enterprise platforms that radically disrupt legacy business paradigms and deliver significant value. Mr. Ika has a Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering from Old Dominion University and worked as a research scientist at Harvard University prior to his entrepreneurial career, he also serves on the Board of Trustees at St. Mark’s School.
George M. Rapier III, M.D. is a renowned physician entrepreneur known for mastering Medicare risk. As a leader and innovator in the healthcare industry, Dr. Rapier impacted many lives through his successful enterprises and philanthropy. During his career, he earned numerous awards, including being named as the 2009 Physician Entrepreneur of the Year by Modern Physician and inducted into the Mexican American/Hispanic Physicians Hall of Fame.
Dr. Rapier founded WellMed Medical Management, Inc. (“WellMed”) in 1990 in San Antonio, Texas and rapidly grew it to become the region’s largest physician-owned IPA. In 2008, Dr. Rapier implemented ikaSystems, founded by nirvanaHealth’s CEO, Ravi Ika, and automated the administration of Medicare. With ikaSystems, WellMed grew membership to over 100,000. In 2011, Dr. Rapier successfully sold WellMed to UnitedHealth Group. WellMed now takes full risk on over 1,000,000 Medicare members and is a key part of Optum’s provider strategy.
Dr. Rapier earned his medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine and completed his residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Among many career accolades, he also led the Electronic Medical Records project, the development of Clinical Health Protocol Screening software, and WellMed’s partnership with Optum.
The entrepreneur enjoys giving back to his community and established many charitable organizations. Dr. Rapier founded the Rapier Family Foundation, distributing more than $1.5 million annually. He also co-founded the non-profit WellMed Charitable Foundation, which supports seniors and their caregivers. With local partners, the WellMed Charitable Foundation launched the first-of-its-kind Caregiver Teleconnection.
Sidd Pagidipati runs Physician Partners, one of the leading value-based healthcare provider networks in the country. Physician Partners is focused on transforming the fee-for-service healthcare system into outcome and value-based world. Prior to Physician Partners, he co-founded America’s First Choice Health Plans (Freedom Health & Optimum Health Plans), which was the largest privately-owned Medicare Advantage HMO in the country until it was recently acquired by Anthem. Freedom Health was ranked #7 on the Inc 500’s fastest growing companies in America in 2009, having grown 10,000+% over a 3-year period.
Dr. Prakash Patel has 25 years of healthcare leadership experience and a proven track record of driving strategy and operations to deliver growth across a broad spectrum of healthcare areas. In particular, he has been an innovator at the intersection of the payor, provider, and technology landscapes and has driven solutions around integrated care models to meet the needs of those with chronic and complex conditions. As a lead operating executive, he will utilize his expertise to support the value creation strategies and execution capabilities related to investments in leading healthcare businesses.
Most recently, Prakash served as Executive Vice President and President for Anthem, Inc.’s Diversified Business Group, where he led the business’s strategic direction and its multi-fold growth. Before joining Anthem, he served as Chief Operating Officer of the GuideWell Enterprise and Florida Blue and President of GuideWell Health; and in executive roles with Magellan Health Services, Internet Healthcare Group, and Scheer & Company.
Prakash earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan and his Medical Doctorate degree from Cornell University Medical College. He is an avid fitness and sports enthusiast, a current Board Member for Dugout Ventures, a CEO forum member of the national value-based organization HCP-LAN (CMSAlliance), and a past Global 50 Executive member. His civic activities include supporting education and healthcare organizations focused on children and the underprivileged.
If you are interested in partnering with us on our mission to disrupt healthcare, reach out to our nirvana innovation team. We would love to hear any comments, questions, or feedback.
Since 2013, the RxAdvance team has been dedicated to disrupting the healthcare industry, specifically in pharmacy benefit management. After 3 years of development, we went live with our first client in 2016 and delivered groundbreaking pharmacy benefit management services. Now that we have proven success year-after-year, we have decided to expand our impact beyond just the PBM industry—onto the payer industry. These two industries alone control the majority of the healthcare spend in the United States, including the $900+ billion of waste generated annually. With our expansion into a new portion of the industry, we have outgrown the RxAdvance name, since it does not accurately capture the scope of our healthcare reach and mission. We are excited to announce our new name and brand—nirvanaHealth. The RxAdvance name has served us well for many years and will continue to do so under nirvanaHealth.