Carrum Health Taps Pallav Sharda as Chief Platform Officer to Scale Technology Platform

Former Google Executive Brings Unique Combination of Technical, Medical and Business Experience to Guide Digital Transformation of Surgical Care Delivery

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Carrum Health

Aug 12, 2021, 07:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Carrum Health, the first digital health company connecting employers and employees to Centers of Excellence (COEs) through a technology-powered platform for higher quality and cost-effective surgical care, today announced it named Pallav Sharda as Chief Platform Officer. Bringing a unique blend of data science, product management and clinical expertise, Sharda will lead the team responsible for scaling Carrum Health's technology platform as the company expands its provider base and procedures offered and sees growing demand from self-insured employers seeking cost-effective, high-quality care for their employees.

"At Carrum Health, we've built the highest quality network of Centers of Excellence and are leading the much-needed digital transformation of surgical care. This is only achievable through our plug-and-play technology platform that integrates data science and machine learning to ensure surgery is necessary and then guarantees the highest quality of care," said Sach Jain, CEO and founder of Carrum Health. "With our platform, we virtualized almost every step of a surgical episode through our patient app while radically simplifying the adoption of COE programs for employers. Now is the time to change the way people experience healthcare, and I'm thrilled to welcome a leader of Pallav's caliber to help drive forward our technology platform."

Before joining Carrum Health, Sharda served as the Global Healthcare and Life Sciences Leader for Google Cloud and worked on healthcare projects at X, the R&D division of Google's parent company, Alphabet. He taught graduate-level Medical Informatics courses at Northwestern University, and his book on Health IT innovation and entrepreneurship, "Before Disrupting Healthcare," was published in June 2016. Trained as a physician, Sharda earned a master's in Bioinformatics at Columbia University and spent his early career working in health IT product and engineering management for GE Healthcare. He then moved to the payor side of the industry, first serving as director of Advanced Analytics for Kaiser Permanente and then director of HIE Product Management for UnitedHealth Group. Sharda also was the Director of Interoperability and Partnerships at Omnicell and co-founded health IT startup Dovetail Care Inc.

At Carrum Health, Sharda will oversee engineering, product, data science and design to ensure that the evolving technology platform can effectively scale as the company's member and provider bases grow. The company recently announced a strategic agreement with Vizient Inc., the nation's largest healthcare performance improvement company. This agreement will give Carrum Health members greater access to quality care through high-value providers affiliated with Vizient member healthcare systems, which comprise more than half of the nation's hospitals, including 97% of academic medical centers. Sharda and his team will play a pivotal role as the company enters a hyper-growth stage in 2021 and beyond.

"It's one thing to bundle a hip or knee replacement, but to tackle a complex patient journey like cancer and incentivize some of the nation's top cancer centers, like Memorial Sloan Kettering, to offer a two-year warranty on the care, that's a game-changer," said Sharda. "The Carrum technology platform is built from the ground up to support end-to-end care journeys and leverage data and AI to offer a modern, digital health experience to members as well as a single, seamless solution for employers. I look forward to working with Sach and the entire Carrum Health team to scale this technology to more employers, geographies and service offerings."

About Carrum Health
Carrum Health was founded in 2014 with a mission to "bring common sense to healthcare" through a value-based healthcare model that benefits families, employers and providers. Headquartered in South San Francisco, Carrum's award-winning surgery benefits platform connects self-insured employers with top providers under standardized bundled payment arrangements to better manage healthcare costs. By aligning provider incentives with quality performance, Carrum drives improvements in patient experience and health outcomes. Customers include Fortune 500 companies and public sector organizations. For more information, visit carrumhealth.com.

SOURCE Carrum Health