Valant relies on our advisors to ensure excellence and provide guidance in all facets of our service and product.
Stacy Shaw Welch, Ph.D.
Dr. Welch has had a longstanding interest in anxiety-related problems, trauma and body-focused repetitive behaviors (such as trichotillomania and compulsive skin-picking). She specializes in treating anxiety disorders in children, adolescents, and adults, including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and specific phobias, as well as Separation Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She often treats depression in her clinical practice, as well as working on stress management, stress in the workplace, and increasing fulfillment and satisfaction with life, especially after recovery from anxiety or depression. Dr. Welch received her BA at Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she majored in psychology. Prior to completing her Ph.D in clinical psychology, Dr. Welch was active in research on self-esteem in children, and received a Ford Foundation grant focused on children’s mental health within the LA School System. She worked on several federally funded research projects at the UCLA Medical Center, and also served as a school counselor in a K-8 school. Dr. Welch completed her doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Washington, and was later at the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program at Emory University School of Medicine. She now directs the ASRC, and also works as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. She collaborates on a large study on treatment of anxiety disorders in primary care settings (the Coordinated Anxiety Learning and Management, or “CALM” study) that includes multiple internationally known experts in anxiety disorders. Dr. Welch enjoys seeing children, adolescents and adults at the ASRC. She is a member of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America and the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, the Trichotillomania Learning Center, and the American Assocation for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. She supervises, lectures, and trains other mental health specialists regularly.
Peter Roy-Byrne, MD
Dr. Roy-Byrne is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine. After graduating from Vassar College, he attended Tufts Medical School, completed a residency at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, and spent four years at the NIMH Intramural Research Program, before coming to the University of Washington in 1986. His initial research focused on the phenomenology and neurobiology of mood and anxiety disorders, with a special interest in benzodiazepine tranquilizers and the role of the benzodiazepine receptor in mood and anxiety disorders. He also conducted numerous clinical medication trials for depression and anxiety disorders. He has spent the last decade planning and coordinating two large multi-site trials funded by the NIMH focused on the delivery of evidence based behavioral and pharmacologic treatments in primary care for multiple anxiety disorders. He currently has a similar large effectiveness trial funded by NIDA examining brief interventions for problem drug abuse in primary care.
His published and funded work has emphasized issues of co-morbidity, particularly the intersection of depression and anxiety with each other, and with addictive disorders and medical illness. He recently stepped down after 18 years as Department Vice-Chair and Chief of Psychiatry at the University’s Harborview Medical Center, where he developed expertise in assessing and measuring quality of care, and understanding the intersection of health services research and health care policy. He currently divides his time between work on three funded treatment intervention and dissemination studies and the private practice of ambulatory psychiatry, with a focus on complex and treatment resistant cases of depression and anxiety. He is Past President of the Society for Biological Psychiatry, Editor in Chief of Depression and Anxiety, Editor in Chief of Journal Watch Psychiatry, co-Editor in Chief of UpToDate Psychiatry, and the author of over 300 peer review articles and book chapters.
Donald G. Schoen
Donald G. Schoen, West Des Moines, IA, has a natural entrepreneurial style, which has pushed him to excel in the growth and management of several businesses in multiple industries. Don began his business career in 1975 as an Audiologist. He then moved into the soft serve yogurt business as his first business venture in 1977. He later moved back to Des Moines to manage the family owned supermarket business. While involved in the supermarket industry, he perceived a need to automate inventory control and started a software company called Retail Management Systems (RMS) in 1984. RMS rose to Inc. 500 status and Don was chosen in 1992 as Emerging Business Entrepreneur of the Year for Iowa and Nebraska. Don sold the company shortly thereafter and worked for 3 years with Telxon, an RMS hardware partner and leader in inventory collection hardware. Don was responsible for strategic planning and business development through the Telxon dealer/reseller network during his employment.
In 1995, Don met a doctor who was developing an electronic charting system and the two began working together and eventually formed MediNotes Corporation. MediNotes had established key strategic alliances with major industry players including: Per-Se, McKesson, Cerner, Fujitsu, Motion Computing, Allscripts, Quest Laboratories and LabCorp Laboratories. Since 1995 MediNotes has installed software in over 5,000 medical clinics and services more than 25,000 users nationwide. Don has received the Sybase Innovator award, been selected as a Computerworld Honor Laureate award twice. Don was once again awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year award by Ernst and Young in 2004 and MediNotes Corporation was selected for the Inc. 500 status in both 2005 and 2006. The company has been on the Inc 5,000 list for 2007. In 2008, Don raised $4.4 million in venture funding to purchase another Electronic Health Record company to advance MediNotes, using this product as the next generation for their clients. Within 8 weeks of the purchase, MediNotes was approached by Eclipsys Corporation (which was bought by Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (MDRX)(August 2010) with an interest to purchase. In October 2008 a deal was consummated and Don moved into two different job roles with the new company until leaving Eclipsys in July of 2009.
In March 2007, the Technology Association of Iowa bestowed MediNotes with two of its highest honors, Technology Company of the Year and naming Don CEO of the Year, a distinction he received again in 2008. In addition, MediNotes received national recognition when the company was named to the Red Herring 100, an annual listing of the top 100 privately held technology companies, and the Healthcare Informatics 100, a listing of the top health IT providers in the country.
He holds a BA degree from Northwestern University and a Masters of Science Degree from Michigan State University. Don is one of the founding members of the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association and has represented the organization as Chairman from November 2006 until July 2008. He also has served on the Advisory Committee of HL7 which is a healthcare standards organization as well as sitting on technology company boards. Don currently sits on two boards at the University of Iowa, one within the Marketing area and the other in the Entrepreneurial area. He is currently a Board member in the Technology Association of Iowa (TAI) and recently was the interim CEO for Palisade Systems, a Data Leakage Protection and web filtering company. Don currently sits on Palisade’s board. In 2010, Don started BuyerCompass, a new technology company focused on enabling others to be more efficient, save money and lead healthier lives with a focus on the grocery and healthcare areas.
Lori Simon, MD
Dr. Simon has a rather unique combination of experiences, first as a software developer and now as a user of EHR software. After obtaining a BS in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, she worked in the computer field for the next 18 years, including the first 2 years of medical school. The last 13 years were spent working for IBM. She began as a computer programmer and progressed to become a systems analyst/project leader responsible for the development and implementation of a variety of different software applications. She also assisted with the implementation of IBM’s Patient Care System (PCS) in Stony Brook University Hospital shortly before it opened. As her interest in medicine grew, she began working as a health industry specialist/systems engineer providing technical support to IBM’s healthcare accounts in New York City. Her primary account was Columbia University Medical Center’s Department of Bioinformatics where she was heavily involved in the contract the department had with IBM to develop a clinical decision support system. During that time, she was also a relational database specialist and developed a strategy for the use of speech recognition in healthcare. She taught systems analyst as an adjunct professor at New York University and spent 10 weeks studying advanced computer science topics within IBM’s highly competitive Systems Research Institute (SRI). Her focus was on Artificial Intelligence and she received 12 graduate credits in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Binghamton for these studies.
After graduating from Robert Wood Johnson medical school, Dr. Simon pursued her residency in Psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital – Cornell/Payne Whitney Clinic. During medical school and residency, she spent 4 years serving as the American Medical Informatics Association’s first Student Working Group chairperson. She also spent two years as the Area II (New York State) representative to the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Committee on Residents and Fellows.
Since graduating from residency, Dr. Simon has worked in a variety of clinical settings, including a psychiatry ER, inpatient units doing consultation/liaison, and various sites providing direct care to the homeless. During that time, she has maintained a solo private practice in both New York City and northern New Jersey providing both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. She is board certified in both adult psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine and on the voluntary faculty of New York Presbyterian Hospital – Cornell where she teaches psychiatry to second year medical students. In 2010, she served as a “super user”, assisting with the implementation of the EPIC EHR in Hackensack University Medical Center.
Dr. Simon is committed to using her experiences in both the computer and psychiatry fields to further the optimal use of computers in healthcare, particularly psychiatry. She is currently a member of the APA’s EHR Committee.