CARMEL, IN, June 11, 2020-Illuminate Health, a digital health assistant platform designed to help people live healthier, today announced the addition of three established healthcare executives to the company’s advisory board. Ben Laymen, Lori McLean and Sean Handel bring to the role extensive operational as well as healthcare product strategy and development experience. The executives come to the position at a pivotal time for the organization as Illuminate Health looks to further optimize its value to both end users and those making purchasing decisions as the landscape of healthcare shifts to virtual offerings amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. .

Illuminate Health is an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-powered digital health assistant designed to help people live healthier lives. The offering is comprised of Med Guide, a digital platform to enable daily self-care tasks and routine including medication adherence, and Recovery Coach, a mobile offering to support patients dealing with Substance Abuse Disorders (SUD). The new advisors will collaborate closely with Illuminate Health CEO Varun Goyal and his team as they expand and execute on the company’s strategy for improving health literacy and helping people live healthier.

“We are honored that high caliber healthcare executives like Ben, Lori and Sean have recognized the capability of the Illuminate Health team, and are confident in our vision and strategy for enhancing the quality of patient health, while generating value for the greater healthcare ecosystem,” said Varun Goyal, CEO of Illuminate Health. “We look forward to leveraging their extensive experience as we scale both the reach and impact of our Med Guide and Recovery Coach offerings.”

Ben Layman is a successful integrated healthcare executive with over 16 years of experience in hospital and clinic operations. He most recently served as the president of SSM Health-St. Mary’s Hospital in Janesville, WI. Before joining SSM Health, Layman worked at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI where he was the chief operating officer.

“Illuminate Health is focused on solving one of the most wicked problems in healthcare today through easy to use technology that dramatically improves the communication between patients and their doctors, while simultaneously increasing the efficacy of team-based care,” explains Ben Layman. “Throughout my career, I’ve focused on building high performing multidisciplinary teams that deliver transformational outcomes to improve the health of all we serve. I see a similar focus and drive with the Illuminate Health team and look forward to helping to bring this leading technology to those who can most benefit from its use.”

For the last 20 years, Lori McLean has been building businesses internationally across high tech, healthcare and cloud solutions. Her proven track record of driving growth and peak performance spans start-up and mature environments. Most recently as CEO, Lori led healthcare software startup Polyglot from investment roadshow through to exit, providing significant shareholder return.

“Patients’ inability to understand their medication instructions has the potential to cause unnecessary hospitalizations, nursing home admissions and significantly increased healthcare costs. The need for help is serious,” said Lori McLean. “Having led similar innovation driven initiatives Illuminate Health’s patient-first approach is exciting. I am thrilled to support the company’s evolution as they seek to reach even more patients in the future.”

Sean Handel is a product strategy and development executive who has deep experience building the leading digital health solutions including Proteus Digital Health and Epocrates. He has spent extensive time working in the intersection of healthcare providers, payers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device companies and specialty pharmacies, having built and launched products that serve all of these constituencies.

“I am very excited to be joining the Illuminate Health team as an advisor and to have the opportunity to help the team move into its next stage of development,” said Sean Handel. “Illuminate provides a differentiated patient-centered approach to medication adherence with an emphasis on facilitating critical communications between patients and clinicians. I will be leveraging my background in medication adherence and digital health technologies to help further develop the product and commercial strategies.