Abacus Insights Recruits Top Healthcare Leader as Chief Product and Strategy Officer

Abacus Insights, the leader in data usability for U.S. healthcare payers, is pleased to announce that it has added John Pyhtila, Ph.D., to its management team as Chief Product and Strategy Officer. In this role, Pyhtila will report to Abacus Insights Founder and CEO Minal Patel, MD, and focus his experience on growing Abacus Insights’ leadership in data usability through developing and implementing new strategies, services and products that deliver maximum client value.

“With his unmatched data and analytics expertise, John is a key addition to our senior executive team as we manage fast growth while continuing to build out our leading-edge capabilities and products,” said Patel. “At Innovaccer, Mass General Brigham, and Cigna, he transformed enterprise data, analytics and infrastructure to drive growth and innovation, improve care and patient experience, and reduce healthcare costs.”

Managing data for more than 21 million health-plan members, Abacus Insights is a healthcare technology innovator with the only data transformation platform and data solutions built specifically for payers. With 60% lower TCO and expedited time-to-value in 4 to 6 months, Abacus Insights’ HITRUST r2-certified and SOC2-certified platform and solutions are scalable, compliant, and secure.

“With its visionary focus on making healthcare data usable, Abacus Insights is on the front lines of driving fundamental change and removing the major barrier to improving quality, equity, experience, affordability and outcomes,” said Pyhtila. “By making data accurate, complete, timely, relevant, versatile and use case and application agnostic, Abacus is setting the new standard in healthcare data. I share the Abacus team’s passion for making usable data universal so we can transform individual organizations as well as the U.S. health system at scale.”

Enhancing ROI
Most recently, Pyhtila was Vice President and Chief Analytics Officer for Innovaccer. He was recruited to scale analytic product development across provider, payer and life sciences market segments. He set the vision, organization structure and operational plan to improve data quality and increase both the company’s and clients’ analytics ROI.

Bolstering the bottom line
At Mass General Brigham, Pyhtila served as the first Chief Data and Analytics Officer where his leadership in developing a cloud-based enterprise data and analytics platform and building a 200-person, systemwide data, analytics and reporting team drove key advances in patient care and operational strength through business intelligence. Accomplishments included enabling the capture of $150 million in incremental point-of-service revenue annually and $12 million in annual incremental earnings through improved operating capacity and patient volume management.

Solving business challenges
As head of analytics for Cigna, Pyhtila led a 75-person advanced data science team that worked with business units to identify and deliver $100 million+ in value annually through better member engagement, lower employee healthcare spend, reduced operational costs and increased revenue. The analytics team’s insights saved Cigna’s large-employer clients millions of dollars in annual healthcare costs through improved patient management and benefit structures.

Pyhtila also held several senior management positions at Verscend, including president of the Enterprise Analytics division. He was a McKinsey & Company manager for several years and started his career as a hardware engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Pyhtila holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Duke University, a master’s in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Michigan State University.

About Abacus Insights

Abacus Insights, the leader in data usability for U.S. healthcare payers, is pleased to announce that it has added John Pyhtila, Ph.D., to its management team as Chief Product and Strategy Officeris a healthcare technology leader with the only data transformation platform and solutions built specifically for health plans. Focused on data quality and usefulness, Abacus Insights gives payers a new level of control and flexibility with their data by developing accurate, timely, and robust ecosystems that can support any analytics or other applications. Managing data for 21 million members, Abacus Insights partners with payers to deliver scalable solutions that drive strategic initiatives, control costs, and improve member lives and experiences.

Media Contact:
Lois Padovani