eCaring

History

eCaring was started by family members responsible for coordinating and planning 24 hour home care for their elderly parents. Responding to the difficulties and challenges of providing such care, they reached out to find the best professional and practical expertise of care-industry professionals. In doing so, they created  eCaring.  Since then, they have been joined by top professionals in health care, the Internet, finance and other critical sectors.

Management

Robert M. Herzog, Founder and CEO
Robert M. Herzog has extensive experience founding and managing companies. As a consultant, he has  provided marketing, financial and business development services.  He has worked with technology, media and communications companies,  developing new ventures and Internet initiatives, and has extensive operating experience through holding senior management positions in a variety of companies.  He has provided strategic planning, merger and acquisition, Internet strategy, multi-media development, marketing, and other business development services to numerous companies.  His clients have included: Motionbox, as acting CFO; City Winery, as head of finance and business affairs; Cahners Publishing, R. R. Bowker, The David Sarnoff Research Center, Interactive Video Technologies, (IVT), Sensar, IPnetwork, and The on2 Corp.

Mr. Herzog has been a pioneer in applying new technologies to business ventures, in interactive media, digital TV, intellectual property services, content development, niche media opportunities, and technology commercialization.  Mr. Herzog was acting CEO of IPnetwork, and founded and was CEO of several companies which built advanced environmental and energy facilities. Mr. Herzog was Director of the New York City Energy Office, where he analyzed over $3 billion of energy projects and created through public referendum the NYC Public Utility Service. He was formerly an officer with the Chase Manhattan Bank, where he assessed new lending opportunities and markets in energy, urban economies and housing.  Mr. Herzog graduated from Williams College, and has a Masters from the New School for Social Research.

George Kalkines, co-Founder
George Kalkines is one of the leading health care players in New York State.  He is a partner at Manatt, Phelps and Phillips.  His expertise focuses on all aspects of health care law, including corporate organization, regulatory compliance, finance and reimbursement, physician and faculty practice arrangements, capital financing, labor relations, collective bargaining, and medical/legal issues.  Mr. Kalkines has substantial experience in: representing financially distressed institutions and assisting in the planning, financing and construction of health care facilities; strategic planning and network development; financial turnarounds, planning and implementation including pre and post bankruptcy restructurings.

Mr. Kalkines serves as general or special counsel to voluntary, public and proprietary health care providers, including academic medical centers, acute and specialty care hospitals, nursing homes, faculty practice plans and ambulatory care organizations.  He was a member of the Special Mayoral Task relating to the restructuring of NYC’s public hospital system, leading to the creation and implementation of the NYC Health and Hospital Corp., where he subsequently served as Secretary and General Counsel.  Mr. Kalkines has organized and led a number of legislative initiatives to enhance provider reimbursement and to establish special capital financing programs for financially distressed institutions.

Stuart Hunt, Chief Technology Office
Stuart Hunt has overseen all technical development for the Company, including the design of eCaring’s services, their integration with databases, online development, and the Web site functions. Mr. Hunt has extensive experience in Web site, Database and Interactive Media Development, Computer and Network Management, and writing, research and desktop publishing.  His skills include: Web server administration, database design and administration, multimedia, online, website, CD-ROM and DVD authoring, interface design, and digital audio/video editing and compression.  Mr. Hunt’s clients have included: Reuters Health; the NBA; ABC News; The Smithsonian (award winning CD-ROM); Sotheby’s Auction House; IBM; AT&T; OnHealth.com; Pfizer; NYU’s Stern School of Business, the Internet Shopping Network; Scholastic; and numerous others.  Mr. Hunt graduated from Williams College, and has a Master’s from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Board of Advisors

Dr. Holly Atkinson
Chief of Medical Affairs HealthiNation; Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Medicine and Co-Director of the Advancing Idealism in Medicine Program, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine; Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Weill Medical College, Cornell University; created Reuters health Information; chairwoman, ivillage Health Initiatives; Past President, Physicians for Human Rights, a non-profit human rights organization.

Charles Pendola
Charles J. Pendola has spent nearly forty years in the health care industry in various capacities.  In 1989, he founded and was President and CEO of the Preferred Health Network (PHN), which owned or managed five hospitals and fifteen ambulatory care centers throughout the metropolitan New York area.  In 1996 PHN was merged into the then New York Cornell Health Care System.  Following that merger Charles became the President of First Medical Group and was involved in their becoming a public company in 1997.  Mr. Pendola began his career as an accountant and eventually merged his firm into Touche Ross, where he was a partner and the national director of health care reimbursement.Since 1997 Mr. Pendola has provided interim executive management and consultative services to a variety of entities in the investment banking, consulting, insurance and legal fields, including serving as EVP for Multi-Plan, the nation’s largest healthcare network, and President for DLJ Managed Plans Corporation .  He has also served on the board of both public and not-for-profit entities.  Mr. Pendola is both a CPA and an attorney who holds specialty designations from five distinct professional groups.

Lois Drapin
Lois Drapin founded Drapin & Co., her strategic and business advisory firm based in New York for companies and investors in the pharmaceutical, technology, and health sectors. Her experience in health is robust and leading edge, and spans both consumer-focused and physician-centric perspectives. Previously, she was the cofounder of OriginalThought LLC, a consulting firm focused on the consumer and consumer experience in health, technology, and financial services. Lois works with the CEOs and senior executives for clients in the pharmaceutical, data and business information, medical education, health insurance, drug sampling, remote patient monitoring, health and baby boomer segment, and search and social media sectors. She has served in both entrepreneurial roles and intrapreneurial roles. In addition to her consulting companies, Lois Drapin has developed several start-ups over her 30-year career in health and technology including a deep consumer insight company measuring emotion in health care purchasing and decision making;  an office-based physicians’ dispensing company; and an end-stage renal disease company.  She founded the Market Innovation team for Wyeth in 1995 where she pioneered the use of patient longitudinal data and led new marketing initiatives.  She was an embedded consultant to eJNJ LLC, a J&J innovation division that focused on enabling technology across J&J’s 200+ companies. Additionally, she held senior executive positions at Synetic, CareInsight, Medical Manager, and ultimately served as the senior vice president of strategic development for WebMD upon acquisition. In 2004, she cofounded Healthcare Unbound, the first Center for Business Innovation’s National Summit and Exhibition series on remote monitoring.In addition to e-Caring, Lois holds advisory board roles for WEGO Health and ThirdAge Media.

Josh Grotstein
Josh Grotstein has over 24 years experience and deep subject-matter expertise as a senior digital media and marketing executive and as an investor in digital media and technology companies.  He is currently CEO of Motionbox.com, the leading Internet personal video company, and was formerly SVP for global e-commerce for Citibank.  He has worked for Fortune 500’s (NBC Online Ventures, Citigroup, WPP/J. Walter Thompson), mid-stage/”growth” companies (CNBC, Prodigy) and early-stage ventures (Motionbox, SAS Investors and the latter’s portfolio of seed-stage technology companies).

Mr. Grotstein also has significant marketing and business development experience across various technology and communication sectors, working at CNBC and J. Walter Thompson (where he worked on the Warner-Lambert and Kodak Healthcare businesses, among others) and at McKinsey, including serving on the Board of Directors of American Medical Television, a joint venture of the AMA and NBC.

Over the past two years, he has sat on five boards through SAS Investors, which he co-founded, and has served as a co-Founder of Bonnie Fuller Media, consulting with Fortune 500 media companies, and has worked with the World Science Festival to establish its media partnerships (which currently include Discovery Networks, Scientific American, Scholastic, WNYC, WABC, and ABC News).