VitalSims is a company that promotes and advances best practices through the latest technologies in healthcare education. Our management team is dedicated to delivering simulation-based learning programs that are engaging and cost-effective.
Management Team
VitalSims combines accomplished game developers and healthcare professionals to create an exciting and bold new direction for active-play video games and learning.
Chris Duncan
CEO , Director
Chris has over 25 years in startup and business management experience including CEO of QuickStep Games, a developer of active play video games; Managing Partner for Ice Studios, a new media video production house; and former President of Dexxon Capital Corp., a business finance company.
Don Gerhardt
Chairman
Don Gerhardt is former President and CEO of Lifescience Alley, an internationally recognized trade organization serving the medical and life science fields. He has more than 30 years in high level positions within health care organizations including CEO of MedCenters HealthPlan.
Kathleen Ziegler, RN, BSN, MHA
VP, ClinicalCare
Kathleen has over 20 years of diverse evidence based clinical healthcare knowledge that spans disease states within the healthcare continuum. Kathleen has served in a variety of hospital clinical administration roles at Spectrum Health, Pfizer Inc., Herman Miller Healthcare, and an Army veteran serving as a Captain in the Army Nurse Corps. Kathleen is completing her Doctorate of Health Administration with doctorial research in the area of Patient Safety and Quality Improvement.
Chris Boxmeyer
Director, Product Development
Chris Boxmeyer has been producing video games for major game publishers since 1994. For the past five years, he was a producer at Big Island Publishing having worked on numerous hit titles such as Bass Pro Shops’ Trophy Hunter and Bass Pro Shops’ Trophy Bass video games. He was also the producer on such titles as Diner Dash (#1 hit casual game), Survivor and Fear Factor (games based on hit TV series).
Tony Chiodo
Director of Product Development
Tony Chiodo is an enthusiastic, award-winning, 20+year veteran of the video and computer games industry. He has extensive experience managing internal and external development teams. Prior to VitalSims, he was a Director of Product Development for Destineer Games, a large multi-product game development company and a developer with Microsoft Games with software development partners worldwide, licensors, and high-caliber professional athletes.
Rudy Mazzocchi
Advisor
Rudy Mazzocchi founder or director roles at numerous start-up medical companies including Vascular Science (acquired by St. Jude Medical), CytoGenesis, and Thermonix (acquired by Triton BioSystems). Also CEO of NovaVision Inc., Managing Director with Accutive Medical Ventures and The Innovation Factory and as co-founder and CEO of Image-Guided NEUROLOGICS.
Board members
Chris Duncan
CEO , Director
Chris has over 25 years in startup and business management experience including CEO of QuickStep Games, a developer of active play video games; Managing Partner for Ice Studios, a new media video production house; and former President of Dexxon Capital Corp., a business finance company.
Don Gerhardt
Chairman
Don is former President and CEO of Lifescience Alley, an internationally recognized trade organization serving the medical and life science fields. He has more than 30 years in high level positions within health care organizations including CEO of MedCenters HealthPlan.
Mark Wrightsman
Director
Mark has served as president and chief executive officer of PaR Systems since 1999. PaR Systems provides specialized material handling and automation equipment to many diverse industries, including aerospace, defense, Department of Energy, food and beverage, government, hazardous material management and industrial manufacturing. Prior to joining PaR, he led five other very technical businesses, including two global businesses of more than $300 million in annual revenues. Mark began his career at General Electric and served there in various engineering, product management, account management and business leadership assignments. Before joining PaR, he led Unisys Corporation’s 1,500-person European organization of finance, human resources, legal, procurement, information systems and facilities shared services, and previously also led a business for SPX Corporation.
Andrew Nelson
Director
Andrew is Executive Director of Research for HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research, has provided leadership for this nonprofit, medical/ health care research organization since 1990. Mr. Nelson also serves as a corporate officer for HealthPartners, Inc. HealthPartners is an integrated health delivery system servicing over one-million people in Minnesota.
Dr. JoAnn Sperl-Hillen
Director
JoAnn is a board certified internist and senior investigator at HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research in Minneapolis, MN and co- director of The Institute’s Center for Chronic Care Innovation. Her primary area of interest is research and quality improvement to improve the care of people with diabetes and chronic disease. Dr. Sperl-Hillen is a current work group member of the Minnesota Diabetes ICSI Guideline and co-author for the BMJ Epocrates resource for type 2 diabetes.
Dr. James Woodburn
Director
James is currently a Director and Chief Medical Officer for Applied Pathways, LLC based in Schaumberg, IL. Applied Pathways provides an end-to-end development environment that enables healthcare organizations to import existing knowledge bases and manage and deploy business processes. Prior he was Vice President of Clinical Initiatives for United Health Group and OptumHealth where he helped create and lead the TeleMedicine ConnectedCare enterprise.