We are pleased to announce that Neil Ray, MD, MMCi, has been appointed the associate vice chair for business development, effective December 1st.
In this new role, Dr. Ray will be responsible for identifying, growing and optimizing business opportunities for the department (i.e. diversifying departmental revenue streams). He will also be responsible for establishing robotic process automation in areas such as finance, human resources and credentialing; incorporating machine learning into the business practices of the department; and exploring payor partnerships.
“I’m excited to work with department leadership and faculty to strategically grow opportunities that will benefit not only our department, but also individual faculty,” says Dr. Ray, assistant professor of anesthesiology. “I believe successful innovations come from all of us and hope to realize the wealth of talent available in our department. I’m particularly interested in combining my interests in analytics, technology and business to help advance our collective vision and mission.”
Dr. Ray received his medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He went on to complete his anesthesiology residency at the University of California San Francisco and a fellowship in pain management at Stanford University. After joining Duke Anesthesiology faculty, Dr. Ray earned advanced degrees in Master of Management in Clinical Informatics from Duke and Machine Learning in Business Executive Program from MIT. Dr. Ray is also finishing an MBA with concentrations in finance and business analytics from North Carolina State University and is a member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association.
Dr. Ray is a member of the Orthopaedics, Plastics and Regional Anesthesiology Division and is a physician who specializes in integrating the worlds of clinical care, business/finance, and technology/informatics to innovatively solve health care issues and deliver measurable results. He plays a key departmental role in financial and operational modeling during the assessment of new sites of service. Dr. Ray also has years of experience in evaluating, implementing and managing both clinical and business innovation technology, including the launch of our department’s conversational artificial intelligence (AI) embedded on the Duke Anesthesiology website – successfully used as a recruitment tool for our department’s training programs. Dr. Ray was instrumental in bringing together multiple stakeholders for this AI project, which has now expanded to be a core component of Duke Digital Health’s strategic plan. He also serves as the chief innovation and technology officer for the PDC. In this role, he is pursuing opportunities to unify stakeholders in revamping and improving the patient and employee experience through more timely measurement and action.
Since joining Duke in 2015, Dr. Ray has been an active member of several committees and organizations, including the PDC Retirement, PDC Medical Leadership, Duke Clinical Enterprise Strategic Planning, and Duke Enterprise Wide Clinical Strategy committees.
Please join us in thanking Dr. Ray for his leadership and congratulating him on his new role in our department.