Matt Oefinger, PhD

Matt offers more than two decades of executive leadership in technology organizations, he is passionate about the development of medical technologies and data solutions that improve the lives of patients. As Chief Data and Technology Officer, he will oversee numerous aspects of engineering, data science, analytics, AI, IT, and security. His career began as founder and CEO of his own company, which utilized AI to predict heart attacks. He founded his company while a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Master’s and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a specialization in Biomedical Engineering, and where he was elected a Presidential Fellow. Upon sale of his company, Dr. Oefinger joined Watermark Medical, where he served as Chief Technology Officer and led the development of the first-ever web-based, in-the-home sleep apnea diagnostic platform. Watermark Medical ultimately merged with SleepMed, whose combined platforms process hundreds of thousands of studies annually. Later, at OZ Systems in his capacity as Chief Technology Officer, he led the design and build of a bedside technology used to screen newborns for critical congenital heart disease using noninvasive pulse oximetry, and this technology became a foundational screening tool in numerous hospitals’ neonatal units. OZ Systems was later acquired by PerkinElmer. Oefinger subsequently joined Adeptus Health and successfully executed a complete digital transformation across nearly one hundred emergency room units, leading from an entirely paper-based medical environment to a fully digital paperless environment. When Deerfield Management, a private equity firm, later acquired Adeptus Health, he was promoted to be the company’s first Chief Analytics Officer, tasked with building a data-driven technology environment and culture. So successful was his tenure as Chief Analytics Officer at Adeptus that Deerfield asked him to join the firm in New York to serve as its first Chief Analytics Officer. During his five years at Deerfield, he built a team of data scientists and engineers whose contributions have become an integral part of the investment decision-making process in Deerfield’s healthcare portfolio. Prior to joining Podimetrics, Oefinger served as Chief Data Scientist for Ahara corporation, a personalized and precision nutrition company utilizing data science and AI to create customized and personalized nutrition recommendations. During his time there, he led the design and build of foundational technologies and data science solutions that have moved the company from its infant start-up state to a data literate and data-centric organization.