Why We Started Tuva Health
We’ve spent the last decade working in healthcare data science solving the messy healthcare data problem within our own teams. In the last 6 months, we’ve talked with roughly 40 companies and what is clear is that every organization is solving the messy healthcare data problem in their own way. We are excited to solve this problem for all organizations and unlock the true potential of healthcare data.
Our Founders
Coco (Jorge) Zuloaga
Co-founder
Coco has spent his career focused on healthcare data science, most recently serving as Head of Data Science for Strive Health where he oversaw all machine learning for the company. He has developed deep healthcare domain knowledge by working with a wide range of healthcare data sources and formats to power use cases from informing patient care delivery to population health. Prior to Strive Health, Coco served as Head of Data Science for Big Squid, an early-stage VC-backed machine learning company. Earlier he served in lead data scientist roles at both Health Catalyst and Alliance Health.
Coco received his masters in mathematics from the University of Waterloo in Canada and his PhD in computational physics from Rice University in Houston, TX. Following his graduate work, he joined the faculty at Rice University where he taught and conducted research.
Aaron Neiderhiser
Co-founder
Aaron has spent his entire career focused on healthcare analytics and data strategy, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Technology for Health Catalyst. At Health Catalyst he was responsible for Touchstone – a data warehouse with granular health data on over 150M patients. Aaron led the overall vision and strategy for Touchstone and oversaw data engineering and data science teams to produce novel data products, including Health Catalyst’s suite of patient-level benchmarking and risk adjustment products, as well as the COVID-19 patient registry and resulting real-world evidence studies.
Prior to Health Catalyst, Aaron worked for Colorado Medicaid where he led advanced analytics and helped develop the vision for the Business Intelligence and Data Management (BIDM) platform, a massive data warehouse with comprehensive claims, clinical, and social determinants data on every Medicaid enrollee in the state.
Aaron completed his graduate degree in economics at the University of Colorado Denver, specializing in statistical methods of causality.
OUR INSPIRATION
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century, working on the Manhattan Project and receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum mechanics. His goal of reaching the former Soviet Union country of Tuva before his death (chronicled in the book Tuva or Bust) is an allegory for Feynman’s life and values.
Feynman had a unique way of teaching (see the Feynman Technique) and living life, and especially practiced the following values:
Be intellectually honest
Seek the truth
Be endlessly curious
Have fun
We strive to follow these values in our daily lives and believe they hold the key to building a world-class team and organization.