Sermo, the Cambridge, MA-based provider of an online community of physicians, announced today that it has hired Tim Davenport as its new CEO. Davenport is the former president of Revolution Health, the consumer health website launched by AOL founder Steve Case and later merged with Everyday Health. Davenport also has experience as former CEO of two public software companies, Vastera and Best Software
Earlier this year, Sermo founder and CEO Daniel Palestrant revealed he had left the company to start a new health-focused Web company, called par8o, alongside Sermo chief medical officer Adam Sharp. The new company, focused on improving the medical referral system, started as a project within Sermo. At the time Palestrant’s departure was revealed, Sermo chief operating officer Rich Westelman was running the day-to-day operations at Sermo with the help of other executives, according to a company spokesman.
Sermo also announced today that it has formed a new partnership that merges online education tools and resources from the Joslin Diabetes Center with its online physician community, used for crowdsourcing and market research. Sermo reports and surveys will be distributed to the Joslin community and new content will be developed by the two parties, as part of the partnership.
In the last year, Sermo has also expanded its revenue model to allow pharma companies and the like to pay for sponsorship and premium content on the Sermo platform, the Sermo spokesman said in January. This could include offering detailed information about a new drug that might be of interest to the physician community. The company originally set out with the model of offering financial services firms paid access to doctors in the online community, but later shifted to focus on pharma, medical device firms, and other healthcare companies as customers. Last summer Sermo rolled out a mobile application that enables doctors to consult remotely on patient findings with other physicians in Sermo’s community.
