Our Story

The journey towards Carenostics began for the father-son team of Bharat and Kanishka Rao after the unfortunate loss of a close relative; Kanishka's grandfather passed away from Kidney Disease, but he was not aware he had CKD until his kidneys had already failed. By the time he became aware of the condition, most interventions were no longer effective and his kidney function was irreversibly lost.

They were shocked to find out how common this story is: 33 million Americans are living with undiagnosed CKD, many of which do not become aware until the disease has progressed too far for most effective treatments. The outcomes are even worse for Black & African Americans, who are four times more likely to have kidney failure than their White counterparts. Despite these staggering statistics, the majority of healthcare investment and innovation remains focused on late-stage, already-sick patients, rather than preventative care for early-stage patients.

Leveraging Bharat's 25+ years of experience pioneering the application of AI to healthcare challenges, Bharat and Kanishka founded Carenostics with the goal of tackling the underdiagnosis, undertreatment, and health inequities of chronic disease. Their vision is to transform healthcare into a data-driven paradigm where readily-available patient data is leveraged to make personalized patient recommendations for diagnostic and therapy decisions - to ultimately improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.

To achieve these goals, Carenostics has assembled a world-class team of innovators, builders, and researchers with a proven track record of applying AI and ML to solve healthcare problems. Their decades of experience have afforded them broad expertise across healthcare data interoperability & privacy, bias-adjusted machine learning, AI explainability, and clinical research & adoption. Every member of the Carenostics team shares a common passion for improving the lives of millions of chronic disease patients while addressing the inequities in healthcare today.

Our Team

Bharat Rao, PhD
Co-Founder & CEO

Dr. Rao has been a global leader in Healthcare AI for 25+ years. He has launched 20+ healthcare AI solutions that have been deployed at 300+ health systems, improved care for 10M+ patients, and generated $5B+ in revenue. He previously led Healthcare AI for Siemens and KPMG’s US Healthcare & Life Sciences Analytics practice. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has published 150+ peer-reviewed publications and has been awarded 60+ patents for his healthcare AI innovations.

Kanishka Rao, MS
Co-Founder & COO

Kanishka is a healthtech innovator & strategist who founded and led McKinsey’s US Healthcare Startups practice. His expertise spans growth strategy, GTM, digital health, digital strategy, new product design, AI and healthcare analytics. He holds a BA and MS in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BS in Management, Entrepreneurship and Innovation from The Wharton School.

William Landi, PhD
Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Landi has been a technical manager and executive for 20+ years, with expertise developing award-winning healthcare ML platforms and integrating them with 10+ different EHRs. He was formerly a Senior Director at Cerner & Siemens Healthcare, and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Rutgers University.

Prof. Rayid Ghani
Chief Analytics Officer

Prof. Ghani is a pioneer in deploying bias-adjusted machine learning to solve healthcare, education, and public safety problems in a fair and equitable way. He is a world-renowned expert in AI, ML explainability and bias/fairness/equity. He is a Distinguished Professor of Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University, and previously served as Chief Scientist for President Obama's 2012 Campaign.

Karl Rexer, PhD
Chief Strategist

Dr. Rexer has 20+ years leading analytics teams to solve problems for Fortune 500 companies. In 2011 LinkedIn identified Karl in the #1 position in their inaugural list of “Top Predictive Analytics Professionals”. His expertise includes analytic strategy & leadership, predictive modeling, statistics, data mining, direct marketing, CRM, and market research. He holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Connecticut.

Michael Greenberg, MS
Principal Architect

Mike has spent 30+ years architecting & engineering healthtech solutions that have been deployed at hundreds of health systems around the world. An expert in scalable software and database design, he previously worked in leadership roles in software development, engineering, and architecture at Healthtech and Cybersecurity multinationals. He holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Massachutsetts, Amherst.

Michael Kamp, PhD
Principal Data Scientist

Dr. Kamp has spent more than 10 years as a data scientist and software engineer for healthcare problems. He leads the Trustworthy Machine Learning research group at the Institute for AI in Medicine, University Klinik Essen, that focusses on theoretically sound (federated) learning & explainable models for healthcare. Dr. Kamp holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Bonn.

Andrew Russo, MBA
Data Scientist

Andy has 30+ years of experience developing machine learning models to support executive decision-making, including healthcare companies Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bradford Health, Humana, Change Health, Pilgrim Health and MediFast. He twice led teams to top 10 finishes in the global DMA/Hearst Predictive Modelling Challenge. Andy holds an MBA from Babson College, and serves on the Babson Alumni Board.

Amr Abourayya, MS
ML Research Fellow

Amr has 5+ years of experience in AI and mathematics research. He has developed novel approaches for privacy-preserving federated learning in healthcare. Amr holds MS degrees in both Mathematics Modelling and Technical Mathematics, and is currently pursuing his PhD in Computer Science at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (IKIM).

Soleil Valentin, MS
Chief of Staff

Soleil is a strategy and operations consultant with 4+ years of experience developing growth, product launch, and GTM strategies for both entrepreneurial ventures and Fortune 500 companies. She holds a Master's degree in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Chhayank Jain
Junior Data Scientist

Chhayank is a data scientist with experience building end-to-end data science workflows across the healthcare domain. He previously used his data science skills to predict public health problems such as malnutrition and pregnancy risk at Novartis & Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion. He is currently completing his MS in Computer Science from Arizona State University.

Advisors

Prof. Srinivas Devadas
Security Advisor

Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT

Prof. Erman Ayday
Privacy Advisor

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Case Western Reserve University

Michele Leonelli, JD
General Counsel

Attorney specializing in startups at Phocus Law