Stefanos A. Zenios
Charles A. Holloway Professor of Operations, Information,
and Technology and Professor of Health Care Management
BA, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, 1992; MA, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, 1996; PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1996. At Stanford since 1996.
Professor Zenios studies how health care delivery systems use technology to prolong life and improve its quality for patients with complex and expensive medical needs. He is especially interested in the impact the decisions of providers and payers have on the innovators. Some of the issues he examines include: medical technology adoption through shared decision making between physicians and patients; financial incentives for the adoption and initiation of complex treatments; differences in the utilization of medical technology and outcomes between for-profit and non-profit health care providers; evidence-based decision making and its effect on equitable utilization of medical technology; the value of life implied by existing medical practice and its implications; early-stage business models in medical technology.
Zenios has explored these questions in the context of end-stage organ failure and particularly kidney failure. His research is supported by grants from the NIH, by the prestigious CAREER award from NSF, and by Stanford Hospital and Clinic. He is now expanding his analysis to other conditions such as cardiovascular diseases.
In addition, Zenios teaches two MBA courses:
In Health Care Management and Innovation the students examine the strategic forces that shape market-based health care systems, the quality of care delivered in such systems, and the incentives for innovation.
In Biodesign Innovation, co-taught with Dr Paul Yock and Dr Josh Makower from the Biodesign Program at Stanford University, interdisciplinary teams of students from the Business School, Medical School, and School of Engineering develop prototypes for medical devices to address important unmet medical needs and business plans to commercialize these products.
He has also consulted extensively companies in the life science sector, helping them redesign their product development and delivery processes in response to shifting market conditions. He is the co-founder of Culmini Inc, a small business that uses design thinking and advanced analytics to develop interactive patient guides. During the academic year 2009-2010, he took a leave of absence to lead the development of the analytical platform for these guides. The first guide is now available at Konnectology.com. Konnectology offers tools to help patients get on the kidney transplant list, explore kidney transplant centers to find the best kidney transplant centers for them or the centers with the shortest kidney transplant waiting list. Konnectology also helps patients navigate the hospital referral and transplant evaluation process. The development of Konnectology was funded by the small business innovation research program at the National Institutes of Health. Zenios continues to be very actively involved in Culmini's product development and strategy.
