Scott R. SchellPhD · MD · MBA
Healthcare & Life Sciences Executive. Physician-Scientist and Surgeon.
Chief Medical Officer, Cognizant · Aurora, Ohio
Healthcare's most expensive failures often occur at the same seam: where a strategy that appeared sound in the boardroom meets the clinical, regulatory, financial, and operational reality in which it must work. Every technology cycle exposes that gap, and today AI is its most consequential expression. The investments are substantial, the effects reach across the enterprise, and few leaders have worked in all the environments where those decisions take effect.
Scott Schell has. He has built clinical, cancer, and population-health programs inside major health systems; led a national care-management business through acquisition and a molecular-diagnostics company through recapitalization and turnaround; advised pharma and medtech companies on bringing products through trials and regulation; and turned emerging technology into operating models that survive contact with clinical, operational, and financial reality. That work spans the bench, the bedside, the boardroom, and the payer, regulatory, and capital structures that shape healthcare.
Scott Schell is a physician-executive who works across healthcare's clinical, scientific, commercial, and technical boundaries to test consequential strategies against the realities that determine whether they will scale, and to align the people, decisions, and operating models needed to build what works, redirect what does not, and act before failure becomes expensive.
Population scale
15M
lives under care management
Enterprise delivery
$120M
platform delivered, under budget
Organizational leadership
2,400+
people led at scale
Scientific authority
h-index 22
33 publications, 1 US patent
Where I create value
Scott R. Schell is a physician-executive and healthcare operator: MD, PhD, and MBA; board-certified surgeon; Chief Medical Officer at Cognizant; founder and board chair of the nonprofit Cohelian. He has led healthcare organizations serving 15 million lives and delivered enterprise platforms across provider, payer, and life-sciences settings.
Enterprise strategy and operating-model decisions
Growth, turnaround, integration, and responsible pivots
AI, data, governance, and clinical transformation
Selected work 01
Now · where the domains meet
Chief Medical Officer, Cognizant Health & Life Sciences
As Chief Medical Officer for Cognizant Health & Life Sciences, Schell shapes the strategies, offerings, and operating models the firm brings to provider, payer, and life-sciences clients. He brings clinical and scientific judgment into how AI and data are adopted, how clinical operations are designed, and how partnerships and high-stakes client decisions are structured, so that enterprise ambition survives contact with clinical, regulatory, and financial reality.
Built and delivered at scale
Architected UPMC's trans-enterprise population-health platform
UPMC's HealthPlaNET population-health platform had stalled through two prior attempts to bring it to completion. Schell was brought in as architect and operating leader, directing hundreds of people across product, technology, care delivery, the health plan, and executive administration. The resulting trans-enterprise platform was delivered under budget and ahead of schedule, despite the pandemic, and extended analytics from the health plan into provider operations. The work demonstrates his ability to recover a complex enterprise build, broaden its ambition, and deliver at scale.
Scale, and a prepared exit
Alere Health: 15M lives under care management, prepared for sale to UnitedHealth
Alere's care-management business was stagnating when Schell joined as an oncology consultant. Within sixteen months, he was EVP and Chief Medical Officer, leading roughly 2,400 people across an operation serving 15 million lives. He reorganized the business, rebuilt its predictive-modeling and data-science capabilities, and prepared it for acquisition by UnitedHealth Group. The work led directly to his recruitment as Cleveland Clinic's Founding Chair of Population Health. The sequence matters: repair the business, create value, then be entrusted with the next enterprise mandate.
Across institutional boundaries
Founding Chair, Population Health, Cleveland Clinic
Although already on the surgical staff, Schell was recruited from outside Cleveland Clinic's executive leadership structure to become Founding Chair of Population Health and Associate Chief of Staff as the organization repositioned for accountable care. The mandate required translation across clinical leadership, finance, operations, population health, and changing reimbursement economics. He was not brought in to preserve an existing model, but to help define the next one. The role connects his payer experience to health-system strategy and demonstrates his ability to lead across institutional boundaries.
Global science, at scale
Global scientific advisor, tigecycline program, Wyeth
Wyeth's tigecycline program required scientific oversight across a complex international development effort. As global scientific advisor, working with Dr. Evan Loh, the company's infectious-disease therapeutic-area lead, Schell supervised, evaluated, and course-corrected trials for the two indications ultimately approved: community-acquired pneumonia and complicated intra-abdominal infection. Much of the international program was coordinated from the United Kingdom. Tigecycline reached the market. The work demonstrates scientific and regulatory judgment applied at global scale, where approval was the measure of success.
Corroborated by the FDA approval record and peer-reviewed cIAI publications
Two decades, every room in the industry
Innovatim: advising across pharma, medtech, diagnostics, payer, and digital health
For more than two decades, Schell ran Innovatim as a standing advisory and operating practice, completing more than thirty engagements across the United States, Europe, ASEAN, and South America. Clients included Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, Cubist, BK Ultrasound, i-Flow, Invuity, and organizations across diagnostics, payer, and digital health. The work ranged from product development and clinical evidence to strategy, operating models, regulatory fulfillment, and market entry. Among its portfolio companies was VersaChart, a fully cloud-based EMR he founded for procedure-based practices; when Beaumont's Epic deployment ran years behind, the health system licensed VersaChart to run its breast oncology program, and the company was later acquired. Innovatim is the clearest proof that his cross-sector range was practiced repeatedly, across markets and under consequence.
Innovatim, Inc., Ohio Secretary of StateSelected thinking 02
Keynote, DIA Global Annual Meeting 2025 (The Precision Paradox). Panels: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Kaiser Permanente CMO Conference, Newsweek AI & Healthcare Summit. And 25+ additional bylined placements across national healthcare and technology media, 2024 to present.
The record 03
Executive & enterprise
Chief Medical Officer, Cognizant
Managing Director & Executive Consultant, UPMC
President & CEO, The KEW Group
EVP & Chief Medical Officer, Alere Health
Health-system leadership
Founding Chair, Population Health; Associate Chief of Staff, Cleveland Clinic
Corroborated, Huron Foundation
Corporate Director, Integrated Cancer Programs, William Beaumont Hospital
Training & credentials
MD; PhD, Molecular Immunology; AB, Biology, University of Chicago
Surgical Residency & Fellowship, Surgical Oncology, Johns Hopkins
Endocrine Surgery Fellowship, University of Oxford / John Radcliffe
Co-authored work (Schell, Dudley)
MBA, University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
Board & governance