Scott R. SchellPhD · MD · MBA

Healthcare & Life Sciences Executive. Physician-Scientist and Surgeon.

Chief Medical Officer, Cognizant · Aurora, Ohio

Scott R. Schell

Where I create value

Scott R. Schell helps healthcare and life-sciences enterprises make consequential decisions hold: whether an AI or data strategy will survive clinical reality, whether a transformation will scale or stall, whether a diagnostic or care-management business is built to last or to sell. He has led organizations serving 15 million lives, delivered a $120M enterprise platform under budget, and turned a failing care-management business into an acquisition by UnitedHealth.

Enterprise strategy and operating-model decisions Growth, turnaround, integration, and responsible pivots AI, data, governance, and clinical transformation
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
Thought-leadership reach
58M+
across 33 national publications, 2024-26

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.

He 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.

Selected work 01

Now · where the domains meet

Chief Medical Officer, Cognizant

On arrival, Schell founded Cognizant’s first Healthcare Advisory Board, convening provider and payvider executives around the industry’s most consequential operating questions. The board became a source of substantial new enterprise engagements across multiple health systems, converting senior-level dialogue into material client work. As CMO, he guides strategies, offerings, and operating models Cognizant brings to provider, payer, and life-sciences clients, applying clinical and scientific judgment where AI, data, operations, regulation, and financial reality meet.

Built and delivered at scale

Architected UPMC's trans-enterprise population-health platform

UPMC’s population-health platform development had stalled. Recruited to reset the strategy and serve as recovery architect, Schell designed the new enterprise system and aligned the organizations required to build it: hundreds of people across product, technology, care delivery, the health plan, and executive administration, none reporting to him. The $120 million platform went live under budget, ahead of schedule, and through the pandemic.

Scale, and a prepared exit

Alere Health: 15M lives under care management, prepared for sale to UnitedHealth

Alere recruited Schell as a consultant to turn around its oncology care-management practice. Sixteen months later, he was EVP and CMO, leading 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. The work led directly to his recruitment by Cleveland Clinic.

Across institutional boundaries

Founding Chair, Population Health, Cleveland Clinic

Recruited from outside Cleveland Clinic’s leadership structure, Schell became Founding Chair of Population Health and Associate Chief of Staff as the organization repositioned for accountable care. The mandate required alignment across clinical leadership, finance, operations, population health, and reimbursement economics. He was brought in not to preserve the existing model, but to define the next one.

Global science, at scale

Global scientific advisor, tigecycline program, Wyeth

As global scientific advisor for Wyeth’s tigecycline program, Schell supervised, evaluated, and course-corrected international trials for the two indications ultimately approved by the FDA: community-acquired pneumonia and complicated intra-abdominal infection. Working with infectious-disease therapeutic-area lead Dr. Evan Loh, he helped coordinate a program run largely from the United Kingdom. Tigecycline reached the market, reflecting scientific and regulatory judgment applied at global scale.

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 two decades, Schell ran Innovatim, an advisory and operating practice spanning more than 30 engagements across the United States, Europe, ASEAN, and South America. Clients included Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, Cubist, BK Ultrasound, i-Flow, Invuity, and firms across diagnostics, payer, and digital health. He also founded VersaChart, a cloud EMR licensed by Beaumont to run breast oncology when its Epic deployment fell years behind. VersaChart was later acquired.

Innovatim, Inc., Ohio Secretary of State

Selected thinking 02

Newsweek · Medical Economics · TechTarget · HIT Consultant · Healthcare IT Today · Healthcare Brew · Chief Healthcare Executive · Physicians Weekly

Healthcare AI Needs a Job Description
Healthcare IT Today · May 2026

Keynote, DIA Global Annual Meeting 2025 (The Precision Paradox). Panels: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Kaiser Permanente CMO Conference, Newsweek AI & Healthcare Summit. And 30+ additional bylined placements across national healthcare and technology media, 2024 to present.

The record 03

Executive & enterprise

Chief Medical Officer, Cognizant
2023-present
Founder & CEO, Innovatim, Inc.
2001–2025 · Ohio-registered · Aspire Universal (CMO, 2018–2023) and international advisory engaged via Innovatim
Ohio Secretary of State
Managing Director & Executive Consultant, UPMC
2017-2021 · $120M platform delivered
President & CEO, The KEW Group
2014–2015 · molecular diagnostics · $16.8M Series B (Arsenal Capital)
EVP & Chief Medical Officer, Alere Health
2009–2013 · ~2,400 staff · 15M lives

Health-system leadership

Founding Chair, Population Health; Associate Chief of Staff, Cleveland Clinic
2013–2015 · recruited from outside the leadership organization to lead the accountable-care repositioning
Corporate Director, Integrated Cancer Programs, William Beaumont Hospital
2006–2009

Training & credentials

MD; PhD, Molecular Immunology; AB, Biology, University of Chicago
MD 1991 · PhD 1989 · AB 1984, general and departmental honors, Sigma Xi
Surgical Residency & Fellowship, Surgical Oncology, Johns Hopkins
1991–1998 · Chief Resident · SSO fellowship
Endocrine Surgery Fellowship, University of Oxford / John Radcliffe
1995 · Nuffield Dept. of Surgery
Co-authored work (Schell, Dudley)
MBA, University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
2009 · Special Honors · Beta Gamma Sigma

Board & governance

Founder & Board Chair, Cohelian
Ohio 501(c)(3)
cohelian.org
Board Member, Huron Foundation
2020–present
Huron Foundation