Amazon/Berkshire/JPMorgan Healthcare Venture Gets CTO

The joint healthcare venture involving Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase & Co now has a chief technology officer (CTO).

In a LinkedIn post yesterday, Serkan Kutan, the former technology head at Zocdoc, announced that he will be serving as CTO of the venture, which he says represents “the most promising attempt to improve healthcare in the U.S. We owe it to our children to tackle this giant and the founders’ long-term, not-profit seeking approach is exactly what it will take to make a difference,” Kutan wrote.

Details behind the initiative, which was publicly announced last January, are still vague, but experts have pointed to reducing healthcare fraud and administrative costs as key areas that the companies will focus on. The lack of clarity has also led to skepticism among healthcare stakeholders. A survey last year from venture capital firm Venrock revealed that the majority of respondents are dubious about the impact of the Amazon/Berkshire Hathaway/JP Morgan healthcare partnership and believe the effort will face substantial challenges and take a lot of time to be successful.

This past June, the organizations named Atul Gawande, M.D., as CEO of the initiative. In the LinkedIn post, Kutan wrote that when he heard Gawande became CEO, he remembered thinking that becoming CTO of the venture would be his dream job.

According to a CNBC report, “Kutan's previous role at Zocdoc involved building the technology that consumers use to book doctors' appointments. Zocdoc is one of the few health companies that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has personally funded through his investment group, Bezos Expeditions.”