COMPEER - Key Persons


Chris Smith - CEO, Founder

Job Titles:
  • CEO
  • Founder
Chris Smith is a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Health Information Technology (HIT) architecture, systems, and infrastructure, with a specialization in clinical data technical strategy. Smith is a well-known and published Health Information Technology and Health Information Exchange (HIE) author, speaker, and industry committee member. Smith's experience includes implementing one of the first Internet connectivity projects to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Smith has a Bachelor's degree in Healthcare Administration from the College of Saint Scholastica and an MBA with Information Technology focus from Augsburg College.

Dale Emerson - VP

Job Titles:
  • Vice President
Dale has over 15 years of hands-on experience in the healthcare IT space developing enterprise solution strategies, technology architectures, platform alternatives and roadmaps to enable clinical and business goals. He has worked on projects involving collecting, retrieving, sharing, analyzing, and using clinical and business information, data, and knowledge for communication and decision support. He has managed large and small healthcare IT projects, managed teams of healthcare IT professionals, identified gaps and omissions in planned and existing system, and guided C level decision making with comprehensive and easy to understand reports and recommendations.

Ian Morris - COO

Job Titles:
  • COO
Ian Morris has more than 15 years of experience in healthcare interoperability and has worked on projects to connect providers to Medicare, Medicaid, VA and Social Security Administration systems. He has successfully managed projects for payers and providers, exchanging both medical records and claims data. In 2016, he completed a first-of-its-kind project connecting a large academic medical center to a Medicaid agency for exchange of patient clinical summaries. His experience includes work as an independent consultant and work in diverse roles at leading health care IT companies including United Healthcare and McKesson. Ian holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota.

Kevin Erickson - CTO, Founder

Job Titles:
  • CTO
  • Founder
Kevin Erickson has an in-depth understanding of operations and IT management in the healthcare payer industry. Kevin has more than 25 years of experience in health care, information technology, operations management, business process improvement, and business development. Kevin has worked closely with stakeholders in the provider, payer and regulatory fields and has experience in the Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payer industries. Kevin has a degree in Computer Science from North Dakota State University.

Linda Cramer

Linda Cramer has over 30 years of healthcare knowledge and experience including State Medicaid, Public Health and Health Information Exchange (HIE). She has expertise in State funding requests (IAPDs), State procurements, and direct oversight of implementation of complex healthcare technologies (EHRs, interfaces between disparate vendor clinical systems, etc), development of updated SMHP's and Audit Strategies per CMS guidance. She served 10 years in the United States Air Force where she completed her education in Radiology Technology.

Richard Zhang

Job Titles:
  • Chief Architect
Richard Zhang is an expert in IT service delivery with specialization in healthcare interoperability and analytics. His experience includes successful implementations of large healthcare IT projects, including an innovative, high-speed Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI). Richard has worked for Deloitte Consulting, SAP and Sun, where he was named Employee of the Year. His professional credentials include a Bachelor's Degree in Electronic Physics from Peking University, a Master's Degree in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth and Certification in Technology, Operations and Value Chain Management from MIT Sloan School of Management.