Patrick Heffernan
As Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer for Three Palm Software, Dr Patrick Heffernan brings more than 25 years of experience in medical imaging to this new company. Prior to founding Three Palm Software, Heffernan was most recently Chief Architect at Kodak’s Health Imaging group, and responsible for development of Kodak’s Mammography CAD product. That work continued his role from Miramedica (initially Meddetect), a company that was founded in 2001 to develop a mammography CAD system. Miramedica submitted its PMA for the CAD system in early 2003, and was purchased by Kodak in September 2003. The work at Kodak included the architecture for Kodak’s CAD products, including DICOM connectivity and infrastructure for CAD product deployment.
From 1989 to August 2001, Heffernan was employed at Cedara Software (formally named ISG Technologies). During his time at Cedara, Heffernan held several key technical positions, and was chief architect there for much of that time. While at Cedara, he developed several key pieces of technology, including the IAP platform, Cedara’s components architecture, and a suite of cardiology products.
From 1987 to 1989 Heffernan was a member of the technical staff at HP labs in Palo Alto, California. There he worked on the development of an innovative 3-D cardiac ultrasound system.
From 1981 to 1987 Heffernan was a research associate in the Biodynamics Research Unit at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. There he initially worked on CT reconstruction, and later software tools for image analysis (in particular the “Analyze” tools).
Heffernan has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch New Zealand (1981).
E-mail: pbh@threepalmsoft.com
Daoxian (Heidi) Zhang
Dr Daoxian (Heidi) Zhang holds the titles of VP for Clinical Affairs and Chief Scientist at Three Palm Software. She has more than 17 years commercial experience in the medical imaging domain, and was most recently employed at the Eastman Kodak Company, where she was Chief Scientist, and responsible for the development of the algorithms embodied in Kodak’s mammography CAD product. Zhang also developed the user interfaces and clinical workflow for the end-user applications that formed the front-end of the CAD product. In her role there as Chief Scientist, she was heavily involved in development of intellectual property, and worked with other researchers on the development of innovations in the CAD area. She also worked with clinical sites on the collection and analysis of mammography data sets.
Prior to Kodak (previously Miramedica), Zhang was employed by R2 Technologies in Los Altos, California. There she was responsible for the development of the lung CT CAD workstation including the design and implementation of the user interface and application workflow. She also worked on R2’s mammography CAD review station.
From 1998 to 2000, Zhang was employed by GE Medical Systems in their San Jose ultrasound development group. There she was responsible for the development of an innovative full-field breast ultrasound system.
From 1993 to 1998, Zhang was employed at Cedara Software (previously named ISG Technologies) where she was a developer on the IAP and then the components framework projects.
Zhang has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts.
E-mail: heidiz@threepalmsoft.com
