We value patient safety, innovative user-friendly software & customer service.
Design Clinicals is a healthcare information technology enterprise founded by physicians and IT experts. Our mission is to improve communication between healthcare providers, reduce medical errors, and improve the quality of healthcare provided.
Just as important to us is the level of service we give our customers. We’re committed to being with you at every step of the process as you use our products.
Dewey Howell
MD, PhD, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Dewey Howell is the founding member of Design Clinicals. He is primarily responsible for the design and development of DC’s products and has been instrumental in establishing strategic partnerships, developing new clients and marketing DC’s products.
Dewey received doctorates in Immunology and Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. During his Family Medicine residency, Dewey began to design and develop software. He started by creating Patient Pilot, a program that enhanced the communication between residents managing hospitalized patients. Dewey saw a clear improvement in the quality of patient care after Patient Pilot was introduced. He was inspired by this observation to continue to design and develop software to meet the many needs of providers in both the hospital and clinic. Shortly after graduating from his residency, Dewey founded Design Clinicals to continue the design and development of software to improve provider communication.
Dewey’s experience as physician, actively admitting, managing and discharging patients from the hospital, combined with his programming expertise, make him uniquely qualified to lead DC in its efforts to design relevant, functional and easy-to-use hand-held and Web-based software programs.
Bakha Nurzhanov
Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer
Bakha Nurzhanov’s primary responsibilities include designing, developing and maintaining the interface between our client’s existing electronic medical record systems and DC software. He works closely with Dewey to ensure that our products can seamlessly acquire the necessary patient data from several different sources and also assists with the design and programming for DC’s products.
Bakha received a degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Civil Engineering Institute in Dzhambul, Kazakhstan. He spent three years at the Moscow State Technical University, considered the premiere technical university in Russia, where he honed his designing, developing and programming skills. In 1994 he immigrated to the United States and continued computer science coursework at the University of Washington. He is proficient in several programming languages including C, C++, sh, Tcl, Perl, HTML and XML.
Bakha’s prior experience within healthcare information technology is a tremendous asset for DC. He has the ability to design, develop and code both software programs and the interface engine that allows our products to access existing electronic records and retrieve relevant data.
Mary VanHoomissen
MBA, BSN, RN, Vice President of Implementations
Mary VanHoomissen is a registered nurse with 25 years of clinical and nursing leadership experience. She is responsible for implementation of Design Clinicals’ products and for ongoing communication with clients. She is also accountable for developing and managing project plans, producing education materials and designing user manuals.
Mary’s experience includes executive nursing leadership with accountability for operational and fiscal management, program development, workflow analysis, quality assurance, quality improvement and physician relationships for complex, multi-disciplinary projects.
Prior to joining Design Clinicals, Mary was a Clinical Project Manager in the Information Services Department at Valley Medical Center, Renton, WA, where she was responsible for leading the organization’s migration from paper to electronic documentation, including the implementation of Design Clinicals’ MedsTracker application. Mary also served as Director of Resource Management at Valley, where she led the adoption of the organization’s productivity software for performance improvement, the nursing float pool, and the operations of the nurse staffing office.
Dasein Pinto-Gonzalez Howell
PhD, Co-Founder, Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety
Dr. Dasein P-G Howell is a founding member of Design Clinicals. Her responsibilities include working with other senior managers to establish strategic plans and objectives, research and development of DC’s products, communications, and establishing guidelines and processes for the quality and continuous improvement of our software.
Dasi earned a bachelor of arts degree in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, and a doctorate in Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. She continued her career in scientific research as a Post-doctoral Fellow in malaria research at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute and the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Her experience as a scientist gave her a critical eye for details, honed her problem-solving skills, and made her proficient at managing resources to achieve both short- and long-term project goals.
Kyle Baird
Vice President of Sales and Business Development
Kyle Baird is responsible for creating our sales infrastructure, marketing and building industry partnerships. Kyle is an experienced sales leader, having worked in the medical device, biotech and veterinary industries for 19 years, including 8 years as a sales manager.
Prior to joining Design Clinicals, Kyle directed the Northwest region at MWI Veterinary Supply, managing 17 sales representatives and over $140M in annual business. Kyle also excelled throughout his years at NuGenesis Technologies and Idexx Laboratories, where he was a consistent leader and top performer. Kyle graduated from the University of Washington in 1990 with a B.A. in Communications. Kyle shares our immense passion for patient safety. When he’s not helping people catch the vision of MedsTracker, he plays a lot of basketball, runs marathons and enjoys time with his wife, son and Whippet, Jasper.
Alicia Evans
Chief Financial Officer
Alicia Evans provides comprehensive, strategic financial direction for the company, overseeing all accounting and finance operations. Functions include financial analysis and projections, fundraising and investor relations, budgeting and reporting. Alicia graduated from the University of Washington in 1990 with a B.A. in Business Administration, Accounting Concentration. Alicia has more than 18 years of leadership experience, with an emphasis in executive level finance and business operations services. She most recently served as acting chief financial officer for several early-stage Seattle companies. Alicia was also vice president of finance at Marchex, Inc., a NASDAQ-listed local search and advertising company. Her industry expertise spans games, Internet commerce, display advertising, public accounting and telecommunications, and she is a Certified Public Accountant – Inactive.
Away from work, Alicia enjoys hiking, biking, traveling, reading, going to concerts and spending time with friends and family.