Gary Ferguson

NASHVILLE tech entrepreneur Gary Ferguson has been hired as "chief healthcare strategist" by TIBCO Software, the NASDAQ listed infrastructure-software provider.

TIBCO is regarded as acquisitive, seeking smaller bolt-on buys in key verticals, as in the case of its acquisitions of Foresight electronic-data-interchange and Nimbus business-process discovery and analysis acquisitions. It is targeting the healthcare, life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors, among others.

The 14-year-old company's founder and CEO Vivek Ranadivé is widely regarded as a thought-leader on such topics as real-time computing and leveraging enterprise-wide information for competitive advantage.

Ferguson told VNC this morning he will operate out of Nashville and that TIBCO is a "very virtualized" organization, intent on getting close to current and prospective customers.

TIBCO product lines span business process management and business optimization, service-oriented architecture and Cloud services; and, it offers solutions for most major verticals, including healthcare and life sciences, pharmaceuticals, government, loyalty/CRM, and logistics and supply chain, among other sectors, according to its website.

During 2009-10, Ferguson served John Doerr-backed ClearPractice (St. Louis) as president. There, he helped position the company as a provider of Cloud-based software for electronic medical records and revenue-cycle management systems for small physicians practices, as previously reported by VNC. While with ClearPractice, Ferguson had expressed hope of establishing a Nashville presence for the company, but that has not happened.

Since then, Brentwood-based Ferguson has consulted to health/tech companies including TIBCO, iMedicor, ViewIQ, VoiceHIT, SixDI and ePatientFinder, according to information he posted online.

Prior to ClearPractice, Ferguson held a series of senior healthcare technology roles, including 11 years as CEO of NotifyMD, the Nashville-based provider of wireless medical communications for physicians and hospitals. NotifyMD recently sold to Chicago-based Stericycle.

Earlier, he was founder-CEO of RespraCair (AmeriCair); and, general manager of Mediware Information Systems (Santa Cruz, Calif.), according to online information.

Still earlier, he was executive director of clinical systems for Continental Healthcare and clinical pharmacy services director for United Western Medical Center.

He earned a doctorate of pharmacy/pharmacology at the University of Southern California, and a bachelor's in pre-veterinary medicine at the University of California-Davis. VNC