LiveWorld (LVWD)

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LiveWorld Appoints Seasoned Healthcare and Venture Capital Professionals to Board of Directors
Business Wire Business WireApril 25, 2018
LiveWorld Appoints Seasoned Healthcare and Venture Capital Professionals to Board of Directors
Arthur A. Ushijima (Photo: Business Wire) Multimedia Gallery URL
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SAN JOSE, Calif. & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

LiveWorld, Inc. (OTC Markets: LVWD), the leading social customer experience company announced today the addition of Arthur A. Ushijima, CEO and President of The Queen’s Health Systems (Queen’s), Michael A. Gold, former CEO and President of Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), and Barry Weinman, Co-founder and former Managing Director of Allegis Capital and AVI Group, to its Board of Directors.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180425006300/en/

The newest members of LiveWorld’s Board of Directors bolster the company’s expanding business of consulting services (strategy, adverse events management, moderation, engagement), and conversation management software in the healthcare and pharma markets. LiveWorld’s pharma and healthcare business grew 20%/year over 2016 and 2017. LiveWorld will further expand its suite of marketing, customer service, and operational solutions to help healthcare providers improve the patient experience by having a more engaging presence in social media, messaging apps, and on mobile devices.

“We welcome the insights and experience from Arthur, Michael, and Barry, as LiveWorld sharpens our focus on using 1to1 real-time conversations to improve the patient journey,” said Peter Friedman, Chairman and CEO, LiveWorld. “Their deep expertise in strategic business management, health services, and technology will strengthen our ability to innovate new solutions, enter new markets, and increase revenue.”

Ushijima is a healthcare executive with more than 40 years of experience managing and leading hospitals and health systems in five different states. For the past 28 years, he has been with The Queen's Medical Center, which is the parent corporation for more than 10 healthcare and real estate companies.

In addition to serving as a member of Queen’s internal boards, he serves on a start-up board, Kineticor, which is commercializing a novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) motion-correction technology developed by the University of Hawaii and Queen’s. Ushijima also established a novel position emission tomography (PET) joint venture with Hamamatsu Photonics of Japan, which brought the first PET scanner to Hawaii twenty years ago. He serves on the joint venture management committee.

His past corporate board service includes Vizient, Inc. (formerly VHA, Inc.), which is the nation’s largest group purchasing organization with more than 60 billion dollars in medical supply and equipment spend, representing more than 2,000 hospitals. He has served on the boards of numerous charitable organizations and trade associations.

Also, Ushijima was recognized as Pacific Business News Leader of the Year in 2013 and Hawaii Business Magazine’s CEO of the Year in 2014.

“It’s an honor to work with LiveWorld to deploy conversation engagement programs that will maximize the efficiency of communication in hospitals,” says Ushijima. “Hospitals utilizing an effective messaging channel that integrates human agents and automation provides an invaluable resource that will greatly enrich the patient experience.”

Michael A. Gold was the CEO and President of HMSA until he retired at the conclusion of 2017. During his 43-year career at HMSA, he also served at the Chief Operating Officer and its Executive Vice President and Assistant Treasurer. Throughout his illustrious career working for HMSA, he gained extensive knowledge in underwriting, marketing, provider services, customer relations, account services, community relations, and corporate planning.

Gold is recognized as a visionary whose new ideas and practices have improved the health and well-being of Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association members and everyone in Hawaii. Those accomplishments during his tenure include: creating HMSA’s Online Care®, the first telehealth system in the nation offered by a health insurer, introducing Blue Zones Project® to Hawaii, a communitywide initiative to help make the healthy choice the easy choice for everyone in the state, partnering with digital health care leaders to put all of a person’s health on a single digital platform, and establishing HMSA Centers, state-of-the-art spaces that bring HMSA into communities and closer to members for servicing, sales, and educational programs.