Who: Don Jones
Current position: Vice President of Business Development, Qualcomm
Location: San Diego
Fast facts: If you want to take the pulse of the mobile and wireless healthcare industries, get in touch with Jones. He's been involved in the field since 1979, when he worked at an emergency-response company that transmitted single-lead electrocardiogram data from ambulances to hospitals. Jones has an MBA and a law degree, as well as a bachelor's degree in biology and bio-engineering. He sits on the boards of the Alliance Healthcare Foundation and the American Telemedicine Association and was a founding board member of the West Wireless Health Institute.
What makes him disruptive: Ponder this quote from Jones: "50 percent of primary care does not have to be delivered face-to-face. Why leave your home? Why leave your desk when you don't have to?" Jones truly is a pioneer in wireless healthcare. As an executive of a company that set up medical house calls, Jones brought Qualcomm into the healthcare field, and Qualcomm reciprocated by offering him his current job. In 2003, he forged a partnership between Qualcomm and CardioNet that produced a mobile diagnostic system and service for continuous monitoring of cardiac patients. Two years later, he founded the Wireless Life Sciences Alliance, with funding from Qualcomm and Johnson & Johnson. (West Wireless later hired J&J veterans Donald Casey and Joseph Smith, M.D., as its two top executives.)