Founder, President & CEO, Heritage Provider Network
Health Evolution Partner Committee

Richard Merkin, M.D. is the CEO and founder of the Heritage Group. Under his stewardship, the Heritage Group has become the largest, physician-owned and operated integrated healthcare delivery system in the United States with over 50 related healthcare companies. The Heritage Group encompasses numerous patent, venture capital, private equity, and insurance companies.

Dr. Merkin serves on the Board of the California Institute of Technology and the Board of Trustees at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. He is the Co-founder of Faster cures. He has established the Richard Merkin Foundation for Stem Cell Research at the Broad Institute at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Richard Merkin Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Brain Sciences Institute, the Richard Merkin Foundation for Neural Regeneration at UCLA, and the Merkin Family Foundation Fund for Regenerative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. Dr. Merkin supported the Merkin Initiative to Study Payment and Clinician Reform at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and has also endowed two professorships at the City of Hope, one in immunotherapy and the other in gene therapy. Dr. Merkin is supporting translational sciences and health technology at Caltech through the Heritage Research Institute for the Advancement of Medicine and Science. He is on the board of the California Nano Systems Institute and serves on many other boards that focus on science, healthcare and finance.

Inspired by the X-Prize Foundation Dr. Merkin launched the Heritage Health Prize, a $3 million global incentivized data mining competition in predictive modeling seeking to achieve a fundamental breakthrough in our ability to predict future hospitalizations, saving the country over $40 billion dollars. Recently, he was named one of the top 200 Most Influential Leaders by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, has been honored with the Dr. Armand Hammer Philanthropy Award from StopCancer, the Medical Visionary Award from UCLA Geffen School of Medicine, named one of HealthLeaders Media top 20 Leaders in the country and Healthcare CEO of the Year by the Los Angeles Business Journal. In addition, “Fast Company” named HPN one of the top ten most innovative companies in the world for 2013.