Bob Kocher, MD is a Partner at Venrock and focuses on healthcare IT and services investments. He currently serves on the Board of Jiff, Aledade, and Lyra Health, where he is also a co-founder, and is a Board Observer at Grand Rounds, Stride, and Doctor on Demand. He is a former Director at Castlight Health (CSLT). Additionally, he is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC, and Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution Engleberg Center for Health Reform. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Harvard Medical School Health Care Policy Department, National Institute of Healthcare Management (NIHCM), and ChildObesity180. He is also a member of the Health Affairs Editorial Board.
Prior to Venrock, Dr. Kocher served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy on the National Economic Council. He was one of the leaders of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” childhood obesity initiative, and led the formation of the Partnership for a Healthier America. He also co-founded with Todd Park the Health Data Initiative, a joint effort of HHS and the Institute of Medicine, to release healthcare data to spur private sector innovation to improve healthcare cost and quality. Previously Dr. Kocher was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he led McKinsey Global Institute's healthcare economics work and Center for US Health System Reform. For the past five years, Dr. Kocher has served as Co-Chair of the Health Datapalooza.
Dr. Kocher received undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington and a medical degree from George Washington University. He completed a research fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health, and went on to complete his internal medicine residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School.