Jack Wilson
Principal/Founder
Senior Analyst and Concept Design Strategist/Writer
Born and raised in the Seattle area, Dr. Wilson earned his bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from the University of Washington in 1976 and Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Utah in 1979. When it comes to “right things” he believes in, Dr. Wilson is persuasive—both orally and in writing. He is a “change agent.” His entire career literally has involved persuading others to pursue ideas not tried before. Persuasion is a daily event and a way of life for him. He was a clinical pharmacy practitioner (psychiatry and neurology drug therapy specialist), hospital pharmacy administrator, college educator and applied researcher over a 17 year period before founding a medical device company around his patented inventions in 1990 where he served as CEO/Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. He has delivered hundreds of presentations, mostly in the U.S., to physicians, nurses, pharmacists, healthcare administrators, business leaders, CEOs, investors, bankers, financiers and politicians. He has given keynote addresses at universities here and in Europe on clinical pharmacy practice, automation systems, intra- and entrepreneurship, and management.
His “First Life.” During his 1979-94 work with Washington State’s Department of Social & Health Services, he overhauled accreditation-failed pharmacies at its two largest inpatient flagship facilities. Both facilities were threatened by pharmacy-caused loss of certification and accreditation through U.S. government and accreditation organizations. He persuaded inside pharmacy staffs and outside pharmacists (some nationally known) to join him in overhaul campaigns to bring each facility “from last to first.” He based everything on co-operative quality improvement/best-practice teams. (He insists he never has and never will do anything alone “because teams always outperform”). He also persuaded doctors, nurses and administrators to join him. It worked. He quadrupled staffing and budgets at each facility. Both grew quickly to state and national prominence. His first 950-bed facility was named top pharmacy among the state’s developmental disability institutions within a year. His second pharmaceutical services department at the state’s 1,250 bed facility was listed in a national publication among the top 100 hospital pharmacies in America within three years.
Change, turnaround, quality improvement, teamwork and intra/entrepreneurship are hallmarks in Wilson’s career. He pioneered the first clinical pharmacy patient care clinics and services in state-run facilities. He initiated and chaired all statewide pharmacy projects including: pharmacy job descriptions modernization project, drug contracts project (consolidating hundreds of disparate contracts to a single drug contract for 27 state facilities), prime vendor project (contracting a single drug wholesaler for daily replenishment to all 27 facilities), and pharmacy computerization of all DSHS inpatient facilities. His teams documented objective gains in patient care morbidity and mortality. He designed and implemented statewide computerized analyses of drug therapy in all state institutions that resulted in therapeutic changes in practice statewide, including writing and establishing formal drug use guidelines and protocols against which all physician prescribing was measured and audited.
He introduced and installed the first unit dose drug distribution systems in state facilities. He overhauled all drug use policies and procedures in both facilities for doctors, nurses and pharmacy in a new manual system called “best among hospitals” by Washington State Board of Pharmacy investigators. The senior U.S. Medicare pharmacy surveyor called Wilson’s department the “best I ever surveyed.” Wilson was also the sole pharmacist advisor on the State Assistant Attorneys General team in DSHS that managed medical malpractice lawsuits.
The University of Washington awarded Exemplary Status to both of Wilson’s pharmaceutical services departments. He served on the Affiliate Faculty at the University of Washington School of Pharmacy for a decade. University-based student externs regularly rotated through his model departments. From 1987-94, he chaired the state’s largest Pharmacy Technician Training Program at Clover Park Technical College and overhauled its entire curriculum which won the college’s Advisory Group of the Year award. He served two stints as President of Washington’s 14-county regional hospital pharmacy association and served two years on the Board of Directors of the Washington State Society of Hospital Pharmacists where he initiated overhaul of the state association constitution and by-laws. He was named regional Hospital Pharmacist of the year in 1991 and Washington State Hospital Pharmacist of the Year in 1992 where he insisted, “Compared to my staff, I did very little. They were awe inspiring to me.”
His “Second Life.” His passion for safety and efficiency led to founding his own hospital pharmacy automation company (American Biorobotics Corporation that he later renamed NextRx Corporation). His company was based on his own pharmacy technology patents that won a research grant in 1992 from the National Institutes of Health SBIR (Small Business and Innovative Research) Program and its largest-ever NIH SBIR grant in 1994. He formed a 45-company NIH consortium around the project mostly involving U.S. corporations, including several Fortune 500 healthcare and technology companies. As CEO and product developer, Dr. Wilson launched several businesses in the last 20 years and has raised tens of millions of dollars through a mix of federal grants, industry investors, business-to-business partnerships, venture backers and regional investment bank sources.
He has worked closely with a variety of corporate, healthcare and criminal law attorneys over three decades on issues, cases and lawsuits involving corporate law, governance, finance, medical malpractice, management malpractice, malfeasance/misfeasance/nonfeasance, human resources abuse, patents application, patent lawsuits, and criminal violations.
In his spare time, having six children, he learned about college scholarships and grants as his first two of six home-schooled and public high school children reached college age. He then applied business persuasion experience and knowledge of fundraising, business planning and grant writing to college scholarships and grants. Together, his first and second daughters won over $200,000 using methods he teaches in his community outreach program since 2001 (see www.gotocollegefree.org) where, several times yearly, he trains high school and college students in business persuasion methods in his 15-hour course on college scholarships, grants and costs reduction. Dr. Wilson is presently involved in two more start ups, again in the high tech medical industry—and both will rely on private and federal grants in early stages.
Married 32 years to Jackie, the love of his life, his private life is consumed with being husband, father and grandfather (five grandchildren so far). He enjoys mountain climbing, hiking, golf, tennis, racquetball, bicycling, reading, jazz/classical/gospel music, astronomy–and helping people of all ages get into and finance college (with little or no debt) and to immediately find jobs upon graduation in pursuit of their personal dreams and passions.