An exceptional collaboration with a team of professionals

Kathryn (Kate) Plante, MS, is a Vice President who leads Fortrea’s global Market Access Consulting and HEOR group. In this role, she oversees several service areas: Integrated Evidence Planning, Real-world Evidence & Analytics, Value Demonstration, Health Economics & HTA, Reimbursement Strategy & Payer Insights (US and Europe), and Digital & Design Solutions. She specializes in the development and evaluation of evidence to support medical products across various stakeholders.

Kate has over 25 years of experience in observational study design, real-world data, data analytics, value communications, and health economics. She is well published with over 90 manuscripts and conference presentations in more than a dozen therapeutic areas. She recently co-authored two white papers focused on external control arms.

Before joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp and Covance), Kate was a consultant at Price Waterhouse where she developed financial models and conducted fraud analysis using real-world trading data. She has also served as a statistical analyst supporting Phase I-3 clinical trials.

Kate earned an MS in Statistical Science from George Mason University, and a BS in Mathematics and a BS in Finance from the University of Vermont. She recently earned a certificate in Medical Writing from the University of Chicago Professional Education.

Gordon Cummins, MS, is an Executive Director who leads our Integrated Evidence Platform service area in Fortrea’s Market Access Consulting and HEOR group.  He specializes in real-world data and integrated evidence to support regulatory requirements and economic and humanistic value messaging for medical products.

Gordon has over 30 years of experience with primary and secondary data from clinical trials, observational studies, cross-sectional surveys, administrative claims, and electronic medical records. He is well published with over 50 manuscripts and conference presentations in more than a dozen therapeutic areas.

Before joining Fortrea, Gordon led the development of real-world evidence at Science37.  He also worked at Quintiles/IQVIA in the consulting, digital patient and real-world evidence units.

Gordon earned an MS in Statistics and a BS in Mathematics from Missouri State University.

Kristi Baum-Skorija, MBA, is an Executive Director who leads reimbursement strategy projects within Fortrea’s Market Access Consulting and HEOR group. She has more than 15 years of experience conducting market access assessments, developing provider-facing economic models, and delivering reimbursement trainings. She has led numerous initiatives supporting pharmaceutical, biotech, diagnostic, and medical devices, with deep experience in coding, coverage, and payment policy. She also has extensive experience conducting in-depth qualitative interviews with key reimbursement decision-makers and clinical experts across settings of care.

Before joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp and Covance), Kristi worked in a laboratory setting, conducting endocrine-related scientific research and cardiovascular pathology assessments for medical devices and other cardiovascular therapies.  

Kristi earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BS in Biology from Oakland University. During her time at Sloan, she focused on healthcare management and data analysis, with a special interest in strategy and market analysis.  

John Carlsen, MHA, is a Vice President who leads the Reimbursement Strategy & Payer Insights service within Fortrea’s Market Access Consulting and HEOR group. He specializes in assessing the impact of changes to Medicare and managed care payment systems on the reimbursement of drugs, biologics, and devices. He has collaborated with manufacturers on market access strategy projects across many therapeutic areas and has over 25 years of experience with coding, coverage, and payment issues in various settings of care.

John closely follows the latest health care policy developments. Most recently, he has worked with clients in the areas of Medicare drug coding and payment policies, Medicare hospital payment systems (inpatient and outpatient), the Inflation Reduction Act, Most Favored Nation (MFN) payment models, discarded drug and 340B modifiers, and biosimilars. 

Before joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp and Covance), John worked at the Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, where he focused on financial management and medical information management.

John earned an MHA in Health Services Management and Policy from Ohio State University’s Graduate Program and a BA in Economics with a minor in Psychology from Duke University.

Sam Colman, MSc, is a Senior Director and real-world evidence (RWE) biostatistician who co-leads the RWE & Analytics service within Fortrea’s Market Access Consulting and HEOR group. He provides biostatistical leadership for real-world evidence (RWE) studies, health economic studies, and clinical outcome assessments, with a focus in Asia-Pac.

He has over 20 years of experience in various clinical trial and RWE study designs including randomized, parallel, cross-over, case-control, cross-sectional, prospective, and retrospective. He has also been involved in risk evaluation and mitigation strategies and PBAC submissions in Australia.

Sam brings detailed knowledge of FDA requirements related to data and analysis and has experience in complex statistical methods including multiple imputation, marginal structural modeling, non-parametric methods, propensity score methods, ROC curves, meta-analysis, and indirect comparisons. He is well published with over 80 publications in more than a dozen therapeutic areas.

Prior to joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp and Covance), Sam was a Senior Project Statistician with Eli Lilly and worked in government, academia, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Sam earned an MSc in Biostatistics from the University of Sydney and a BS in Economics and a BS in Science (Honours in Statistics) from the Australian National University.

Alison Howell, PhD, is a Senior Director who leads the Value Demonstration service within Fortrea’s Market Access Consulting and HEOR group. She has over 18 years of experience in market access consulting.

Alison provides strategic direction to projects, specializing in partnering with clients to develop and validate impactful value messages for their products. She delivers the value messages through tactical value communication tools in a variety of formats for use with internal stakeholder and external decision makers. She is well published in medical and health economic journals across many therapeutic areas and has delivered education symposia at international congresses.

Before joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp and Covance), Alison worked for seven years at Medaxial, a specialist value communications consultancy. Prior to that she worked as a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, studying molecular mechanisms of learning and memory.

Alison earned a PhD in Neuroscience and a BSc in Pharmacology from the University of Edinburgh. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (UK).

Tyler Knight, MS, is a Senior Director and real-world evidence (RWE) data scientist who co-leads the RWE & Analytics service within Fortrea’s Market Access Consulting and HEOR group. He has extensive experience writing protocols and statistical analysis plans for RWE studies and overseeing the analyses of primary and secondary data. He has over 25 years of experience using various types of data sources. He is well published with over 70 manuscripts and conference presentations in more than a dozen therapeutic areas.

Tyler’s experience with real-world data includes: administrative claims data from Medicare, Medicaid, and multiple commercial data sources; various electronic medical records sources; hospital administrative data; dialysis center data; various registries; ambulatory care survey files and NHANES from the National Center for Health Statistics; and SEER oncology data from the National Cancer Institute.

Prior to joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp and Covance), Tyler was employed by Price Waterhouse, where he served as a lead SAS programmer and statistical analyst working with large real-world government datasets.

Tyler earned an MS in Mathematics with an option in Operations Research from Miami (Ohio) University and a BS in Applied Mathematics from Franklin College.

Barbara Mascialino is a Senior Director who leads the Health Economic Modeling & HTA service within Fortrea’s Market Access Consulting and HEOR Consulting group. Her work encompasses health economic and other types of modeling across the product development cycle, as well as projects in health technology assessment (HTA), value demonstration, and real-world evidence (RWE) with over 25 years of experience in HEOR.

Barbara offers experience in cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit, cost-minimization, cost-utility, and other modeling, as well as country model adaptations. She is skilled in decision trees, Markov modeling, and Bayesian modeling. She also assists the European Commission in their evaluations to assign research fundings through the past FP7, Horizon 2020 and ongoing Horizon Europe schemes.

Before joining Fortrea, Barbara held roles in health economics, value demonstration and RWE, in industry and consulting. She has successfully implemented market access strategies globally, developing tailored health economic models, advising on evidence generation and value demonstration, and contributed to global value dossiers. With her deep experience and varied background, she brings a unique perspective, offering creative solutions to support client objectives.

Barbara earned an MSc in Physics, a PhD in Medicine, and multiple certificates in health economic modeling techniques. She also recently completed two advanced courses in artificial intelligence.