Brian C. DeBusk, Ph.D., MBA, serves as the President and CEO of DeRoyal Industries, one of the nation’s
largest privately held medical equipment and device companies, specializing in the design, manufacture,
and marketing of surgical supplies, orthopedic goods, patient protection items, and wound care
products. DeRoyal sells into over 68 countries and has been in business for over 45 years with
approximately 2,000 employees.

Dr. DeBusk also serves as the Vice Chairman of Lincoln Memorial University which has focused on
meeting the educational needs of greater Appalachia since the Reconstruction Era of the Civil War. The
university was originally founded as an undergraduate liberal arts institution, but has built its 4,500-
student enrollment on a combination of undergraduate and professional programs. The DeBusk College
of Osteopathic Medicine is the largest medical program in the state of Tennessee, and reportedly the
tenth largest program in the country with 243 students per class. The school also educates 96 Physician
Assistants per year, and the nursing program trains approximately 700 nurses per year and an additional
75 Advanced Practice Nurses, including Nurse Practitioners, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, and
Advanced Practice Mental Health Nurses. Along with its rural Appalachian focus, the school also places
a strong emphasis on Primary Care and Healthcare Provider Shortage Areas.

Dr. DeBusk is also engaged in healthcare public policy, including his 2016 appointment to the Medicare
Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). The Commission serves as a Congressional Branch Agency
with a statutory obligation to advise congress on the finance and delivery of the Medicare program. This
Commission engages in a number of health policy areas, ranging from provider payment
appropriateness and adequacy to delivery system reform to both Part B and Part D drug policy.
Dr. DeBusk began his science career nearly three decades ago at Vanderbilt University after being
invited by the lead researcher of the Surface Physics Group to pursue work following his freshman year.
In subsequent years, he also served as a research assistant in the Living State Physics group and the
Neuroscience Program. After his junior year, he was admitted into graduate school in the field of
neuroscience focused on the primary visual cortex. During this time, Dr. DeBusk worked in three key
areas: Surgical Dissection and Anatomy, Electronic Processing and Capture of Cortical Discharges, and
Digital Array Signal Processing. This is a particularly multi-disciplinary area of science since it requires a
background in biology, engineering and theoretical mathematics. Dr. DeBusk’s work in cortical
discharge sequence analysis led to a series of discoveries on how information is coded in the brain,
particularly how the brain uses global inhibitory mechanisms for gain control and the role of gammaaminobutyric acid in mediating the cross-inhibition of neurons.
This work also led to him receiving his Ph.D. in engineering only three years after completion of his undergraduate degree. As such, Dr. DeBusk
remains the youngest Ph.D. recipient in the history of Vanderbilt University. His research in the field of
neuroscience produced six publications including several first-authorship papers including The Journal of
Neurophysiology in 1997. Dr. DeBusk also attended the Goizueta Business School at Emory University,
where he graduated with the number one academic rank in his class.

After graduation, Dr. DeBusk joined DeRoyal as their head of Research and Development. During this
time, he pioneered the development of several medical products including hydrogel-coated neonatal
temperature probes that are now commonly used in hospitals throughout the country. He subsequently
served as COO and ultimately CEO of DeRoyal during which time the company launched products in
temperature monitoring, patient protection, risk management, wound care, orthopedic softgoods and
surgical accessories. He also led the development of a combined supply chain and information solution
system offered through both Owens & Minor and McKesson. This system was awarded both the
Product of the Year and the Field Sales Support of the Year by McKesson in 1999. Dr. DeBusk also holds
eleven patents in the fields of health care and information technology.

Dr. DeBusk conducts ongoing work in the field of supply chain optimization through DeRoyal’s RFIDenabled Continuum platform, with applications in DMEPOS dispensing and billing, wound care, pharmacy management, and surgery. His work focuses on establishing a digital chain of custody for key
supplies, with physical inventory management linked to patient clinical data and billing.
Dr. DeBusk has served as a professor at the University of Tennessee. As a faculty member in the
Physician Executive MBA program, Dr. DeBusk taught both Information Technology and Strategy courses
offered exclusively for physicians seeking high-quality leadership management, and business operation
skills – receiving the University of Tennessee’s Teaching Excellence Award in 1998.
As an entrepreneur in the field of health information technology, Dr. DeBusk formed iPath, which
pioneered the development of many features found in modern-day Operating Room (OR) Information
Systems including Block Scheduling, Charge by Exception, In-room Clinical Documentation, Rules-based
Charging, Tiered Preference Cards and structured Bills of Materials. Software provided by iPath allowed
providers to seamlessly manage both the clinical and financial aspects of operating room care. Under
Dr. DeBusk’s leadership, iPath had captured one out of every three new orders for operating room
systems, was ranked number one in 15 of the 18 KLAS software evaluation categories and was generally
accepted as the leader in OR systems segment. Having been purchased by General Electric (GE) in 2002,
iPath remains in existence today and its products are offered by GE Healthcare under the brand name
Centricity.

After the sale of iPath, Dr. DeBusk joined GE Healthcare serving in various senior management roles as a
General Manager of Enterprise Resource Management; as Vice President and General Manager of
Clinical Enterprise Solutions; and, as Director of Global Business Development. Dr. DeBusk worked for
GE in capacities ranging from engineering, sales and marketing and acquisitions of new businesses.
Dr. DeBusk then led the turnaround of Inobis Healthcare, an information technology company that
specialized in item catalog analysis for determining the functional equivalence of similar disposable
medical devices. After a successful restructuring of the company’s information technology
infrastructure and sales force, Inobis was sold to MedAssets of St. Louis, MO. This company remains in
existence today and is offered as part of the Vizient Information technology portfolio.
As part of his role in healthcare public policy, Dr. DeBusk has placed particular emphasis on Hospital
Wage Index reform, design and implementation of episodic payment models, unification of post-acute
care payments, risk adjustment and socio-demographic stratification methodologies, improving the
Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, and reducing prescription drug costs