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Five things you should know about Dr. Paul Bleicher

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Dr. Paul Bleicher is chief executive of OptumLabs.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff

Dr. Paul Bleicher has worked in Boston health care for more than three decades. A dermatologist with a PhD in microbiology, he moved from medicine and research over to industry in 1992. His latest role is a mix of both worlds; he is chief executive of OptumLabs, the Cambridge-based research outpost of the big health care company Optum. There, the 61-year-old Bleicher oversees research projects targeting one of health care's biggest goals: improving patient care while controlling costs. Bleicher spoke recently about how OptumLabs is taking on this challenge — and his unrelated newfound obsession with coffee.

1. OptumLabs launched in 2013 as a partnership between Optum and the Mayo Clinic. It's an open research center that offers a huge hub of digital health care data to researchers from different organizations. The database includes some 160 million patient records — stripped of identifying information — and Bleicher said it's his staff's job to help researchers sort through it all.

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"We tend to think of ourselves as data sherpas. We're assistants. We know where the data is, what the data is, we know how to use it, so we point the way."

2. OptumLabs is involved in about 53 research projects right now, across cancer, Alzheimer's, heart abnormalities, and other conditions, Bleicher said. One recent project looked at the risk of bleeding for certain patients taking blood thinners. Another examined drops in glucose levels in diabetics.

"If you were going to put it all in one basket, our projects are all oriented toward improving value," he said. "How can we improve outcomes? How can we improve quality? How can we improve safety? And how can we do all of that while reducing the cost of care?"

3. Optum, which has about 1,000 employees in the Boston area, is a division of UnitedHealth Group, a public company that also runs the nation's largest health insurer. Yet Bleicher said OptumLabs feels more like a startup (including a funky open office with meeting spaces that look like diner booths and big moveable walls). OptumLabs has about 50 employees, about half of them based in Kendall Square.

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"In terms of having the ups and downs, the roller coaster aspect to it, it very much feels like a startup," he said. "On the other hand, the resources that we have available to us and the kinds of people we can reach because of the name Optum, because of the name UnitedHealth Group, that allows us to sort of leapfrog to places that a typical startup has to wait years before it can get to."

4. Bleicher knows the startup scene well. He helped found Phase Forward, a company that took clinical trials from paper to the Internet age. Software giant Oracle agreed to buy Phase Forward in 2010 for a handsome $685 million. Bleicher was later the chief medical officer of Humedica, a startup acquired three years ago by his current employer, Optum.

"I came from a family of entrepreneurs in the old-fashioned sense, opening stores and things like that. I think I have a little bit of it in my blood," he said. "I saw this biotech stuff as the way I could take research results and take them into clinical practice."

5. Bleicher uses the word "passion" a lot, and not just when discussing his job. These days, he is really into coffee. He orders his own beans, roasts and grinds them at home, and brews his own cup every morning with a professional-grade espresso maker. If that weren't enough, he also tops off his drink with intricate designs of roses and tulips made from poured steamed milk.

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"I always wanted to do latte art," he said. "Every day on my Facebook page I publish my latte art. The first ones were about as horrible as you would expect. . . . I've worked my way up."


Priyanka Dayal McCluskey can be reached at priyanka.mccluskey@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @priyanka_dayal.