Our Team


Photo of Sandeep Goel

Sandeep Goel

Chief Executive Officer

Sandeep is an experienced and visionary operational CEO with 30 years of experience in building and growing early and growth-stage software and SaaS healthcare companies. He is a life-long entrepreneur and a visionary with a track record of correctly predicting market directions. Sandeep has an excellent track record of mentoring and building laser-focused, happy and harmonious teams.

Sandeep started dakota imaging at age 22 while still in college. He scaled it as the CEO/COO into a segment leader in Healthcare and a pioneer in SaaS over 14 years creating a dominant market share (60+% of market penetration) and multi-national operations. He led a successful sale of the company to WebMD (now Change Healthcare) in 2004. Over the last 15 years, Sandeep has mentored and directed executives of a number of early to growth-stage companies through Venture Capital investments.  Sandeep moved to Asheville in 2015 and has been an advisor to many Asheville entrepreneurs and businesses since his arrival.

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Katherine (Kat) Houghton, Ph.D

Co-Founder & Chief Clinical Officer

Kat started ilumivu in 2009 with Mark to support families struggling with autism and look beyond behavioral interventions to discover what other tools could be helpful. Her work with wearable sensors and mobile tacking led to the development of the ilumivu platform to increase the wellbeing of children with autism. Specializing in parent-implemented approaches, there was a desire to empower parents to take the lead in their child’s development and make evidence-based interventions available to those with fewer resources. Her behavioral interventions are still used in Argentina and Poland.

Today, ilumivu has grown into the leading solution for ambulatory data capture and insight in the clinical research market under Kat’s leadership. To date, over 70 health systems and research universities have completed hundreds of different studies using the ilumivu platform. Kat continues to work individually with adults and leads soul-tending retreats and wilderness rites of passage in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

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Mark Tuomenoksa

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Mark started ilumivu with Kat in 2009 with an equal passion to support families with children with autism and to create innovative technology to make their lives better. He went on to develop online platforms for researchers running clinical trials on autism intervention (the Early Start Denver Model at the M.I.N.D Institute), clinical psychologists providing online support to training programs for parents of children with complex needs (The Adult-Child Wellbeing Project, UK), and ultimately a platform to facilitate a multisite collaborative research projects.

Mark worked as an engineer and executive at Bell Labs Research, AT&T and Lucent Technologies for 15 years where he developed portions of the original Unix operating system kernel before starting ilumivu. He has also worked in two early-stage networking and internet security start-ups, one of which was acquired by Intel for $180M. Mark has worked in biomedical engineering where he developed algorithms for implantable devices and continues to collaborate with colleagues at MIT.

Mark has a B.S and M.S in computer science, 11 issued patents, and has studied music at Berklee College of Music. As an avid musician, Mark lives on top of a mountain where he creates both new algorithms and beautiful music.

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Bill Bates

Bill Bates

SVP, Engineering

Bill has been working in the technology field for over 25 years, with 20 of those building and managing teams in the startup SaaS space.  He spent a decade working in NYC for companies such as Worldly Investor, ScreamingMedia, CBS Marketwatch and X+1.  In 2006, Bill relocated to the Raleigh, NC area, where he continued to build technology teams for companies such as ChannelAdvisor, iContact, Appia, DigitalTurbine, and Validic.  It was at Validic that Bill first entered into the healthcare technology industry, spending the last 5 years building a remote patient monitoring application and the associated IoT infrastructure required to support it.

Bill leads and directs Engineering and the ilumivu Software and Development teams. He is located in Raleigh, NC and is a graduate of the University of Maine.

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Mike Helmeke

Chief Operating Officer

Mike is a seasoned operations and client service executive with 25 years of experience managing systems, processes, contracts, and people for companies such as IBM, WebMD (now Change Healthcare), and a number of early-stage growth companies. He was the operational executive at Dakota Imaging responsible for professional services, product delivery, and contracting, and played an instrumental role in the acquisition of Dakota by WebMD.

Mike assists clients with strategic technology planning, analyzing processes and requirements, and designing and implementing operational solutions. He leads all of ilumivu’s operations including delivery, product management, contracting, customer support, and client satisfaction. He is a proud graduate of the University of Maryland - Go Terps!

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