EXECUTIVE ADVISORY BOARD

 

Richard E. Anderson, MD, FACP

Richard E. Anderson, MD, FACP, is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Doctors Company and TDC Group. He is also a Director of The Doctors Company Foundation. Dr. Anderson was a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and is Past Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Scripps Memorial Hospital, where he served as Senior Oncologist for 18 years.

Dr. Anderson is the editor of a book, Medical Malpractice: A Physician’s Sourcebook, and the author of a number of peer-reviewed publications on medical malpractice, the Harvard Medical Practice Study, and the impact of defensive medicine.

He has been invited to address numerous medical and legal forums, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons, the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons®, a number of medical school faculties, including the medical centers of Stanford, UCLA, UCSD, Case Western, and the Cleveland Clinic, and the law schools of Columbia, Stanford, and Northwestern.

Industry presentations include the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the former Physician Insurers Association of America (PIAA), which is now MPL Association, the Professional Liability Underwriters Society (PLUS), Lloyd’s of London, Crittenden, the American Association of Health Plans, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Dr. Anderson currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice and several committees within the MPL Association. He serves as an honorary faculty member for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He also serves as a member of the Board for the Napa Valley Community Foundation and as a member of the Board of Directors for the OLE Health Foundation.

Dr. Anderson is the former Chair of the MPL Association and served on its Board for 10 years. He is a recipient of the Peter Sweetland Award of Excellence for his contributions to the MPL Association, the insurance community, and the healthcare professions.

He is also the first recipient of the PLUS Foundation’s Award for Outstanding Leadership in Healthcare Professional Liability.

After graduating from Stanford Medical School, Dr. Anderson completed his internship and residency at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Hospital, followed by his postdoctoral fellowship in medical oncology at Stanford. He received his bachelor of arts degree magna cum laude from Yale College.

 

Robert Wachter, MD

Robert Wachter, MD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a thought leader in organization of care, quality, patient safety, and digital health.  

Dr. Wachter, who has published more than 300 articles and 6 books, is the best-selling author of The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age. He is currently writing a new book on the impact of AI on healthcare, to be published in 2026. He coined the term “hospitalist” in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article and is generally regarded as the academic leader of the hospitalist movement. Dr. Wachter is Past President of the Society of Hospital Medicine. He is Chair of the Patient Safety Committee and a Member of the Technology and Cybersecurity Committee at The Doctors Company. Dr. Wachter also serves as Vice Chair of The Doctors Company Foundation Board of Directors.

 

Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD

Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD, is a clinician-educator and Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is the Site Director of the internal medicine clerkship at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, where he sees patients and teaches medical students and residents in the emergency department, urgent care clinic, inpatient wards, outpatient clinic, and morning report. Dr. Dhaliwal studies, writes, and speaks about how doctors think—how they make diagnoses, how they develop diagnostic expertise, and how they interface with technology to augment their thinking.

Dr. Dhaliwal is a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators and the UCSF Department of Medicine Council of Master Clinicians. In 2012 he was profiled in the New York Times article “Could a Computer Outthink This Doctor?”

In 2025, he was the first physician to go head-to-head against Dr. CaBot—an AI system trained on the complete 100-year archive of the New England Journal of Medicine’s Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital—in a case-solving challenge.

From 2013–2018 he was a writer for the Wall Street Journal’s “The Experts: Health Care” report. Dr. Dhaliwal has been a podcast guest on Freakonomics, M.D., The Clinical Problem Solvers, The Curbsiders, and many other medical podcasts. He has received dozens of teaching awards, including the 2019 UCSF Osler Distinguished Teacher Award and the 2015 national Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award.

Dr. Dhaliwal has published over 175 articles and has been a visiting professor at over 50 universities across the United States, and in China, Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland.

 

Michael Pfeffer, MD

Michael Pfeffer, MD, is the Senior Vice President, Chief Information and Digital Officer, and Associate Dean for Stanford Health Care and Stanford University School of Medicine, where he oversees Technology and Digital Solutions to support research, teaching, and patient care. He is also a Clinical Professor of Medicine and practices as a hospitalist, teaching medical students and residents. Previously, Dr. Pfeffer served as the Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at UCLA Health Sciences, where he led one of the largest electronic health record launches and helped earn multiple national awards for health information technology (IT) innovation. He has published over 60 articles, lectured worldwide, and has been recognized as a leading physician CIO and a great leader in healthcare by Becker’s Hospital Review.

 

Daniel Hashimoto, MD, MTR

Daniel Hashimoto, MD, MTR, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at Perelman School of Medicine and in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Senior Fellow in the Penn Institute for Biomedical Information and faculty member in the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory—Penn Engineering’s robotics center. Dr. Hashimoto is Director of the Penn Computer Assisted Surgery and Outcomes (PCASO) Laboratory, a multidisciplinary group of clinicians and computer scientists that aims to translate advances in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to surgical care and to promote the integrated education of clinicians, engineers, and data scientists.

Dr. Hashimoto earned his doctor of medicine (MD) degree and master of science (MS) degree in translational research at the University of Pennsylvania, completed his surgical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and completed a research fellowship in surgical artificial intelligence and innovation at MGH and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He completed a clinical fellowship in foregut surgery and comprehensive flexible endoscopy at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. Dr. Hashimoto’s research has garnered awards from organizations such as the American Surgical Association, the Association for Surgical Education, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, and the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. His work has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, and the Annals of Surgery. Dr. Hashimoto serves on the editorial boards of the Annals of Surgery, Computer-Assisted Surgery, PLOS Digital Health, and the Journal Oversight Committee of Academic Medicine. He is Editor of the textbook Artificial Intelligence in Surgery: Understanding the Role of AI in Surgical Practice.

 

Michelle Mello, PhD, JD

Michelle Mello, PhD, JD, is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University Schools of Medicine and Law. Dr. Mello conducts empirical research into issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and health policy. She is the author of nearly 300 articles on artificial intelligence (AI), medical liability and patient safety, ethical and legal issues arising in biomedical research, and other topics. Dr. Mello is Co-Director of the Healthcare Ethical Assessment Lab for Artificial Intelligence (HEAL-AI) at Stanford University, which conducts ethical assessments of AI tools proposed for deployment at Stanford Health Care facilities.

The recipient of a number of awards for her research, Dr. Mello was elected to the National Academy of Medicine at the age of 40. From 2000 to 2014, she was a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she directed the School’s Program in Law and Public Health.

Dr. Mello holds a juris doctor (JD) degree from the Yale Law School, a doctor of philosophy (PhD) degree in health policy and administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a master of philosophy in liberal arts (MPhil) degree from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a bachelor of arts (BA) degree from Stanford University.