Mark Jones, President
Mark Jones, president of Fortress Medical Systems, is a veteran of the medical device industry. Mr. Jones has 20 years experience in clinical trial and data management and information systems development. His deep clinical trials experience includes the development of clinical trial IS infrastructure for the worlds first rate-responsive pacemaker, IS development and support for a screening trial of 45,000 subjects and support for many diverse clinical trials as an independent contractor.

Mr. Jones formed Fortress Medical Systems in 1997 to meet the growing software needs of the clinical trials community. His unique clinical IS expertise, combined with years of diverse software development experience in the customer relationship management, financial services and entertainment industries, makes Mr. Jones uniquely qualified to understand the special needs of clinical software users while maintaining a robust and quality-controlled environment essential for professional software development.

Advisory Board
Tim Church
Timothy R. Church, Ph.D., received his degree in Biometry (Biostatistics) from the University of Minnesota and has been an associate professor on the faculty of the School of Public Health there since July 1996. Before that, he spent ten years in the clinical departments of Medtronic, Inc. He has been involved with the design, management and analysis of numerous clinical trials and epidemiological studies in the areas of medical devices, cancer detection, prevention, and causes, including Medtronic’s groundbreaking steroid-eluting pacing lead, activity-sensing, rate-adaptive pacemaker, and active-can defibrillator. In addition, he has been principal investigator of the Minnesota Colon Cancer Control Study, the Prostate, Lung, Colon, and Ovary Cancer Screening Trial, the National Lung Screening Trial, the National Colonoscopy Screening Trial, the Lung Screening Study, the Minnesota Brain Cancer Case-Control Study, the Minnesota-Wisconsin Men’s Health Study, the Cancer Control in Farmers Study, the Colon Cancer Family Registry. Among other topics, his publications address clinical trial methodology, cardiac screening, the design of epidemiologic studies of disease prevention and screening, models of mass screening, sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic and screening tests, and adjustment for selection bias.

Dr. Nicola Ilett, BA(Oxon) BM BCh
Dr. Ilett is a strategy and communications consultant in the healthcare sector. Since gaining her medical degrees at the University of Oxford, she has spent over 20 years working with the pharmaceutical industry. During the 1990’s, she was responsible for co-founding and developing the healthcare strategy and communications consultancy, Bullet Communications, into what was one of the UK’s leading consultancies. Bullet Communications clients included Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoWellcome, Merck, Pfizer, SmithKline Beecham and Sanofi.

In 1997, Bullet Communications was purchased by Blackwell Science (now Blackwell Publishing). Dr. Ilett spent two years working with the management team of Blackwell Science on company culture, organization structure and long-term strategic planning and joined the Board in 1999 as a Non-Executive Director.

Ross Jones
Ross is CEO and a Founding Partner of JTP Partners, a London based FSA regulated company that provides specialist investment risk advisory and oversight to institutional investors in the alternative investment area. Ross began his career in 1977 with Gerrard & National (later the Gerrard Group) and was appointed a director of the Group in 1986. His main responsibility was fixed interest market making as CEO of the Banking subsidiary, Gerrard & King Ltd, and in 1996 Ross was elected the inaugural Chairman of the London Money Market Association. Ross also served on the Executive Committee of GNI Ltd, the Derivatives Broking subsidiary, was Chairman of the Group Risk Committee and was Chairman of the Trustees of the Gerrard & National Retirement Benefit Scheme. The Gerrard Group was purchased by Old Mutual PLC in 2000 and in 2001 Ross was appointed CEO of GNI Fund Management Ltd ( later Bright Capital Ltd), a Hedge Fund of Fund business, until leaving in December 2003. In 2004 Ross joined Athanor Capital Management Ltd as a director before leaving in 2005 to set up JTP Partners LLP.