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Health Progress TeamDRAFT

Gulay Topcu MD

Managing Partner, Healthcare Services 

Gulay Topcu, Sr.Consultant to “Social-i Health Progress” received her academic education as a medical doctor at the Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine (Turkey). She also holds certifications in Occupational Health & Safety, OH&S Trainer, and  Disaster Management. From graduation to September 2007, she worked in several hospitals throughout Turkey for MoH Turkey where she had extensive field experience. Between 1999-2004 She took part in different disaster fields as a field coordinator in Iran (Bam earthquake, coordination / S&R team, Field Hospital), Istanbul (British Embassy and HSBC, Sisli Sinagog terrorist bomb attack) Bolu and Izmit Earthquake (1999 – volunteer )was responsible for the organize and manage field team and coordinate communications.

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Hamza Zeytinoglu MD

Founder & President

Monitoring and delivering competencies in change initiatives in healthcare services, organizations and information systems has been Hamza’s passion for over 25 years. Initially starting out in the policy and public health domain, he participated in the reforms activities of the national Healthcare system in Turkey. Founded the Health and Social research group of Strateji MORI and moved to Boston,MA as the director of the international studies division, a JV with CMB Inc. Next he became post-doc research fellow and co-director of the Clinical Informatics department at Cambridge Health Alliance (Harvard Medical School teaching hospital), he designed and implemented first of its kind patient registries for chronic disease management, other Digital Health Services oriented databases, reporting systems, and various applications for process improvement and prevention of hospitalizations and disabilities.

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Huda El-Dosougi

Digital Health Applications

Huda has global healthcare experience spanning almost 20 years in pharma, academia and as a consultant with expertise in health systems, cross-sector analysis, integration, and value creation. She is a creative, collaborative and tenacious change agent with depth in process improvement, and solution development for implementation of effective interventions. Her professional skills spanning from various positions in healthcare services include; market access management, multi-sector data and stakeholder dynamics for value proposition, health economics & outcomes research, population health research for value based care, data curation (Informatics), information management via assimilation, synthesis, & inference, digital health innovations, digital solutions & health technology assessments, health system analysis, mapping, assessing, & re-engineering processes.

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Cebrayil Cebrayilov

Internal Med./ Nephrology – INTERACT

Cebrayil was born in 1986 in Baku. After receiving his medical doctor degree from Azerbaijan Medical University in 2004-2010, he received his Internal Medicine specialization at Hacettepe University in 2012-2017. In the last year of his specialization in internal medicine, he prepared the training and work programs of assistants, interns and trainee doctors, as the chief assistant. After working in the intensive care unit in Ankara Özer Koru Hospital between 2017 and 2018, he worked as a Nephrology senior specialist at Hacettepe University between 2018 and 2021. He is currently the lead Nephrology consultant of private Ege Hospital in Baku.

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Mesut Ceylan

Artificial Intelligence Eng.

Mesut Ceylan is a tech-savvy AI engineer with several years of experience in deploying deep learning and machine learning algorithms in Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Time Series and Signal Processing. Currently, he is completing his data science postgraduate degree at the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich. He has been specializing in the healthcare domain to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to tackle difficult problems in the field, focusing on scalable patient-oriented and data-driven innovative solutions. When away from the computer, he keeps busy exploring the amazing sceneries that nature offers and experimenting with culinary skills as a foodie.

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Khurshud Huseynova

Pulmonary Med. – INTERACT

Khurshud studied at Nakhchivan High School No. 12 (1996-2007) and then graduated from Azerbaijan Medical University (2013). Following her first years of experience, she worked as a general practitioner at Başkent University Hospital in 2016. In 2015-2017, Khurshud successfully passed the Level Determination, Foreign Language, and Medical Specialization exams and started her specialty training at Hacettepe University, Department of Chest Diseases and continues to work there to date. With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Azerbaijan in 2020, she served as a consultant physician in REACT C-19, a project of the World Health Organization, she was responsible for the follow-up of up-to-date academic publications for the entire project, evaluation of evidence for direct action, daily follow-up of the teams’ activities in the field work.

Read More

Hamza Zeytinoglu MD

Founder & President

Monitoring and delivering competencies in change initiatives in healthcare services, organizations and information systems has been Hamza’s passion for over 25 years. Initially starting out in the policy and public health domain, he participated in the reforms activities of the national Healthcare system in Turkey. Founded the Health and Social research group of Strateji MORI and moved to Boston,MA as the director of the international studies division, a JV with CMB Inc. Next he became post-doc research fellow and co-director of the Clinical Informatics department at Cambridge Health Alliance (Harvard Medical School teaching hospital), he designed and implemented first of its kind patient registries for chronic disease management, other Digital Health Services oriented databases, reporting systems, and various applications for process improvement and prevention of hospitalizations and disabilities.

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Prof. Dr. Stefano Battiston

Scientific Advisor

Stefano Battiston is associate professor in Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia. He was SNF Professor of Banking at the University of Zurich. He is a leading scholar in the field of network models of systemic risk and sustainable finance. He has made advances in the scientific understanding of the relation between financial interconnectedness, complexity and risk. He has also directed a new and growing stream of research on climate-related financial risk.
He has co-authored 50+ publications including on top journals such as PNAS, Nature Communications, Nature Climate Change and Management Science. His scientific background in complex systems, combined with 15 years of research in economics and finance, put him in a unique position to understand policy issues both from a quantitative and holistic perspective.

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Leo Halepli (1981 – 2021 R.I.P.)

Founder

Leo has had an unlikely and varied career. Growing up in an international crafts based family business in the Grand Bazaar in Turkey, he was exposed to the value of design and a no-nonsense approach to trade and business. Graduating proudly with Distinction from an MSc program at London School of Economics, he pursued PhD level research, organised NGOs, and participated in the public dialogue on Political Economy, with a focus on European economics, public policy, and business. He was a researcher in the Anglo German Foundation’s project, Developing Sustainable Growth in Europe.
An avid enthusiast of complex adaptive systems, he became particularly interested in the application of change and transformational methodologies to human systems. Since 2011, he has been associated with Applied Behavioral Technologies and the JS Riggio Institute in Princeton, NJ.

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Aykut Altın

Managing Partner / VP Communications

Aykut studied Literature at Galatasaray High School between 1975-83 and Philosophy at Bogazici University between 1983-88. He was heavily involved in theater during his high school and university years. He lived three years in the United States taking writing and television classes. He worked temporary jobs in Chicago, Charleston, and Las Vegas, while traveling.

In his advertising career, which he readily started while he was a student in 1986, he worked as a copywriter, creative director and manager at important advertising agencies in Turkey such as Merkez Ajans (Lowe Lintas), Markom (Leo Burnett), Mod Agency. He founded Altın Vanderlee Advertising Agency in 1996 and served Merck Sharp & Dohme as a main client for six years.

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Belma Öcal

VP Community Engagement

As someone who has built her life on learning with the philosophy of “Life is a journey and you learn something new in every moment” is a “life student who gets richer by sharing”, she is wide open to innovations with a passion for reading, researching and observing.
Studied in Beşiktaş High School and then in Istanbul University Biology Department, currently she is a student of IU. Sociology. She completed the ‘Human Resources Management’ program with a full grade of 4. At Yildiz University she received a Positive Psychology Education degree. Starting her business life in the pharmaceutical industry, she worked for 17 years in two global companies that have become brand names as sales executive, manager and sales trainer. She took part in the project teams in the birth of many mega-brands.

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Selin Sertel

Coach & Trainer

As a life long learner and practitioner Selin started her education with a BSc Honours degree in Chemical Engineering, in Istanbul Technical Univ. She received a Higher National Diploma in Business & Finance and Certificate in Management Studies from BTEC Exeter, UK. She holds a MSc in Industrial Biotechnology, from Liverpool John Moores Uni., UK and a MA in Applied Psychology, İstanbul Trade Uni.

Starting her career as a product manager, she then had diverse experiences in the Pharmaceuticals sector, taking on national and top level managerial roles. She then founded and acted as Leading Facilitator & Executive Coach in CoachPro_ serving corporate programs in diverse industries and sectors, focusing on organizational development with instructional system design, talent assessment and management, coaching and HR projects and university lecturer in Executive MBA on ‘ Strategic Leadership’.

Read More

Hamza Zeytinoglu MD

Founder & President

Monitoring and delivering competencies in change initiatives in healthcare services, organizations and information systems has been Hamza’s passion for over 25 years. Initially starting out in the policy and public health domain, he participated in the reforms activities of the national Healthcare system in Turkey. Founded the Health and Social research group of Strateji MORI and moved to Boston,MA as the director of the international studies division, a JV with CMB Inc. Next he became post-doc research fellow and co-director of the Clinical Informatics department at Cambridge Health Alliance (Harvard Medical School teaching hospital), he designed and implemented first of its kind patient registries for chronic disease management, other Digital Health Services oriented databases, reporting systems, and various applications for process improvement and prevention of hospitalizations and disabilities.

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Aida Aliyeva

Marketing

As an established scholar, Aida received her Bachelor degree from Azerbaijan State Economic University on International Economic Relations, followed consecutively by a Masters degree from Azerbaijan State Oil Academy on International Economic Relations and a PhD degree from the National Aviation Academy on International Economic Relations. Ms. Aliyeva furthered her studies and certifications through attendance on topics such as “Principles And Practices Of Islamic Economics And Banking”, “The sustainable development of the economy of Azerbaijan” and “Economic Growth”.

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Rza Huseynov

Country Representative

Rza graduated in 2016 from Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University (ASOIU) in Baku, Azerbaijan with a Bachelor’s degree in Petroleum Engineering. Courses of ASOIU are enough to bring up a well-equipped engineer; however, taking supplementary courses is better. Therefore, I attempted several courses such as “Drilling Engineering” and “AutoCAD”. Additionally, because of my curiosity, I worked on my own to gain new computer skills such as Excel VBA and C++. Afterwards, from 2019 to 2021, I worked at SOCAR as an engineer. In 2020 I was accepted to the Master of Science program in petroleum engineering at Heriot-Watt University where I am still a student at.

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Khurshud Huseynova

Pulmonary Med. – INTERACT

Khurshud studied at Nakhchivan High School No. 12 (1996-2007) and then graduated from Azerbaijan Medical University (2013). Following her first years of experience, she worked as a general practitioner at Başkent University Hospital in 2016. In 2015-2017, Khurshud successfully passed the Level Determination, Foreign Language, and Medical Specialization exams and started her specialty training at Hacettepe University, Department of Chest Diseases and continues to work there to date. With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Azerbaijan in 2020, she served as a consultant physician in REACT C-19, a project of the World Health Organization, she was responsible for the follow-up of up-to-date academic publications for the entire project, evaluation of evidence for direct action, daily follow-up of the teams’ activities in the field work.

Read More

Cebrayil Cebrayilov

Internal Med./ Nephrology – INTERACT

Cebrayil was born in 1986 in Baku. After receiving his medical doctor degree from Azerbaijan Medical University in 2004-2010, he received his Internal Medicine specialization at Hacettepe University in 2012-2017. In the last year of his specialization in internal medicine, he prepared the training and work programs of assistants, interns and trainee doctors, as the chief assistant. After working in the intensive care unit in Ankara Özer Koru Hospital between 2017 and 2018, he worked as a Nephrology senior specialist at Hacettepe University between 2018 and 2021. He is currently the lead Nephrology consultant of private Ege Hospital in Baku.

Read More

Selin Sertel

Coach & Trainer

As a life long learner and practitioner Selin started her education with a BSc Honours degree in Chemical Engineering, in Istanbul Technical Univ. She received a Higher National Diploma in Business & Finance and Certificate in Management Studies from BTEC Exeter, UK. She holds a MSc in Industrial Biotechnology, from Liverpool John Moores Uni., UK and a MA in Applied Psychology, İstanbul Trade Uni.

Starting her career as a product manager, she then had diverse experiences in the Pharmaceuticals sector, taking on national and top level managerial roles. She then founded and acted as Leading Facilitator & Executive Coach in CoachPro_ serving corporate programs in diverse industries and sectors, focusing on organizational development with instructional system design, talent assessment and management, coaching and HR projects and university lecturer in Executive MBA on ‘ Strategic Leadership’.

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Melda Özer

Platform Art Co-Founder

Melda graduated from Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics and then worked as an Electrical Engineer at Honeywell between 1984-85 and Teletaş between 1985-87. Between 1987-1991, she received her master’s degrees in Electronics and Business Administration at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1991, she was selected as a consultant for foreign students and continued her educational activities as Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Berlin Technical University between 1991-1993. Simultaneously she worked in the mobile phone department of Siemens company in Berlin.

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Hakan Urhan

Platform Art Co-Founder

Hakan graduated from Izmir Bornova Anatolian High School and Middle East Technical University, Department of Business Administration. Between 1988/7 and 1997/8, he worked as a middle and senior manager in the fields of sales and marketing at Unilever and UNICA-Unilever Central Asia / Turkic Republics. Then, Hakan worked in sales and marketing at Boyner Group Network Textile Merchandising Company between 1997/8-1998/2, and in the packaging factory installation projects planned to be realized in Turkic Republics within the body of Nuh Holding in 1998/6-1999/4.

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Belma Öcal

VP Community Engagement

As someone who has built her life on learning with the philosophy of “Life is a journey and you learn something new in every moment” is a “life student who gets richer by sharing”, she is wide open to innovations with a passion for reading, researching and observing.
Studied in Beşiktaş High School and then in Istanbul University Biology Department, currently she is a student of IU. Sociology. She completed the ‘Human Resources Management’ program with a full grade of 4. At Yildiz University she received a Positive Psychology Education degree. Starting her business life in the pharmaceutical industry, she worked for 17 years in two global companies that have become brand names as sales executive, manager and sales trainer. She took part in the project teams in the birth of many mega-brands.

Read More

Huda El-Dosougi

Digital Health Applications

Huda has global healthcare experience spanning almost 20 years in pharma, academia and as a consultant with expertise in health systems, cross-sector analysis, integration, and value creation. She is a creative, collaborative and tenacious change agent with depth in process improvement, and solution development for implementation of effective interventions. Her professional skills spanning from various positions in healthcare services include; market access management, multi-sector data and stakeholder dynamics for value proposition, health economics & outcomes research, population health research for value based care, data curation (Informatics), information management via assimilation, synthesis, & inference, digital health innovations, digital solutions & health technology assessments, health system analysis, mapping, assessing, & re-engineering processes.

Read More

Cebrayil Cebrayilov

Internal Med./ Nephrology – INTERACT

Cebrayil was born in 1986 in Baku. After receiving his medical doctor degree from Azerbaijan Medical University in 2004-2010, he received his Internal Medicine specialization at Hacettepe University in 2012-2017. In the last year of his specialization in internal medicine, he prepared the training and work programs of assistants, interns and trainee doctors, as the chief assistant. After working in the intensive care unit in Ankara Özer Koru Hospital between 2017 and 2018, he worked as a Nephrology senior specialist at Hacettepe University between 2018 and 2021. He is currently the lead Nephrology consultant of private Ege Hospital in Baku.

Read More

Aykut Altın

Managing Partner / VP Communications

Aykut studied Literature at Galatasaray High School between 1975-83 and Philosophy at Bogazici University between 1983-88. He was heavily involved in theater during his high school and university years. He lived three years in the United States taking writing and television classes. He worked temporary jobs in Chicago, Charleston, and Las Vegas, while traveling.

In his advertising career, which he readily started while he was a student in 1986, he worked as a copywriter, creative director and manager at important advertising agencies in Turkey such as Merkez Ajans (Lowe Lintas), Markom (Leo Burnett), Mod Agency. He founded Altın Vanderlee Advertising Agency in 1996 and served Merck Sharp & Dohme as a main client for six years.

Read More

Hamza Zeytinoglu MD

Founder & President

Monitoring and delivering competencies in change initiatives in healthcare services, organizations and information systems has been Hamza’s passion for over 25 years. Initially starting out in the policy and public health domain, he participated in the reforms activities of the national Healthcare system in Turkey. Founded the Health and Social research group of Strateji MORI and moved to Boston,MA as the director of the international studies division, a JV with CMB Inc. Next he became post-doc research fellow and co-director of the Clinical Informatics department at Cambridge Health Alliance (Harvard Medical School teaching hospital), he designed and implemented first of its kind patient registries for chronic disease management, other Digital Health Services oriented databases, reporting systems, and various applications for process improvement and prevention of hospitalizations and disabilities.

Read More

Belma Öcal

VP Community Engagement

As someone who has built her life on learning with the philosophy of “Life is a journey and you learn something new in every moment” is a “life student who gets richer by sharing”, she is wide open to innovations with a passion for reading, researching and observing.
Studied in Beşiktaş High School and then in Istanbul University Biology Department, currently she is a student of IU. Sociology. She completed the ‘Human Resources Management’ program with a full grade of 4. At Yildiz University she received a Positive Psychology Education degree. Starting her business life in the pharmaceutical industry, she worked for 17 years in two global companies that have become brand names as sales executive, manager and sales trainer. She took part in the project teams in the birth of many mega-brands.

Read More

Khurshud Huseynova

Pulmonary Med. – INTERACT

Khurshud studied at Nakhchivan High School No. 12 (1996-2007) and then graduated from Azerbaijan Medical University (2013). Following her first years of experience, she worked as a general practitioner at Başkent University Hospital in 2016. In 2015-2017, Khurshud successfully passed the Level Determination, Foreign Language, and Medical Specialization exams and started her specialty training at Hacettepe University, Department of Chest Diseases and continues to work there to date. With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Azerbaijan in 2020, she served as a consultant physician in REACT C-19, a project of the World Health Organization, she was responsible for the follow-up of up-to-date academic publications for the entire project, evaluation of evidence for direct action, daily follow-up of the teams’ activities in the field work.

Read More

Hamza Zeytinoglu MD

Founder & President

Monitoring and delivering competencies in change initiatives in healthcare services, organizations and information systems has been Hamza’s passion for over 25 years. Initially starting out in the policy and public health domain, he participated in the reforms activities of the national Healthcare system in Turkey. Founded the Health and Social research group of Strateji MORI and moved to Boston,MA as the director of the international studies division, a JV with CMB Inc. Next he became post-doc research fellow and co-director of the Clinical Informatics department at Cambridge Health Alliance (Harvard Medical School teaching hospital), he designed and implemented first of its kind patient registries for chronic disease management, other Digital Health Services oriented databases, reporting systems, and various applications for process improvement and prevention of hospitalizations and disabilities.

Read More

Aykut Altın

Managing Partner / VP Communications

Aykut studied Literature at Galatasaray High School between 1975-83 and Philosophy at Bogazici University between 1983-88. He was heavily involved in theater during his high school and university years. He lived three years in the United States taking writing and television classes. He worked temporary jobs in Chicago, Charleston, and Las Vegas, while traveling.

In his advertising career, which he readily started while he was a student in 1986, he worked as a copywriter, creative director and manager at important advertising agencies in Turkey such as Merkez Ajans (Lowe Lintas), Markom (Leo Burnett), Mod Agency. He founded Altın Vanderlee Advertising Agency in 1996 and served Merck Sharp & Dohme as a main client for six years.

Read More

Selin Sertel

Coach & Trainer

As a life long learner and practitioner Selin started her education with a BSc Honours degree in Chemical Engineering, in Istanbul Technical Univ. She received a Higher National Diploma in Business & Finance and Certificate in Management Studies from BTEC Exeter, UK. She holds a MSc in Industrial Biotechnology, from Liverpool John Moores Uni., UK and a MA in Applied Psychology, İstanbul Trade Uni.

Starting her career as a product manager, she then had diverse experiences in the Pharmaceuticals sector, taking on national and top level managerial roles. She then founded and acted as Leading Facilitator & Executive Coach in CoachPro_ serving corporate programs in diverse industries and sectors, focusing on organizational development with instructional system design, talent assessment and management, coaching and HR projects and university lecturer in Executive MBA on ‘ Strategic Leadership’.

Read More

Rza Huseynov

Country Representative

Rza graduated in 2016 from Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University (ASOIU) in Baku, Azerbaijan with a Bachelor’s degree in Petroleum Engineering. Courses of ASOIU are enough to bring up a well-equipped engineer; however, taking supplementary courses is better. Therefore, I attempted several courses such as “Drilling Engineering” and “AutoCAD”. Additionally, because of my curiosity, I worked on my own to gain new computer skills such as Excel VBA and C++. Afterwards, from 2019 to 2021, I worked at SOCAR as an engineer. In 2020 I was accepted to the Master of Science program in petroleum engineering at Heriot-Watt University where I am still a student at.

Read More
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