
Dr. Stephen D. Barnhill
Chairman and CEO of Doc’s Place International, Inc. and Apollon Formularies, Inc.
Dr. Stephen D. Barnhill is a physician, Fellowship trained in Laboratory Medicine and Board Certified by the American Board of Bioanalysis. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Doc’s Place International, Inc., the first Global Center of Excellence for Medical Cannabis Therapy in Negril, Jamaica, as well as Chairman and CEO of Apollon Formularies, Inc., the parent company of Apollon Formularies Jamaica, Ltd.
Dr. Barnhill has most recently been Founder, Chairman and CEO of a U.S. publicly-traded international biotech company, which he took from inception to profitability. In addition, he was founder, Chairman and CEO of BCL laboratories, LLC with operations in southeastern U.S. which was acquired by Corning–MetPath, now Quest Diagnostics, the largest clinical laboratory in the world. Dr. Barnhill served as a Medical Director for Quest Diagnostics for approximately five years after the acquisition. He was also founder, Chairman and CEO of National Medical Specialty Labs which was acquired by Horus Therapeutics Inc.
Dr. Barnhill is a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning (pattern recognition algorithms) and an inventor on more than 40 patents including neural networks and support vector machines including the Hallmark SVM-RFE technique now cited by more than 10,000 publications. His patents were part of the intellectual property portfolio that won 1st Place out of 1600 publicly-traded companies and was awarded the MICO award from MDB Capital for the most disruptive intellectual property portfolio. Dr. Barnhill’s neural network patents were acquired by Johnson & Johnson. He is also an inventor on patents related to laboratory developed tests and tumor markers. His work includes expertise in the clinical laboratory including clinical chemistry, hematology, microbiology, blood banking, toxicology and immunology, as well as, diagnostic test development relating to cancers of the prostate, pancreas, breast and ovary, cytogenetics, flow cytometry, FISH and imaging in digital mammography, funduscopic analysis of macular degeneration (AMD) and was part of the team that launched the first iPhone app using SVM for melanoma detection.
Dr. Barnhill has negotiated and executed deals with many companies including Pfizer, Corning-Metpath, Quest Diagnostics, Clarient (now GE Healthcare), LabCorp, NeoGenomics, Abbot, Bruker and others. He has published many peer reviewed papers with academics including those from MD Anderson Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, Stanford University Medical Center and others. He is a frequently invited speaker to medical conferences in the U.S. and internationally. He has raised millions of dollars in startup and ongoing financing for both private and public companies.
Dr. Barnhill is or has been a Member or Fellow of the American College of Physician Inventors, the American College of International Physicians, the American Medical Association, the American College of Physician Executives, the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, the American College of Managed Care Medicine, the Association of Clinical Scientists, the American Society of Contemporary Medicine and Surgery, the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics, the Southern Medical Society, the American Federation for Clinical Research, the National Federation of Catholic Physicians and the Society of Cannabis Clinicians.