Connecting Americans to their Healthcare

Speaker Biographies

David Ahern, Ph.D.
David Ahern, Ph.D., is the national program director of the Health e-Technologies Initiative, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program office based at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston (Partners Health Care System). Dr. Ahern also is assistant professor of psychology (psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School.

From 1992-2000, Dr. Ahern was the founder and director of the Behavioral Medicine Service at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) wherein he provided clinical care, mentoring of interns and residents, clinical research and consultative services. Dr. Ahern transferred his primary hospital appointment from MGH to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2000 to continue his collaborative research program with Arthur Barsky, M.D., within the department of psychiatry.

Dr. Ahern has had a distinguished career in clinical research in behavioral medicine and the development of behaviorally based, eHealth applications for health promotion and chronic disease management. He has published over 75 original articles in the areas of chronic pain, psychosocial aspects of musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular behavioral medicine and eHealth research. He has held investigator roles on numerous research grants and contracts funded by multiple agencies including the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Dr. Ahern also holds the position of senior scientist consultant for Abacus Management Technologies based in Rhode Island.

Tim Andrews
Tim Andrews is currently managing director of the ALS Therapy Development Foundation (TDF), a non-profit, biotechnology research institute which has pioneered an industrialized drug development and validation model focused on addressing the translational gap between basic research and clinical studies.

In addition, Tim spends part of his time working with clients in health care and life sciences at the intersection of technology, strategy and culture. Tim is a visionary and has been inventing and commercializing technologies for more than 25 years. He is a recognized expert in health care and life sciences, wireless broadband technologies, Internet technologies, simulation, databases and advanced text processing. Tim also has deep understanding of cognitive psychology, behavioral economics and education that enable him to provide the ability to create sustainable improvements in institutions large and small in addition to technological insight.

Prior to TDF, Tim held CTO and senior management positions with Zurich Financial Services, Viant Corporation, DiamondCluster International and Computer Sciences Corporation. Tim is on the Personal Health Technology Council of the Connecting for Health program, remains involved in leading edge organizations and is currently an advisor to several innovative companies, including Ambient Devices and Resilient.

Corey Angst, Ph.D.
Corey Angst, Ph.D., is a research assistant professor in the decision and information technologies department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. He is also the associate director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems. His interests are in the transformational effect of information technology in the health care industry and information technology usage in the health care supply chain.

Dr. Angst’s recent research explores barriers and constraints related to the introduction of disruptive health information technologies such as the electronic medical record and personal health records.

In January 2005, Dr. Angst co-founded the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland, College Park. As associate director of CHIDS, Dr. Angst is responsible for executing the vision for CHIDS, which is to "advance the science of technology implementation and decision analysis in the health care sector and better understand health information technology impacts at all levels, including industry, organizational, provider, and individual outcomes."

In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, Dr. Angst has a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.B.A from the University of Delaware.

Zoë Baird
Zoë Baird is president of the Markle Foundation, a private philanthropy that focuses on using information and communications technologies to address critical public needs, particularly in the areas of health care and national security.

Ms. Baird's career spans business, government and academia. She has been senior vice president and general counsel of Aetna, Inc., a senior visiting scholar at Yale Law School, counselor and staff executive at General Electric, and a partner in the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers.

She was associate general counsel to President Jimmy Carter and an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice. She served on President Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1993-2001 and on the International Competition Policy Advisory Committee to the Attorney General. Ms. Baird served on the Technology & Privacy Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Defense in 2003-2004 and Co-Chairs with Jim Barksdale the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.

Ms. Baird participates in the Steering Committee of Markle's Connecting for Health initiative, and is on a number of non-profit and corporate boards, including the Chubb Corporation, Boston Properties and the Brookings Institution.

Cynthia Baur, Ph.D.
Cynthia Baur, Ph.D., is the director of the Division of Health Communication and Marketing, National Center for Health Marketing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

She was formerly the senior health communication and e-health advisor in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP). At ODPHP, she managed the development of the report, "Expanding the Reach and Impact of Consumer E-health Tools."

She is the chair of the HHS Health Literacy Workgroup and the Healthy People 2010 Health Communication Focus Area Workgroup. Dr. Baur holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of California, San Diego.

Adam Bosworth
Adam Bosworth is a vice president at Google, Inc. He was previously VP Engineering at BEA Systems and was responsible for the engineering efforts for BEA's Framework Division. Prior to joining BEA, Mr. Bosworth co-founded Crossgain, a software development firm acquired by BEA in 2001. Crossgain's "Cajun" project developed into BEA's WebLogic Workshop product.

At BEA, Bosworth also developed the Alchemy intelligent caching framework in a team consisting of Bosworth and his son, Alex. Alchemy was a software layer used by Internet Explorer to communicate with a corresponding software layer on the web server allowing both upload and download data to be cached when the browser was disconnected from the network. Architecturally, this approach is similar to the design of the Google Web Accelerator although that product only performs server-side caching, rather than client-side caching.

Known as one of the pioneers of XML, Mr. Bosworth previously held various senior management positions at Microsoft, including General Manager of the WebData group, a team focused on defining and driving XML strategy. While at Microsoft, he was responsible for designing and delivering the Microsoft Access PC database product (codenamed 'Cirrus') and assembling and driving the team that developed Internet Explorer 4.0's HTML engine (codenamed 'Trident').

Prior to Microsoft, Mr. Bosworth worked for Borland where he developed the Quattro spreadsheet application following Borland's acquisition of Analytica in 1985— founded by Mr. Bosworth and Eric Michelman, and managed by Brad Silverberg.

Patricia Brennan, RN, Ph.D.
Patricia Brennan, RN, Ph.D., is the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor, School of Nursing and College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Following seven years of clinical practice in critical care nursing and psychiatric nursing, Dr. Brennan held several academic positions. She developed the ComputerLink, an electronic network designed to reduce isolation and improve self-care among home care patients.

Dr. Brennan currently directs HeartCare, a WWW-based tailored information and communication service that helps home-dwelling cardiac patients recover faster, and with fewer symptoms.

Dr. Brennan is national program director of Project HealthDesign, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded initiative designed to stimulate the next generation of personal health records.

Dr. Brennan is fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (1991), a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (1993) and an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (2002).

Dr. Brennan received a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ronald Brimmer
Ron Brimmer was part of the initial focus team to help develop My HealtheVet in 2001. Two years later, he started using the pilot site, which was useful in tracking his medical care, particularly his progress reports and test results performed at the hospital. Since 1978, Mr. Brimmer he has been a patient at the Veterans Hospital in Washington, D.C.

In 1974, Mr. Brimmer enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was honorably discharged in 1978. After the Marine Corps, he worked at the Mayflower Hotel, where he was the assistant director of security, receiving awards for Employee of the Month 1989 and Year 1990 and Security Specialist of the Year Washington D.C. 1990. In 1992, he worked for the FDIC as an administrative assistant to five different section chiefs and attended college in the fields of security and computers.

Mr. Brimmer has spoken at other engagements regarding My HealtheVet, and today he lives with his wife in Annapolis, M.D.

Helen Burstin, M.D., M.P.H.
Helen Burstin, M.D., M.P.H. has served as the director of the Center for Primary Care, Prevention and Clinical Partnerships at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) since January 2000. The Center expands the knowledge base for clinical providers and patients and translates new knowledge and systems improvement into primary care and prevention. Dr. Burstin also oversees all health information technology initiatives at AHRQ.

Prior to her appointment at AHRQ, Dr. Burstin was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the director of Quality Measurement at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. While in this position, she served as chair of the Medical Staff Executive Committee on Quality Assurance/Risk Management and developed the hospital’s computerized Quality Measurement Reporting System.

Dr. Burstin is also president of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) Foundation and a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of La Clínica del Pueblo, a free Latino clinic in Washington D.C. where she is a volunteer staff physician.

Dr. Burstin is a board-certified, general internist and health services researcher, and a graduate of the State University of New York at Upstate College of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Burstin completed a residency in primary care internal medicine at Boston City Hospital. After residency, she completed fellowship training in General Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Harry Cayton
Harry Cayton is national director for Patients & the Public at the Department of Health where he advises ministers, senior officials and the NHS on the involvement of patients and the public, on improving patients experience and on building a patient centred health service. He continues to work one day a week in the voluntary sector to keep in touch with service user’s issues and priorities.

Mr. Cayton directed the Choice, Responsiveness and Equity consultation in the autumn of 2003, which resulted in the strategy document Building on the Best (2003). He chaired the Patient Charges for NHS Dentistry Working Group (2004), the Expert Group on the Regulation of Cosmetic Surgery (2005) and the Expert Panel on the Review of Patient and Public Involvement (2006). He is chair of the Strategic Management Board of the Expert Patient Programme, chair of the Care Record Development Board and chair of the Ministerial Taskforce on the Summary Care Record.

Before becoming national director for Patients and the Public, Mr. Cayton was chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society (1992-2003). From 1981 -1992 he was Director of the National Deaf Children’s Society.

Mr. Cayton was awarded the OBE in 2001. He was holder of a Canadian Commonwealth Fellowship in 1986, a Honorary Life Member of the European Federation of Deaf Children’s Associations (1992), and is a Distinguished Graduate of the University of Ulster 2003.

Susan Christensen
Susan Christensen is a senior advisor at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with the responsibility for initiatives to address legal and privacy issues in the development and implementation of interoperable health information systems.

Ms. Christensen came to AHRQ from BearingPoint, where she provided counsel, coordination and support for business related to the 2003 Medicare reform law, federal health information technology initiatives and other health care-related activities. Prior to that, she served as Senior Health Policy Counsel in the personal office of U.S. Representative Nancy Johnson (CT-05), chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, for more than three years. She staffed the Medicare conference and was an advisor on issues in Medicare, Medicaid, long-term care, prescription drugs, information technology and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid oversight and reform. Ms. Christensen also had primary responsibility for drafting Chairman Johnson’s legislation to create a national officer to provide federal leadership in the health information technology (HIT) field, one of the first bills on HIT introduced in the U.S. House.

Before joining Rep. Johnson’s staff, Ms. Christensen had a private consulting practice, advising business and consumer clients on state and federal health care programs. In 1997, Ms. Christensen completed a one-year fellowship with the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, during which she did research and policy development on managed care and long-term care. Before that, she practiced law for many years.

Carolyn Clancy, M.D.
Carolyn Clancy, M.D., was appointed director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on February 5, 2003. Prior to her appointment, Dr. Clancy had served as AHRQ's Acting Director since March 2002 and previously was Director of the Agency's Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research (COER).

Dr. Clancy, who is a general internist and health services researcher, is a graduate of Boston College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Following clinical training in internal medicine, Dr. Clancy was a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond before joining AHRQ in 1990.

Dr. Clancy holds an academic appointment at George Washington University School of Medicine (clinical associate professor, Department of Medicine) and serves as senior associate editor, Health Services Research. Dr. Clancy has served on multiple editorial boards (currently Annals of Family Medicine, American Journal of Medical Quality, and Medical Care Research and Review). Dr. Clancy has published widely in peer reviewed journals and has edited or contributed to seven books. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and was elected a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2004.

Her major research interests include various dimensions of health care quality and patient, including women's health, primary care, access to care services and the impact of financial incentives on physicians' decisions.

Gary Claxton
Gary Claxton is a vice president and the director of the Health Care Marketplace Project at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The Project provides information, research and analysis about trends in the health care market and about policy proposals that relate to health insurance reform and our changing health care system.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Mr. Claxton worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for Health Care Research and Policy at Georgetown University, where his research focused on health insurance and health care financing.

From March 1997 until January 2001, Mr. Claxton as the deputy assistant secretary for Health Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he advised the secretary on health policy issues including: improving access to health insurance, Medicare reform, administration of Medicaid, financing of prescription drugs, expanding patient rights and health care privacy.

Other previous positions include serving as a consultant for the Lewin Group, a special deputy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, an insurance analyst for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and a health policy analyst for the American Association of Retired Persons.

Kelly Cronin
Kelly Cronin is director of the Office of Programs and Coordination in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Ms. Cronin is responsible for ensuring complete integration of all efforts across the Office of the National Coordinator and supports the dissemination and adoption of the Administration’s policy on health information technology.

Prior to this assignment, Ms. Cronin was senior advisor to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2004-2005, she led initiatives to incentivize electronic health record adoption in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. She also served as the executive director of the Council for the Application of Health Information Technology in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Ms. Cronin directed patient safety initiatives at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and coordinated the drafting of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act while working for the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee.

Ms. Cronin is a lecturer in the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University and a doctoral candidate in the School of Public Health and Health Services.

Jodi Daniel
In January 2006, Jodi Daniel was appointed director of the Office of Policy and Research (OPR) in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In this role, she is responsible for considering the policy implications of key health information technology activities and coordinating health information policy discussions within HHS. She had served as Acting Director of OPR since October 2005.

Ms. Daniel developed an expertise in legal issues and HHS’ strategies regarding health information technology, prior to assuming this position with ONC, as the senior counsel for Health Information Technology in the Office of the General Counsel of HHS. She was responsible for coordinating all legal advice regarding health information technology for HHS, and was the lead attorney for ONC.

As an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Office of General Counsel, she was a member of the core team responsible for developing policies and drafting the final HIPAA Privacy Rule. Before joining HHS, Ms. Daniel was a health care associate at Ropes & Gray. She also worked at MetLife as an internal management consultant and a health benefits consultant.

Ms. Daniel earned a law degree from Georgetown University and a master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins University.

Carol Diamond, M.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Diamond heads the Health Program of the Markle Foundation. The Health Program is widely recognized as one of the nation's most innovative philanthropic efforts to improve the ability of patients, consumers, and clinicians to use information technology to improve health and health care in the United States. A central initiative of the Health Program is Connecting for Health. Chaired by Dr. Diamond, this public-private collaborative of more than 100 diverse organizations and institutions focuses on accelerating nationwide electronic health information exchange based on the use of common open standards and information policies. The Connecting for Health approach is rooted in the belief that technological solutions for health information should be shaped by core values, including achieving medical excellence, fostering patient participation in health care, and protecting personal privacy.

Dr. Diamond, widely regarded as a leading expert on pragmatic strategies for health IT adoption, has testified before Congress on behalf of the Markle Foundation and works with various government agencies and bodies. Dr. Diamond played a role in the development of www.KatrinaHealth.org, along with the federal government and the health information technology community, to establish a free and secure online service to connect physicians and pharmacists caring for hurricane evacuees with electronic information about their prescription medication history.

Before joining the Markle Foundation, Dr. Diamond was president of U.S. Quality Algorithms® (USQA®), Aetna U.S. Healthcare's performance measurement affiliate. As USQA's president, she led a 400-employee business unit that developed and deployed sophisticated clinical and financial information products and services. Prior to joining USQA, Dr. Diamond was a consultant for Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Diamond sits on the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Public Advisory Board, co-Chairs the Interoperability Workgroup for the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), and is a member of the IPRO advisory board for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Doctor's Office Quality-Information Technology (DOQ-IT) project in New York. Dr. Diamond earned her dual B.A./M.D. at the Medical School of the State University of New York at Brooklyn and her master's degree in public health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey of Rutgers University.

Dr. Diamond is quoted widely in the media, including in reports by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and the Economist, as well as on NPR.

Eric Dishman
Eric Dishman, general manager of Intel's Health Research & Innovation Group, is responsible for driving worldwide R&D on new health and wellness information technologies across the continuum of care from hospital to home. Mr. Dishman has led Intel's pioneering research on home health technologies for families struggling with cognitive decline, cancer and cardiovascular disease since 1999.

Mr. Dishman currently leads an integrated team of social scientists, designers and systems engineers. His group's research is focused on in-home sensor network technologies for assessing and assisting people who are dealing with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Mr. Dishman serves as national chair of the Center for Aging Services Technologies, a cross-industry advocacy group to accelerate technology R&D for aging-in-place. He is a nationally known author and speaker, and advises numerous companies, universities and Congressional members on assistive technologies, telemedicine and home health care.

David Douglas, M.D.
David M. Douglas, M.D., is the chief health informatics officer for the Portland VA Medical Center (VAMC). Dr. Douglas is a psychiatrist and is board-certified in both adult and geriatric psychiatry.

The Portland VAMC is the site of a VA pilot project, where over 5,000 veterans can access their medical records online. The Portland VAMC is a mecca of information technology innovation, including a first-of-its-kind project to allow patients to self-enter past medical history and participate in medication reconciliation via self-service kiosks similar to those used for airline flight check-in.

Stephen Downs
Stephen Downs is a senior program officer and deputy director of the Health Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Mr. Downs’ program work has focused on health IT and he is the principal architect of the Foundation’s strategies and programs related to public health informatics, health information exchange and personal health records.

Since 2003, he has also led the team responsible the development and operation of the Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio, which supports future-oriented efforts aimed at promoting fundamental breakthroughs and novel approaches to health and health care.

From 1994 to 2002, Mr. Downs was a program officer and then director of the Technology Opportunities Program in National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. During his tenure, the program provided nearly $200 million in matching grants to public sector and non-profit organizations for innovative demonstration projects that used information and communication technologies to enhance the delivery of services, such as health, education and public safety, to underserved communities across the United States.

Prior to joining NTIA, Mr. Downs was a research fellow at the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, in the U.S. Public Health Service. Mr. Downs holds a Master of Science in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Applied physics from Yale University.

Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson is author of the blog, "Release 0.9" for CNET Networks. Previously, she had co-owned EDventure Holdings and written and edited the newsletter, "Release 1.0" since 1983. From 1998-2000, she was chairman of ICANN, the agency that sets policy for the Domain Name System.

At "Release 0.9," and in her private investment activities, Ms. Dyson focuses on emerging technologies, emerging companies and emerging markets. Among the topics she has covered for "Release 1.0" recently is the potential impact of information technology on health care. Her angel investments include Medstory, a start-up search company for medical information; Ovusoft, a user-centric fertility software service; and Voxiva, which collects (mostly health) data by cell phone and manages and monitors it, mostly in developing countries. Previously, she was an investor in and sat on the board of Medscape. In 2005, Dyson led CNET Networks' Personal Health Information workshop.

By 1994, Ms. Dyson had already explored the impact of the Net on intellectual property. In 1997, she wrote a book on the impact of the Net on individuals' lives, Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age.

Ms. Dyson is also an active player in discussions and policy-making concerning the Internet and society, and is a member of the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. A variety of government officials worldwide turn to her for advice on Internet policy issues.

Vicki Estrin
Vicki Estrin is the program manager for the regional informatics activities at the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health. She focuses on governance, operations planning, security/privacy/ legal and other policy-related issues.

Ms. Estrin serves as one of the Project Management Office leaders for the MidSouth eHealth Alliance HIE project - a project funded through Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the state of Tennessee. In this role, she has implemented the Connecting for Health Policy and Legal Framework and worked with the community to develop the governance structure. Ms. Estrin provides technical assistance to other organizations involved in HIE through AHRQ’s National Resource Center on an ad hoc request basis. She has worked with projects in Ohio, Georgia, Illinois and Louisiana.

Ms. Estrin trained as an industrial engineer at Georgia Tech. After several years as a management engineer at Vanderbilt, she co-led a major performance improvement initiative for the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.

Returning to Nashville to work for a for-profit health system, Vicki advanced within her firm and directed activities in two consulting practices focused on benchmarking/productivity management and quality management. She directed R&D efforts to assist rural health care facilities with cost management strategies.

Ted Eytan, M.D., M.S., M.P.H.
Ted Eytan, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., is the medical director of Health Informatics and Web Services, in the Quality/Informatics Division of Group Health. Dr. Eytan is board certified in family practice and has been with Group Health since July 2000.

Dr. Eytan works closely with other physicians and technologists at Group Health to bring members useful information and decision-making health tools, to ensure that patients have an active role in their own health care. His particular interests are preventive care and supporting the health and diversity of the communities that Group Health serves.

Dr. Eytan attended medical school at the University of Arizona. He received his master's of public health degree from the University of California, Berkeley and his masters of science, health services degree from the University of Washington. Dr. Eytan completed his residency training at Group Health and his fellowship training in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Washington in 2000.

Adoph Falcón, M.P.P.
Adolph Falcón, M.P.P, is vice president for Science and Policy for the National Alliance for Hispanic Health (the Alliance). Mr. Falcón oversees the research and policy portfolio of the Alliance. He played a leading role in the landmark Disadvantaged Minority Health Improvement Act of 1990, and most recently has been active in protection of patient rights under Executive Order 13166, improving access for limited English proficient (LEP) persons, health information technology policy and regulatory oversight of the Medicare Modernization Act.

Mr. Falcón has served as principal investigator for initiatives funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others. He currently serves as principal investigator for Proyecto Ciencia (project science), an NIH-funded effort that is fostering new Hispanic research talent and bringing the best in science to Hispanic health consumers.

Prior to joining the Alliance, Mr. Falcón was editor-in-chief of the "Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy," a senior associate at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, a grants specialist for the Bank of Boston philanthropy division and a program director at the Hill Health Center.

He received his master of public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and his bachelor of arts from Yale University.

Paul Feldman
Paul Feldman manages the Health Privacy Project's Washington, D.C. office and is responsible for convening the Consumer Coalition for Health Privacy. He serves as co-chair of the Confidentiality, Privacy and Security Workgroup of the American Health Information Community, and as a member of the Workgroup on Consumer Authentication and Health Information Exchange of Connecting for Health.

Mr. Feldman was most recently director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of People with AIDS and also served as public affairs director. He was policy coordinator for Lifelong AIDS Alliance, finance and policy director for Chicken Soup Brigade, founding co-chair of the Seattle HIV/AIDS Care and Prevention Planning Council, member of ACT UP/Seattle and its representative to the ACT NOW coalition of ACT UPs from around the country.

Lisa Fenichel, M.P.H.
Lisa Fenichel, M.P.H., is an e-health consumer advocate at Health Care For All (HCFA) of Massachusetts. In this capacity, she works closely with the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative’s pilot project, which is computerizing and connecting health records within three Massachusetts communities.

Ms. Fenichel also sits on the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium’s federal Health Information Privacy and Security Collaboration grant, studying the practices that prevent and promote health information exchange. In addition, she participates in workgroups of the Markle Foundation and the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Before working at HCFA, Ms. Fenichel spent many years as chief of consumer protection at the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, the state agency which licenses and disciplines physicians, and as a community consumer advocate for the U.S. Office of the Attorney General.

Lisa received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a M.P.H. from Boston University’s School of Public Health.

Stefanie Fenton
Stefanie Fenton is a senior business leader in Intuit's new Healthcare Products Group, where her responsibilities include developing the product offering strategy, marketing strategy and organizational structures to deliver on those strategic goals. Ms. Fenton has worked in the health care industry with hospitals, health plans, pharmaceutical companies and technology firms for more than14 years.

Before Intuit, Ms. Fenton was the director of New Product Development at BENU, a venture-backed start-up that managed joint ventures for health insurance companies to bring innovative insurance options to cost-conscious, middle-sized companies. Prior to BENU, she worked in the Strategic Services Group at Accenture and at Epocrates.

Ms. Fenton holds an M.B.A and master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley and B.A. from Wesleyan University.

She received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in health communication research.

Edward Fotsch, M.D.
Edward Fotsch, M.D., is CEO of Medem Inc., the corporation founded in 1999 by the nation’s medical societies and the American Medical Association (AMA) to deliver the premier secure, online physician communications network in the country, and the iHealthRecord, a personal health record for all Americans.

Dr. Fotsch has more than 10 years’ experience in the clinical practice of medicine and was the founding chairman of a Northern California physician group with 200+ physician members. Since 1995, Dr. Fotsch has led organizations that provide Internet-based health care applications, networks and communications services.

Dr. Fotsch authored Planning and Implementing Your Healthcare Internet Strategy, published in 1996, and has also been published repeatedly in the area of online professional liability, including a chapter on eHealth liability in Medical Malpractice, A Physician’s Sourcebook, in 2005.

Dr. Fotsch is also a member of several national health information technology (HIT) committees and panels including, the JCAHO HIT Committee, the HL7 PHR Committee and the Markle Foundation’s Connecting for Health Personal Health Technology Committee.

Mark Frisse, M.D.
Mark Frisse, M.D., M.B.A, M.Sc., is the accenture professor of biomedical informatics and director of Regional Informatics Programs at Vanderbilt University. He is responsible for coordinating regional, state and national projects aimed at the application of information technology to advance patient care.

Prior to assuming his position at Vanderbilt, Dr. Frisse was vice president in First Consulting Group’s Clinical Transformation Practice. Prior to joining First Consulting Group, Dr. Frisse was chief medical officer and vice president at the Express Scripts. He served as general manager for their Practice Patterns Science subsidiary and participated in the formation of RxHub. He was also responsible for the Express Scripts’ DrugDigest consumer web site.

A board certified internist, Dr. Frisse was a professor of medicine and associate dean at Washington University School of Medicine and served as academic director of the Health Services Executive MBA program at the John M. Olin School of Business.

Dr. Frisse received his M.D. and M.B.A from Washington University and received a master’s degree in medical computer science from Stanford University.

Francesa Gany, M.D., M.S.
Francesca Gany, M.D., M.S., is the founder and director of the Center for Immigrant Health, New York University School of Medicine. The Center for Immigrant Health is a network of over 1,000 community members, social scientists and health care and public health professionals working with the diverse immigrant groups in New York and nationally.

Dr. Gany has extensive background in immigrant health research, curriculum development, education and program and policy development. Dr. Gany has served as the principal investigator on a number of pioneering immigrant health projects in the areas of language access and cultural competence, technology and immigrant health, insurance and access, tuberculosis, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Her research has led to the development of long-term policy and programmatic changes in immigrant health. Dr. Gany has published and lectured widely on immigrant health issues and has facilitated the dissemination of model projects nationally.

Dr. Gany holds a B.S. in biology from Yale University, an M.D. from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and an M.S. in health policy from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Archelle Georgiou, M.D.
Archelle Georgiou, M.D., executive vice president of Strategic Relations, Optum/UnitedHealth Group joined UnitedHealthcare in 1995, and was named the company's chief medical officer in 1999. Leveraging UnitedHealthcare’s investments in disease management, data and analytics, Dr. Georgiou designed the company's care coordination medical management program - a radical departure from other industry models, making the launch of Care Coordination a groundbreaking event and one of the biggest news stories in 1999.

In January 2002, Care Coordination was repositioned from a core operational function within UnitedHealthcare to a separate Care Management business within the Specialized Care Services division of UnitedHealth Group. As the chief executive officer, Dr. Georgiou was responsible for the financial, operational and clinical performance of a business serving 16 million individuals.

Dr. Georgiou assumed her current responsibilities when Care Management integrated with Optum in 2004. She leads Optum's vision to grow as a personal health management company and is accountable to the service provided to more than 27 million individuals.

Prior to joining UnitedHealth Group, Dr. Georgiou practiced internal medicine in California.

Dr. Georgiou is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is board certified in internal medicine.

M. Chris Gibbons, M.D., M.P.H.
M. Chris Gibbons, M.D., M.P.H., is the associate director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Community HEALTH and holds faculty appointments at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr. Gibbons is currently working to demonstrate the value of uniting health information technologies and eHealth interventions with culturally appropriate clinical behavioral interventions to reduce disparities in chronic disease among African-American population.

Prior to coming to the Urban Health Institute, Dr Gibbons was a senior policy fellow at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where he provided leadership for the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Demonstration for Ethnic and Racial Minorities project.

Dr. Gibbons received his training in preventive medicine, general surgery, molecular genetic cancer research and a master of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. He received his medical degree from the University of Alabama, School of Medicine in Birmingham, AL.

Dr. Gibbons has been named a Health Disparities Scholar by the National Institutes of Health.

Janlori Goldman
Janlori Goldman directs the Health Privacy Project created in 1997. The Project is dedicated to ensure that people's privacy is safeguarded in the health care environment. Ms. Goldman is also research faculty at the Center on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

In 1997, Ms. Goldman was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to that, she co-founded the Center for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit civil liberties organization committed to preserving free speech and privacy on the Internet in 1994. That same year, she also worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

From 1986 to 1994, Ms. Goldman was the staff attorney and director of the Privacy and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). While at the ACLU, Ms. Goldman led the effort to enact the Video Privacy Protection Act and led efforts to protect people's health, credit and financial information and personal information held by the government. She was also the legislative director of the Minnesota affiliate of the ACLU from 1984-86.

Ms. Goldman testifies frequently before the U.S. Congress, and has served on numerous commissions and advisory boards.

Melissa Goldstein, J.D.
Melissa Goldstein, J.D., is an associate research professor of Health Policy and Health Sciences at The George Washington University Medical Center, where she teaches courses in bioethics and public health law, and conducts research on the legal and policy aspects of health information technology.

Ms. Goldstein is a former director of the Markle Foundation's Health Program, where she managed the Policy Subcommittee of Connecting for Health and other policy aspects of the Foundation’s work in health information technology.

Ms. Goldstein was also a White House Fellow and domestic policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore from 1999 to 2001. She also has worked as a legal consultant to President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission; a senior litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom LLP; and a coordinator of the Kerry-Edwards 2004 general campaign’s efforts on embryonic stem cell and other medical research issues.

Ms. Goldstein graduated from the University of Virginia and received her law degree from Yale Law School. She clerked for judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before completing a post-doctoral Greenwall fellowship in bioethics and health policy at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities.

Linda Golodner
Linda Golodner is president and CEO of the National Consumers League (NCL); she has been with the League for 23 years. NCL is the nation’s oldest consumer organization, founded in 1899, to bring consumer power to bear on marketplace and workplace issues. Priority programs for NCL are food and drug safety, health care, fair labor standards, telecommunications and technology, financial services, environmental issues and consumer fraud.

In addition to serving as president of NCL, Mr. Golodner chairs the Alliance Against Fraud in Telemarketing and Electronic Commerce, a coalition of more than 90 groups organized to combat fraud through public education. Mr. Golodner serves on the Board of Directors of the Patient Safety Institute, Cooperating for Food Safety, and the American National Standards Institute. Mr. Golodner is the U. S. consumer expert on the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility and serves on the Editing Committee.

President Clinton appointed her to the White House Apparel Industry Partnership, which she co-chaired; she serves on the Board of Directors of its successor organization, the Fair Labor Association.

Ms. Golodner received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) highest public honor, the FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation and the American Pharmacists Association’s Hugo H. Schaefer Award. The United Nations Association (NCA) also honored her for her work in human rights. The American Council on Consumer Interests presented her with the "Friend of Consumers Award," in recognition of her outstanding contributions to policies that promote consumers interests nationally and internationally, and the Direct Selling Education Foundation gave her their Circle of Honor award.

Before coming to NCL in 1983, Ms. Golodner was president of her own public affairs firm. She also worked for the U.S. House of Representatives on the staff of former Congressman James G. O’Hara of Michigan. Ms. Golodner is a former commissioner and chair of the Fairfax County Commission for Women. She graduated from the University of Maryland in 1975.

Gerry Hinkley
Gerry Hinkley is a partner in the San Francisco office of the national health care law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, where he co-chairs the Health Information Technology (HIT) Practice Group. His HIT practice is focused on community network development and finance, network user participation, system procurement, regulatory compliance and privacy.

Mr. Hinkley has been involved with governance, network user and privacy projects for the California Healthcare Foundation, Connecting for Health (a program of the Markle Foundation and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), The California Endowment, CalRHIO and eHealth Initiative. Mr. Hinkley co-chairs the eHealth Initiative Working Group on Getting Started and Organization and Governance.

Mr. Hinkley is an active member of The National Alliance for Health Information Technology, addressing regulatory compliance, governance and CPOE procurement initiatives. He also serves as a member of the Steering Group of Connecting for Health, the Certification Process Advisory Group of the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, the eHi/HIMSS RHIO Federation Task Force, a technical advisor to the AHIMA State Level RHIO Consensus Best Practices Steering Committee, and has served as a faculty member at the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health, Privacy and Confidentiality Workshops.

William Huddleston
William Huddleston is a psychologist with 35 years of clinical experience; however, his primary perspective is that of a patient. His early consultant experiences regarding the Institute of Living’s Automated Nursing Note in 1973, his own 35 years of struggling with generating clinical records in his private psychology practice and his current assistance to a pediatrician friend who is gradually computerizing his private practice, provide him with insights into the records transition process across levels of care and from various participant perspectives.

Mr. Huddleston’s most provocative observations focus on how the medical record may affect diagnosis as a result of the patient’s own words eventually coming to dominate their medical record.

Mr. Huddleston has a Harvard Law degree and an undergraduate background in management and economics.

U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy, (D-RI)
U.S. Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, (D-RI) is serving his 6th term in Congress from the First District of Rhode Island.

Throughout his political career, Rep. Kennedy, named the 15th most powerful person in health care in 2006 by Modern Healthcare magazine, has made universal access to high quality, efficient care one of his top priorities. Rep. Kennedy co-authored the 21st Century Health Information Act to create health information networks and promote the adoption of health information technology, legislation that has broad bipartisan support, including the support of former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Hillary Clinton. Rep. Kennedy wrote the Josie King Act, legislation that would transform health care delivery by developing new tools and incentives to make quality of care, patient safety, and efficiency the paramount priorities of the system. Most recently he introduced the Personalized Health Information Act to accelerate the use of web-based personal health records by patients and their doctors. Rep. Kennedy has also championed prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, especially asthma and blood cancers.

Rep. Kennedy has been particularly renowned as the leading champion in Congress for improved access to quality mental health and addiction care. He is the chief House sponsor of legislation to end insurance discrimination against patients with mental illnesses and addictions, which has gained majority support three Congresses in a row. He has written numerous pieces of legislation to address mental health needs in various settings and for a range of populations.

As a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, Rep. Kennedy oversees most federal spending on health care. He strongly supported the doubling of funding for the National Institutes of Health and public health efforts through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has sought to encourage and support systemic reform in various aspects of health care delivery. He is the co-founder and co-chairman of the House 21st Century Health Care Caucus and the House Addiction Treatment and Recovery Caucus and the recipient of many awards for championing improved health.

Rep. Kennedy, who is a resident of Portsmouth, was born July 14, 1967, in Brighton, Mass. The youngest of three children of Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Joan Bennett Kennedy, he came to Rhode Island to attend Providence College, from which he graduated in 1991. At the age of 21, he won a seat as a state representative in Providence, where he championed reform and open government in the General Assembly for three terms. Kennedy won an open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 27, where he served three terms on both the Armed Services and Resources Committees before accepting a seat on the Appropriations Committee.

Robert Kolodner, M.D.
Robert Kolodner, M.D. is interim national coordinator for Health Information Technology (IT) at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Kolodner was previously at the Veterans Health Administration in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where he has been serving as Chief Health Informatics Officer and has been involved with the development and oversight of VistA - VA’s electronic health records systems - and My HealtheVet - VA’s personal health record for veterans.

Before that, Dr. Kolodner was director of the medical Information Resources Management Office, leading all health automation activities in VA and an associate chief information officer for Enterprise Strategy in the newly created Office of Information in the Veterans Health Administration.

Since 1997, Dr. Kolodner has been actively involved in overseeing, promoting, and guiding VA activities related to the establishment of a life-long, comprehensive, computerized clinical record for military personnel and our nation’s veterans. He fostered the idea for the creation of My HealtheVet - a health portal for veterans and their families to access health information, tools and services via the Internet.

Dr. Kolodner received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and his medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine. He completed a clinical fellowship in Medicine at Harvard University School of Medicine and his psychiatric residency at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Kolodner has medical specialty board certification in psychiatry.

David Lansky, Ph.D.
David Lansky, PhD, is the senior director, Health Program and executive director, Personal Health Technology Initiative. Prior to this position, Dr. Lansky served as Foundation for Accountability’s (FACCT) president from its inception in 1995.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Lansky has been a proponent of a more responsive and accountable health care system. He is a nationally recognized expert in accountability and quality measurement and as a result, has served as a board member or advisor to numerous health care projects and programs. Some of these include the National Quality Forum, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, National Patient Safety Foundation, The Leapfrog Group and President Bush's 2002 Economic Forum.

Prior to FACCT, Dr. Lansky was a senior policy analyst for the Jackson Hole Group during the national health reform debate of 1993-94. He also led the Center for Outcomes Research and Education at Oregon-based Providence Health System. In this capacity he was responsible for outcomes research, measurement of consumer satisfaction, health risk and health status assessment, development of electronic member and patient records and communicating with purchasers and the larger community about health care quality.

Josh Lemieux
Josh Lemieux is an expert in Internet-based applications to help consumers understand health and health care. For the past three years, he has worked on research and policy development for electronic personal health records under the auspices of the Markle Foundation’s Connecting for Health collaborative.

Lemieux, a program officer at the Northwest Health Foundation, serves as lead staff to the Markle Foundation’s Personal Health Technology Initiative.

In previous positions Lemieux directed the launch of health benefit decision support tools at WebMD and several interactive applications at WellMed, Discovery Channel and Mayo Clinic. Based in Portland, OR, he most recently held senior positions at the Foundation for Accountability and Omnimedix Institute.

He began his career writing for United Press International in Brazil, and worked several years as a correspondent for The Associated Press, assigned to the Mexican border.

Art Levin, M.P.H.
Arthur Levin, M.P.H. is director of the Center for Medical Consumers, a New York City-based, non-profit organization committed to informed consumer and patient health care decision-making, patient safety, evidence-based, high-quality medicine and health care system transparency. It receives no funding from the drug, device or health care industry.

Mr. Levin was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Committee on the Quality of Health Care that published the "To Err is Human" and "Crossing the Quality Chasm" reports and subsequently, "Leading by Example." He is currently a member of the IOM Board on Health Care Services, which has been responsible for overseeing the IOM’s decade-long effort to improve the quality and safety of America’s health care system.

Mr. Levin serves as a member of the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Committee on Performance Measures. He also has been a long-time member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Consumer Nominating Workgroup that recommends consumer representatives for service on FDA Advisory Committees and is the consumer member of the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee (DSaRM).

Levin earned his Masters of Public Health degree from Columbia University School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Reed College.

Mark McClellan, Ph.D., M.D.
Mark McClellan, Ph.D., M.D., is the former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Presently, he is a visiting senior fellow at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies where he will work on developing and implementing ideas to drive improvements in high-quality, innovative and affordable health care. He is also an associate professor of economics and associate professor of medicine at Stanford University.

Dr. McClellan previously served under the Bush Administration as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and senior director for health care policy at the White House (2001-2002).

Dr. McClellan has been widely praised for his efforts to improve the American health care system and make entitlement programs more effective and sound for the future. His work at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center will similarly focus on improving care and eliminating excess health care costs—by identifying and helping to implement steps in the public and private sector to speed the development and use of safe and effective new treatments, and to reform payment and regulatory systems to increase access to high-quality, innovative care that prevents diseases and disease complications at the lowest possible cost.

In the Clinton administration, Dr. McClellan was deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy from 1998-1999, supervising economic analysis and policy development on a range of domestic policy issues. He subsequently directed Stanford’s Program on Health Outcomes Research and was a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Additionally, he was associate editor of the "Journal of Health Economics" and co-principal investigator of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal study of the health and economic wellbeing of older Americans.

A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, he earned his M.P.A. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1991, his M.D. from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1992, and his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1993. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston.

Dr. McClellan has been board-certified in internal medicine and has been a practicing internist during his academic career. His academic research has been concerned with the effectiveness of medical treatments in improving health, the economic and policy factors influencing medical treatment decisions and health outcomes, the impact of new technologies on public health and medical expenditures, and therelationship between health status and economic well-being. He has twice received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Outstanding Research in Health Economics.

Kathleen Mahan
Kathleen Mahan is vice president of Product Management for SureScripts. Ms. Mahan is primarily responsible for incorporation of strategic requirements into corporate development plans. In addition, she oversees the implementations and certification process for all software applications transacting on the SureScripts Network. She remains active in standards bodies and steering committees, including but not limited to: NCPDP, ANSI X12, American Healthcare Information Community, Continuity of Care Record and the Rhode Island Department of Health.

She came to SureScripts after a career with Vitria Systems / XMLSolutions, where she served as the director of Strategic Accounts and director of Consulting. She was responsible for consulting services in the health care sector, as well as strategic HIPAA- related implementations. She oversaw key accounts and led HIPAA claims restructuring projects for some of the largest national payers. Prior to Vitria, Ms. Mahan worked for SAP Americas as a principal consultant, where she led multi-million dollar Enterprise Software Implementation projects.

Ms. Mahan received her Masters of Business Administration degree from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management and a Bachelor of Science degree in Pre-Law and Communications from Northern Arizona University.

Phil Marshall, M.D., M.P.H
Phil Marshall, M.D., M.P.H., is the vice president of Product Strategy for WebMD Health. Dr. Marshall has focused his career on enhancing how patients and physicians can more easily communicate and manage health data, and he has worked on electronic medical record systems at GE Medical Systems and Kaiser Permanente Northwest.

Upon joining WebMD, Dr. Marshall has been responsible for the product architecture that guides all Personal Health Record-keeping, as well as WebMD’s Health and Benefit Management solutions. Most recently, Dr. Marshall has overseen WebMD Health’s corporate and payer market product strategy and development, including key consumer-driven health plan decision support products. Dr. Marshall lives in Portland, OR, and also serves as the executive director of the Oregon Crusaders Drum and Bugle Corps, a youth, non-profit performing arts organization.

Dr. Marshall received his medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine, and has residency training in general surgery and public health and preventive medicine.

Holly Massett, Ph.D.
Holly Massett, Ph.D., is the director of the Operations Research Office at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where she oversees both the user-centered informatics research and market research activities. Dr. Massett has more than14 years of professional experience in consumer research, dissemination and social marketing and evaluation.

Dr. Massett’s expertise is in conducting qualitative and quantitative research to better inform the development and design of products and programs in order to maximize their efficacy and acceptability by their intended audiences and end-users including; user-centered design methodologies to develop e-health patient-centered technologies and web-based tools; interviews and observations to conduct needs assessments and workflow analyses; focus groups and triads to create health communication messages and materials for both traditional and new media; and large-scale national surveys to establish baseline measures and assess long-term impact of programs.

Prior to NCI, Dr. Massett worked at RTI International as a senior research scientist, and at Porter Novelli as the director of research.

David Merritt
David Merritt is a project director at the Center for Health Transformation. The Center, headed by former Speaker Newt Gingrich, is a collaboration of public and private sector leaders dedicated to transforming health and healthcare in America. Mr. Merritt advises Speaker Gingrich and leads CHT’s projects on Health Information Technology, the Uninsured and Consumer-Driven Healthcare.

Mr. Merritt works extensively with Congressional offices, the administration, media and private sector leaders to transform our health care system, particularly through the adoption of health information technology. He works closely with members of the Center on strategic planning and consulting. Mr. Merritt was recently appointed by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to serve on his Health Information Technology Council, where he chairs the Business Case Subcommittee.

Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Merritt was with America’s Health Insurance Plans, directing the association’s educational programs, with a primary focus on federal legislative and regulatory issues.

Mr. Merritt earned his master’s degree in political science from Loyola University Chicago and his bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University.

Omid Moghadam
Omid Moghadam is the director of Personal Health Record Programs at Intel, where he is spearheading corporate efforts in transforming the U.S. health care system in partnership with other large employers. He joined the health group after five years with CTG, Intel’s research and development arm, where he led teams of business and technical experts in development of new multi-core architectures for video, speech recognition, 3D graphics, and digital imaging.

Prior to joining Intel, Mr. Moghadam was a principal of American Management Systems Inc. (AMS), a management consultancy based in Washington, D.C., where he advised clients on strategy and intellectual property. Prior to AMS, Mr. Moghadam spent seven years with Eastman Kodak Company in various technical and business management roles.

Mr. Moghadam serves on Markle Foundation’s Personal Health Technology Council, and Markle’s Connecting for Health Steering Committee. A prolific inventor, he holds 34 US patents, and has received the honor of Eastman distinguished inventor.

An expert in medical imaging, Mr. Moghadam holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, as well as an M.B.A in finance.

Peter Neupert
As corporate vice president for Health Strategy at Microsoft Corp., Peter Neupert is responsible for Microsoft’s collaboration with the health care ecosystem to address global infrastructure issues of significant scale.

Before rejoining Microsoft, Mr. Neupert served as president and chief executive officer of Drugstore.com Inc. from July 1998 to April 2001, and then as chairman of the board of directors from July 1999 to September 2004.

Mr. Neupert served in various capacities at Microsoft from 1987 to 1998. He started at Microsoft as the director of operating systems responsible for shipping OS/2, and later was responsible for MSNBC as vice president of News and Publishing for the interactive media group. He also served on President Bush’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 2003 to 2005.

Mr. Neupert holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College.

Michael Parkinson, M.D., M.P.H.
Michael Parkinson, M.D., M.P.H., executive vice president, chief health and medical officer, is responsible for the strategic direction and health care management of Lumenos.

He formerly was associate director of medical programs and resources for the U.S. Air Force, where he was responsible for policy and planning for the medical service with over two million beneficiaries, 70 facilities and a $4 billion budget. Dr. Parkinson is also a retired colonel and served as deputy director of Air Force medical operations and chief of preventive medicine.

While assigned to the U.S. Public Health Service, Dr. Parkinson provided oversight of federal programs in public health, geriatrics and preventive medicine training. He served on the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Care Purchasing Institute and as vice chair of the American Board of Preventive Medicine.

He is president-elect of the American College of Preventive Medicine, a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee which reviewed NASA prevention programs, and the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. He is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and the American Journal of Medical Quality.

Dr. Parkinson received his A.B. from Cornell University; M.D. from George Washington University; family practice training at the University of California, Los Angeles; and his M.P.H., preventive medicine residency and chief residency at the Johns Hopkins University.

Harriet Pearson
Harriet Pearson is a corporate affairs leader at IBM, where she develops and leads global policy initiatives in support of IBM’s business strategies, with special focus on health care, energy and climate, globalization and business and data privacy issues. She retains her responsibilities as IBM’s chief privacy officer (CPO), a role she assumed in November 2000.

From 1997 to 2000, Ms. Pearson was director of Public Affairs in IBM’s Governmental Programs function in Washington, D.C., where she led the company’s global strategies in several areas of public policy.

Ms. Pearson practiced environmental law with the firm now known as Bracewell & Guiliani in before joining IBM in 1993. Before attending law school she worked as an engineer for Shell Oil in Louisiana.

She currently serves on the board of directors of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the executive committee of the Center for Information Policy Leadership and the board of trustees of the American College of Thessaloniki & Anatolia College High School.

Ms. Pearson holds a law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and an honors engineering degree from Princeton University. She earned bar admission in Virginia and the District of Columbia.

George Peredy, M.D.
George Peredy, M.D., has been a national physician lead for Kaiser Permanente’s HealthConnect Epic Systems EHR project since it’s initiation in 2003. He is also physician sponsor of the Wireless Computing initiative for deploying infrastructure and wireless carts throughout Kaiser’s network of hospitals.

Soon after joining The Permanente Medical Group, in 1992, he co-developed Northern California Kaiser’s first comprehensive Clinical Information Presentation System and has worked in leadership roles continuously leading toward a Kaiser Permanente EHR.

Michael Perry
Michael Perry has been a partner at Lake Research Partners (LRP) since 1997. Mike heads a team of researchers who specialize in studying public attitudes and experiences on social policy issues for non-profit organizations and foundations. A key component of Mr. Perry’s research is seeking out and including the perspectives of diverse and hard-to-reach populations on important policy issues.

Mr. Perry has an expertise in studying attitudes on many of today’s most pressing issues including access to affordable health care, poverty, foster care, childhood obesity, Medicaid and Medicare, teen pregnancy and reproductive health, cancer research, global health issues like HIV/AIDS, death and dying issues in the wake of Terry Schiavo, and more. Among Mr. Perry’s clients are many top national foundations and non-profit organizations as well as many universities.

Mr. Perry serves on the Media and Research Steering Committee of the DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and the Advisory Council for the Spanish Catholic Center, which provides health and social services to the new immigrants in the Washington, D.C. area.

Prior to joining LRP, Mr. Perry was a senior associate at Mathew Greenwald and Associates, a market research firm in Washington, D.C., and a Fellow at the Program on International Policy Attitudes with the University of Maryland. He has a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Southern California.

Virginia "Ginger" Price
Virginia "Ginger" Price is the acting program manager for Veterans Services and program manager for My HealtheVet in VHA’s Office of Information. Ginger was previously the deputy director, HES/HIS and prior to that the executive assistant to the director, HES/HIS.

Ms. Price has a vision for how automation can be used to support a changing health care management paradigm, and has a special interest in complex systems and transforming how we deliver health care in high-changing environments. She is using this expertise to manage the My HealtheVet project, a major addition to the manner in which we provide health care to our nation’s veterans.

My HealtheVet (MHV) is a new web-based application that creates an online environment where veterans, family and clinicians may come together to optimize veterans’ health care. It enables clinicians to partner with patients in optimizing their health by using web technology combined with essential health record information and online health resources. Ms. Price was instrumental in the concept, design, development and management of this program.

James Ralston, M.D., M.P.H.
James D. Ralston, M.D., M.P.H, is an investigator at the Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative (GHC). He is a health informatics researcher with a focus in web-based support for patients with chronic medical conditions. He is involved in four ongoing randomized trials involving web-based support for patients with chronic medical conditions.

Dr. Ralston also practices internal medicine at GHC and is affiliated with the Health Informatics Division of GHC. He is responsible for the development and maintenance of GHC’s patient web site, MyGroupHealth.

Dr. Ralston received his B.A. from Stanford University and an M.D. and M.P.H. and from the University of Washington.

Alison Rein
Alison Rein is the assistant director of Food & Health Policy at the National Consumers League (NCL). Founded in 1899 to bring consumer power to bear on marketplace and workplace issues, NCL is the nation’s oldest consumer organization.

Ms. Rein designs and coordinates campaigns and other activities around NCL’s priority issues, including food and drug safety, nutrition education and risk/benefit communications - all aimed at enhancing consumer access to useful and relevant information. In the last two years, she has expanded NCL’s involvement in the emerging national discussion about health information technologies - recognizing the efficiency and quality gains that could be generated through appropriate electronic data exchange. Ms. Rein has encouraged expanded and meaningful consumer involvement in local and regional efforts, as well as in the federal government’s efforts to design the Nationwide Health Information Network.

Prior to joining NCL, Ms. Rein served as a health care consultant to a number of private and non-profit organizations for which she conducted strategic evaluations, market studies and health economics and outcomes research.

Ms. Rein holds a master’s degree in public policy analysis from the University of Rochester.

Peter Reuschel
Peter Reuschel is founder and chief executive officer for InterComponentWare (ICW), the eHealth specialist. The company’s mission is to promote patient empowerment, reduce medical errors, and streamline health care costs through the utilization of the web-based Personal Health Record LifeSensor®.

Under Mr. Reuschel’s direction, ICW entered the international marketplace and established subsidiaries in the U.S. and Bulgaria. Mr. Reuschel guided the company to a number of successful milestones. In 2003, the German Federal Ministry of Health awarded an electronic health card project to a consortium including IBM, SAP, Orga, Fraunhofer and ICW.

In 2004, ICW supported the development of the specific solution architecture for the German e-health card. In that same year, the company was also invited to participate in the Austrian eCard project.

Prior to founding ICW, Mr. Reuschel attended Technical University of Dresden, Germany, where he earned his degree in computer science. In 1992, Mr. Reuschel joined IBM Germany as the product manager of a group responsible for the development of a service concept for SAP software.

In 1994, he joined SAP as the IBM Relationship Manager. As Product Manager IBM Platforms, he was responsible for SAP R/3 on all IBM platforms until 1997. After obtaining his M.B.A from the Warwick Business School, Mr. Reuschel was responsible for establishing SAP’s venture capital business in Europe. He served in this capacity in 1999 and 2000, before shifting his focus and full-time energies on ICW.

Lygeia Ricciardi
Lygeia Ricciardi joined the Markle Foundation in 2001 as one of the initial members of the Health Program. Since 2004, she has been a director of that program. Ms. Ricciardi has participated in building the program and has managed a number of Health Program projects, including CHESS, Life on the Line, the Markle Telemedicine Clinic in Cambodia and significant aspects of the Connecting for Health Common Framework. She also was managing editor of two of the major Heath Program publications, the Connecting for Health "Roadmap" and Collaborative Response to the request for information from the Office of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator of the U. S. Department of Health and Human services.

Before joining the Markle Foundation, Ms. Ricciardi oversaw development of online content for parents, teachers and policymakers at MaMaMedia.com, a leading independent web site for children.

As a policy advisor at the Federal Communications Commission from 1995-1997, she wrote speeches for the chairman and helped to shape policies that make affordable telecommunications services available to schools, libraries and rural health care providers. Before that, as a research associate at Harvard Business School, Ms. Ricciardi wrote published case studies on telecommunications policy and international investment.

Ms. Ricciardi graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College and earned a master’s degree from Harvard in technology in education.

Rose Marie Robertson, M.D., FAHA, FACC, FESC
Rose Marie Robertson, M.D., FAHA, FACC, FESC, has been chief science officer of the American Heart Association (AHA) since 2003.

Dr. Robertson served as president of AHA from 2000-2001. During her tenure, the Association signed a historic and ongoing Memorandum of Understanding with the Office of the Surgeon General, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; and the Indian Health Services. In June, 2001, Dr. Robertson received CDC’s Partner in Public Health Award.

Dr. Robertson has served on review and advisory committees for AHA, Department of Veterans Affairs, CDC, NHLBI and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). She currently chairs RWJF’s National Advisory Committee for the Amos Minority Medical Faculty Development Award, serves on the selection committee of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ annual Prevention Awards and co-chairs American Health Information Community’s Consumer Empowerment Workgroup.

She received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School and is professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where she was an investigator in the Vanderbilt Center for Space Physiology and Medicine and directed the Vanderbilt Women’s Heart Institute.

Steve Ross, M.D.
Steve Ross, M.D., is associate professor of general internal medicine at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

At University of Colorado Hospital, Dr. Ross and his colleague, Dr. Chen-Tan Lin, have conducted a number of clinical trials related to personal health records, using a technology platform incorporating components from Allscripts, IDX and the 3M Lifetime Data Repository. These trials have included a study of patient portals in primary care, a study of patient-accessible medical records for patients with heart failure (funded by The Commonwealth Fund) and an online disease management system for patients with diabetes (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).

Dr. Ross' training includes a B.S. in computer science from Duke University and an M.D. from University of North Carolina, as well as clinical training and research training at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Daniel Sands, M.D., M.P.H.
Daniel Sands, M.D., M.P.H., is director of IBSG Healthcare and Cisco’s director of medical informatics. He brings solid industry knowledge and broad experience to these roles, where he provides both internal and external health information technology (HIT) leadership and helps partners with business and clinical transformation using IT.

Prior to joining Cisco, Dr. Sands was vice president and chief medical officer of Zix Corporation, where he helped the company to become a leader in e-prescribing. Before that, he was clinical systems integration architect at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he developed and implemented numerous systems to improve clinical care delivery and patient engagement.

Dr. Sands earned his baccalaureate at Brown University, medical degree at Ohio State University and a master’s degree at Harvard School of Public Health. He did residency training at Boston City Hospital and an informatics fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and maintains a primary care practice in which he makes extensive use of HIT.

Dr. Sands is the recipient of numerous HIT awards, sits on the board of the American Medical Informatics Association and has been elected to fellowship in both the American College of Physicians and the American College of Medical Informatics.

Gerald Shea
Gerald Shea is assistant to the president for External Affairs at the AFL-CIO. John Sweeney appointed Mr. Shea as assistant when Mr. Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO in October 1995. Mr. Shea held various positions at the AFL-CIO from August 1993 through October 1995, serving first as the director of the policy office with the responsibility for health care and pensions, and then in several executive staff positions. In addition to managing the AFL-CIO’s relationships with outside organizations, Mr. Shea directs the Federation’s work on health care and retirement security.

Before joining the AFL-CIO, Mr. Shea spent 21 years with the Service Employees International Union as an organizer and local union official in Massachusetts and later in the national’s union staff.

Mr. Shea is a member of the Board of the National Quality Forum, the Board of the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, and the principals group of the Hospital Quality Alliance. He was a founding board member of the Foundation for Accountability and chairs the RxHealthValue Project. He is a past member of the Medicare Prospective Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and its predecessor Congressional advisory board, the Prospective Payment Advisory Commission, as well as the Institute of Medicine’s Quality in Health Care Committee’s Subcommittee on the External Environment.

Mr. Shea has served two terms on the Social Security Advisory Board, from 1996-1998 and again from 2000-2004. He had been a member of the predecessor Social Security Advisory Council in the period 1994-1996.

Mr. Shea is a graduate of Boston College.

Paul Sheils, J.D.
Paul Sheils, J.D. is with the new eHealth unit of Aetna, which is developing Aetna’s pioneering CareEngine®-Powered Personal Health Record (PHR).

Mr. Sheils is a frequent speaker on the importance of health plan-based PHRs and their critical role in the emerging National Health Information Network. He sits on several industry association PHR committees, and is a member of the Board of Directors of eHealth Connecticut, a state-wide Regional Health Information Organization.

Prior to Aetna, Mr. Sheils was CEO of Mayo Health Ventures, the venture capital division of The Mayo Foundation, and of MayoClinic.com.

From 1998 to 2000, Mr. Sheils was Chief Executive Officer of Medscape, Inc., one of the nation’s leading eHealth companies. Mr. Sheils led Medscape’s successful IPO in 1999 and sold the company to MedicaLogic, Inc., a leading supplier of electronic medical records, in 2000.

Prior to Medscape, Mr. Sheils was vice president of Dow Jones Interactive Publishing, where he led the team that launched "The Wall Street Journal Online" in 1996.

Before his business career, Mr. Sheils was a corporate attorney, serving as General Counsel of Dow Jones Information Services and as an associate attorney at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. He holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D. from Fordham Law School.

Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the web.

In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology - how our networks shape culture and vice-versa. His current course, Social Weather, examines the cues we use to understand group dynamics in online spaces and the possible ways of improving user interaction by redesigning our social software to better reflect the emergent properties of groups.

Mr. Shirky has written extensively about the Internet since 1996, including regular columns in Business 2.0, FEED, OpenP2P.com and ACM Net_Worker, and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Release 1.0, Computerworld, and IEEE Computer. He has written about biotechnology in his "After Darwin" column in FEED magazine, and serves as a technical reviewer for O'Reilly's bioinformatics series.

Mr. Shirky graduated from Yale College with a degree in art, and prior to falling in love with the Internet, he worked as a theater director and designer in New York.

Anna Slomovic, Ph.D.
Anna Slomovic, Ph.D., is responsible for all Revolution Health data privacy policies and initiatives. Dr. Slomovic joined Revolution Health having served as chief privacy officer and Senior Privacy Strategist at SRA International, a provider of technology and consulting services to clients in the national security, health care and public health arenas. Prior to joining SRA, she managed privacy issues at ValueOptions, a behavioral health care management company owned by FHC Health Systems.

Dr. Slomovic has a broad range of privacy-related interests, including medical privacy, privacy of genetic information, privacy issues raised by new technologies and analytic methodologies, such as biometrics, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices, data mining and the use of watch lists. She has done research and analysis on data protection under the Privacy Act, HIPAA, E-Government Act, and other national and international legal and regulatory regimes. She has spoken and testified on privacy and compliance issues, and has published articles on the interaction between privacy, technology and public policy.

She has a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School, an M.B.A. from Loyola Marymount University and a B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology.

Micky Tripathi, Ph.D.
Micky Tripathi, Ph.D. is the president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC), a non-profit collaboration of 34 leading Massachusetts organizations. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of MA-SHARE, a community utility service for state-wide clinical data exchange in Massachusetts.

Prior to joining MAeHC, Mr. Tripathi was a manager of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading strategy and management consulting firm. While at BCG, he served as the founding president and CEO of the Indiana Health Information Exchange, an Indianapolis-based non-profit company partnered with the Regenstrief Institute to create a statewide health information infrastructure in Indiana. As a manager in BCG’s health care practice, Mr. Tripathi also served a variety of U.S. and international clients in the non-profit sector as well as in the bioinformatics, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master of public policy degree from Harvard University and an A.B. in political science from Vassar College.

Prior to receiving his Ph.D., he was a senior operations research analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in Washington, D.C., for which he received the Secretary of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award.

Alan Westin, Ph.D.
Alan Westin is professor emeritus of Public Law and Government at Columbia University, where he taught for 37 years, retiring in 1997.

For five decades, Dr. Westin has specialized in studying, writing and consulting about the impacts of information technology on individuals, organizations and society - particularly issues of personal and group privacy. Dr. Westin’s award-winning 1967 book, Privacy and Freedom, is considered the leading work in this field, and has influenced thinking and legal activity on privacy worldwide.

Dr. Westin was director of the Center for Social and Legal Research, a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank between 1993 and 2006. He was also co-founder, publisher and editor of the "Privacy & American Business" electronic newsletter.

With Robert R. Belair, he founded the Privacy Consulting Group in 1993, and he leads this organization’s privacy work today.

In 2005, in response to developments in the field of electronic health records (EHRs), Dr. Westin created the new Program on Information Technology, Health Records and Privacy at the Center for Social and Legal Research.

Dr. Westin earned his B.A. from the University of Florida, his LL.B. from Harvard Law School and his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.

Jon White, M.D.
Jon White, M.D., serves as senior portfolio manager for health information technology (IT) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He oversees projects in the portfolio implementing health IT. Dr. White leads the State and Regional Demonstration projects, developing health information exchange governance and infrastructure within involved states.

Dr. White also manages the Electronic Prescribing Standards Pilot in cooperation with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. His other activities at AHRQ include participation in quality measurement initiatives, such as the AQA and the AHIC Quality Workgroup.

A board-certified family physician, Dr. White received his medical degree from the University of Virginia and trained as a resident at Lancaster General Hospital, where he received the national AAFP/Mead Johnson Award for Excellence in Graduate Education.

Dr. White has experience in health IT development and implementation in the ambulatory and acute settings, and was previously chief medical information officer and associate residency director of Lancaster General Hospital.

Matthew Wynia, M.D., M.P.H., FACP
Matthew Wynia, M.D., M.P.H., FACP, is an internist, a specialist in infectious diseases and director of the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association. Dr. Wynia oversees the Institute’s Fellowship and Visiting Scholar Programs and a wide range of research projects on topics including: physician professionalism, responses to market pressures in medicine, the role of codes of ethics, understanding the physician’s role in addressing inequities in health and health care and how demographics and technology will change medical practice.

Dr. Wynia’s work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs and many other medical and ethics journals. He is contributing editor for bioethics and public health at the American Journal of Bioethics.

In addition to his work at the AMA, Dr. Wynia is the president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and past chair of the Ethics Forum of the American Public Health Association. He cares for patients at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where he is a clinical assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases.