NAMOur WorkProgramsLeadership ConsortiumCommission on Investment Imperatives for a Healthy NationDigital and Data Architecture Workstream

Workstream 3: Digital and Data Architecture

Enabling seamless delivery of continuously improving services and new knowledge development and application.

Problem Statement

Digital technology makes possible unprecedented potential for the speed, effectiveness, and outcomes of health care, public health, social services, and health research. To do so, collaborative policy, regulatory, and governance reforms must eliminate existing barriers to the digital connectivity and interoperability, data quality, data sharing and linkages, and analytic capacity for delivery and discovery activities required for advances in the common good.

Workstream Charge

The Digital and Data workstream will uplift alignment challenges, opportunities, and impacts related to the capture and conversion of health data into the intelligence needed to drive evidence-informed decisions and actions. Workstream members will produce a background paper that will inform Commission deliberations on the associated opportunities, priorities, and implications dependent on correcting the alignment of values, incentives, policies, and actions.

The paper will:

  1. review the status of and trends for the digitization of health information in the U.S.;
  2. describe how lack of data sharing and poor evidence mobilization contribute to a multitude of system shortfalls;
  3. identify salient contributors to the problem;
  4. identify accountability disconnects;
  5. estimate the health and economic costs of maintaining the status quo;
  6. estimate the potential health and economic gains from the digitization of health information that enables seamless, continuously improving services and new knowledge;
  7. identify legal, regulatory, or cultural levers to drive the change from where we are now to a better future state; and
  8. describe promising strategies for marshaling the will to deploy the necessary levers at the right place, at the right time.

Workstream Members

Chairs

Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
President, Microsoft Research
Microsoft Corporation

Peter Lee is President, Microsoft Research, at Microsoft. He leads Microsoft Research across its nine laboratories around the world. He also oversees several incubation teams for new research-powered lines of business, the largest of which today is Microsoft’s growing healthcare and life sciences effort. Dr. Lee has extensive experience in managing fundamental research to commercial impact in a range of areas, spanning artificial intelligence, to quantum computing, to biotechnology, and more. Before joining Microsoft in 2010, he was at DARPA, where he established a new technology office that created operational capabilities in machine learning, data science, and computational social science. From 1987 to 2005 he was a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and from 2005 to 2008 the Head of the university’s computer science department. Today, in addition to his management responsibilities, Dr. Lee speaks and writes widely on technology trends and policies. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine, and the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. In public service, Dr. Lee was a commissioner on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and led several studies for both PCAST and the National Academies on the impact of federal research investments on economic growth. He has testified before both the US House Science and Technology Committee and the US Senate Commerce Committee.

Ken Mandl
Chair | Director – Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children’s Hospital

Ex officio (Evidence & Data Action Collaborative co-chairs)

Cofounder
Highlander Health

Amy Abernethy, M.D., Ph.D., is cofounder of Highlander Health, an organization focused on advancing evidence generation for the new era of medical innovation. As an oncologist, serial entrepreneur, and standard setter, Dr. Abernethy is a champion for speeding the pace at which safe and effective treatments reach patients, and for progressive and responsible use of our healthcare system’s data.

Dr. Abernethy is the former principal deputy commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. While there, Dr. Abernethy led initiatives in advancing clinical evidence generation and personalized healthcare and also served as the agency’s acting chief information officer.

More recently, Dr. Abernethy served as chief medical officer and president of product development at Verily, Alphabet’s precision health business, leading the company’s development and delivery of solutions that connect clinical research and care. Earlier roles include that of Flatiron Health’s first chief medical officer and chief scientific officer, as well as: professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine; director of the Center for Learning Health Care at the Duke Clinical Research Institute; and, director of the Duke Cancer Care Research Program at the Duke Cancer Institute. An avid learner and teacher, and a hematologist/oncologist and palliative medicine physician, Dr. Abernethy has authored over 500 publications.

Senior Vice President
Medtronic

Laura Mauri, MD, MSc, is the Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at Medtronic. Laura received her A.B. from Harvard College and her M.D. from Harvard Medical School, both magna cum laude, and her M.Sc. (Clinical Epidemiology) from Harvard School of Public Health. She completed residency in internal medicine and fellowships in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Laura serves on the Board of directors of (MDIC) and is a member of the NIH Advisory Committee. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of University Cardiologists, a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, a Fellow of the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, and member of the Society of Cardiac Angiography and Intervention. She has authored approximately 200 original articles, served as a Senior Editor for the journal Circulation, and was awarded the Joseph A. Vita Award for Clinical Research by the American Heart Association in 2017.

Members

Former President
Society of Hospital Medicine
Brian Anderson
Chief Executive Officer, Coalition for Health AI
Wanda Barfield
Director of the Division of Reproductive Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Monica Bharel
Clinical Lead Public Sector Health, Google
President and CEO
CyncHealth
Chief Scientific Officer
TriNetX
Adam Eschenlauer
Research and Performance Analytics Chief, Defense Health Agency
Special Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP
Chief Informatics Officer
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center
Susan Gregurick
Associate Director for Data Science and Director of the Office of Data Science Strategy, National Institutes of Health
Clinical Professor, CERC
Stanford University
Anupam Jena
Joseph P. Newhouse Professor, Harvard Medical School
Thomas Maddox, MD, MSc
Professor of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
Karen Murphy
President
Geisinger Health Plan
2023-2025 Omenn Fellow

Ravi B. Parikh, MD, MPP, FACP, is an associate professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the Emory University School of Medicine. He serves as medical director of the Winship Data and Technology Applications Shared Resource at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University.

Dr. Parikh’s work broadly focuses on improving care delivery for serious illnesses such as cancer. His work has specifically addressed areas including palliative and supportive care, cancer survivorship, alternative payment models, and risk-adjustment. Dr. Parikh’s work increasingly applies machine learning methods to longitudinal electronic health record data, patient-generated data, and data on social determinants of health to develop precision care solutions for patients with serious illness. Additionally, he has a robust portfolio in emerging topics in healthcare AI including algorithmic bias, human-machine collaboration, and AI regulation and policy. His work has been published in numerous leading journals, including Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Journal of the American Medical Association. He serves on the board of the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) and advises for-profit and non-profit organizations on these areas. Prior to his career in medicine, Dr. Parikh worked on accountable care organization implementation in the Massachusetts State House; his recommendations earned commendation from the Massachusetts Speaker of the House and were incorporated into landmark payment reform legislation passed in 2012.

Dr. Parikh completed his MD at Harvard Medical School, Master of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has received the Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award, Prostate Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award, AMA Foundation Excellence in Medicine Leadership Award, and the American College of Physicians Joseph E. Johnson Award.

Larra Petersen-Lukenda
Chief Operating Officer, CyncHealth
Deborah Porterfield
Medical Officer, Office of Science and Data Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Troy Sarich
Former Chief Commercial Data Science Officer
Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Global Leader for Population Health Analytics
Amazon
Peter Speyer
Head of Data and Analytics, Novartis Foundation
Kenneth Yale
Founder
Health Solutions Network

Contact Information

Questions?

For additional information on workstream activities, contact Sunita Krishnan ([email protected]).

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