National Advisory Committee Biographies
David K. Ahern, Ph.D.
Director, Health Information Technology Resource Center
Aligning Forces for Quality, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Brigham & Women's Hospital
David K. Ahern, Ph.D., is director of the Health Information Technology Resource Center (HITRC) based at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston and Aligning Forces for Quality, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation providing 15 current active communities across the U.S. with technical assistance and guidance to leverage the near term value of health information technology to improve health care quality.
Dr. Ahern is an associate in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Also, Dr. Ahern is an 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, behavioral medicine and behavioral informatics and eHealth. He has published over 80 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 for Abacus Management Technologies based in Rhode Island.
Veenu Aulakh, M.S.P.H.
Associate Director
Community Clinics Initiative
Veenu Aulakh. M.S.P.H, is associate director of the Community Clinics Initiative (CCI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health of underserved communities through strategic consulting, technical assistance, grantmaking and community building.
Aulakh has broad experience in health care policy, technology, financing and program development. Before joining CCI, she worked as a senior program officer at the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) where she led projects and managed investments to organizations with innovations to lower the cost of care and improve access to care. She also led projects that improve quality and access of care through information technology and participation of patients and their families in all aspects of care.
Before joining CHCF, Veenu worked as a senior project manager at Kaiser Permanente, with an emphasis on improving the quality of care through health education and patient engagement. She also developed diabetes management programs for Kaiser Permanente's Care Management Institute, and was a project manager with the diagnostics division of Abbott Laboratories.
Aulakh received a bachelor's degree in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan and a master's of science in health policy and management from Harvard University.
Carmella A. Bocchino, R.N., M.B.A.
Executive Vice President, Clinical Affairs and Strategic Planning
America’s Health Insurance Plans
Carmella Bocchino, R.N., M.B.A., is a leading authority in identifying strategies that promote greater organization in the health care delivery system and advance innovative payment models that drive quality and value. As executive vice president of Clinical Affairs and Strategic Planning at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Bocchino works with the executives of member organizations to develop patient-centered programs and tools, foster private-public partnerships and advance an interconnected highly functioning health care system.
A registered professional nurse and former hospital administrator, Bocchino’s clinical and public policy expertise has been widely recognized by national and state lawmakers, policymakers, patient advocacy groups, employers, and throughout the health care community. She has been appointed to numerous private, state, and federal health care advisory committees, including the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine for the Study of the Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) program; advisor to the Rand Health Sciences Program for the capitation study for the end-stage renal disease project; the Advisory Committee for Quality Improvement Standards for Managed Care; the Planning Committee establishing the National Quality Forum; and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) ONCHIT Health Information Technology Adoption Initiative Expert Consensus Panel. She currently serves on the RWJF National Advisory Committee, Project Health Design: Rethinking the Power and Potential of Personal Health Records.
Bocchino received her Master in Business Administration from Rutgers University, Graduate School of Management in Newark, N.J. She also has an undergraduate degree in human resources management from Upsala College and a nursing degree from Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing. Prior to her positions in health policy, Bocchino held administrative and clinical positions in critical care medicine and renal replacement therapy.
Susannah Fox
Associate Director, Digital Strategy
Pew Internet & American Life Project
Susannah Fox is associate director of Digital Strategy at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Fox leads the Project's health research and oversees the Project's digital strategy. Her recent reports include “The Social Life of Health Information,” “Chronic Disease and the Internet,” and “Peer-to-peer Healthcare.”
Fox formerly served as an editor of the U.S. News & World Report website; she has also worked as a researcher for RealNetworks and for The Harwood Group.
Fox graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in anthropology. She also contributes to e-patients.net, the blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine.
Michael Christopher Gibbons, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Director, Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins’ Schools of Medicine and Public Health
Michael Christopher Gibbons, M.D., M.P.H., is an associate director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute and is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins’ Schools of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Gibbons’ is an urban health expert and informatician who works primarily in the area of consumer health informatics where he focuses on using health information and communications technologies to improve urban healthcare disparities.
He is an advisor and expert consultant to several state and federal agencies and policymakers in the areas of urban health, eHealth, minority health and healthcare disparities. Dr. Gibbons is leading a systematic evidence review on the impact of consumer health informatics applications for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and has been named a Health Disparities Scholar by the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Gibbons is currently serving on a National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committee investigating the role of human factors in the delivery of healthcare in nonclinical home and community settings. Dr. Gibbon’s has recently authored the book entitled “eHealth Solutions for Healthcare Disparities” and his research is leading the development of the emerging field of Populomics.
Dr. Gibbons obtained his medical degree from the University of Alabama. He then completed residency training in preventive medicine, a molecular oncology research fellowship and earned a Master of Public Health degree focusing in health promotion among urban and disadvantaged populations all from Johns Hopkins.
John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S.
Chief Information Officer
Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S., is chief information officer of Harvard Medical School, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), CEO of MA-SHARE (a Regional Health Information Organization), co-chair of the U.S. Healthcare Information Technology Standards Committee, and a practicing emergency physician.
As chief information officer of Harvard Medical School, he oversees all educational, research and administrative computing for 18,000 faculty and 3,000 students. At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he is responsible for all clinical, financial, administrative and academic information technology serving 3,000 doctors, 14,000 employees and two million patients. As chairman of NEHEN, he oversees the administrative data exchange in Massachusetts; as CEO of MA-SHARE, he oversees the clinical data exchange efforts in Massachusetts; and as chair of the HIT Standards Committee, he coordinates the process of electronic standards harmonization among stakeholders nationwide.
J. Daniell Hebert
Microsoft Bing
J. Daniell Hebert was the CEO of MOTO Development Group, which he founded with college roommate Gregor Berkowitz in 1991. MOTO is a leading product research and development company focusing on innovation and product development that blends electronics, software, and mechanical engineering. MOTO was acquired by Cisco in 2010.
Under Hebert's leadership, MOTO provided advanced research and intellectual property for leading research and innovation groups at Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Hewlett Packard, Interval Research, Motorola, Casio and Ricoh. MOTO also developed and shipped high volume consumer electronics products for Virgin, Intel, Logitech, Sirius and many other startup companies.
While at MOTO, Hebert was also the founder and CTO of two startup companies: Mjuice (1997) a secure music download company (aquired by Artist Direct) and MVOEM/MSX (2003) a software company providing deeply brand-customized mobile phones and services. Prior to founding MOTO, Hebert was a researcher in MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and later joined Apple as a researcher of advanced manufacturing systems.
Hebert received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and completed the Stanford Business School Executive Program for Growing Companies. He has been awarded patents for portable computer systems, portable audio systems and medical instruments. He currently works at Microsoft.
Brandon Hull, M.B.A.
Partner and Co-Founder
Cardinal Partners
Brandon Hull, M.B.A., is a co-founder of Cardinal Partners, a medical and life sciences venture capital partnership established in 1996. He entered the venture capital industry in 1991 as a principal of the Edison Venture Fund, where he directed Edison's healthcare investing activities and served on the boards of its healthcare portfolio companies. His extensive investment experience includes all facets of health care services, health care information systems, medical products and devices, and encompasses a variety of information technology sectors outside of health care. Prior to his venture investing experience, Hull spent seven years in health services operations.
Hull has served on the boards of numerous healthcare and medtech companies, and currently serves as a director of AthenaHealth, CardioOptics, Replication Medical, CodeRyte, and Fluidnet and is a board observer at AccentCare.
Hull received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and literature from Wheaton College and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Carlos Roberto Jaén, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor and Chairman, Department of Family and Community Medicine
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Carlos Roberto Jaén, M.D., Ph.D., is the Dr. John M. Smith, Jr. professor and chairman of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio since 2001.
Dr. Jaén is a former RWJF Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar and completed a U.S. PHS Primary Care Policy Fellowship. He is co-director of the AAFP-funded Center for Research in Family Medicine and Primary Care and is the PI of the National Demonstration Project evaluation of TransforMED. He served on the panels that published smoking cessation guidelines in 1996 and 2000 and is co-chair of the panel that published an update in 2008.
Dr. Jaén has been active in family medicine and public health research since 1985. In 2005, he was appointed to the National Advisory Council to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He is a practicing family physician and has been selected to the Best Doctors in America since 2002.
He received a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in biology from Niagara University and doctoral degrees in medicine and epidemiology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He completed a family medicine residency and primary care research fellowship at Case Western Reserve University.
John Maeda, Ph.D., M.B.A.
President
Rhode Island School of Design
John Maeda, Ph.D., M.B.A., is a world-renowned graphic designer, artist, and computer scientist and is noted for his advocacy of simplicity in the digital age. He has pioneered the use of the computer for people of all ages and skills to create art. Maeda's early work redefined the use of electronic media as a tool for expression by combining skilled computer programming with a sensitivity to traditional artistic concerns. This work helped to develop the interactive motion graphics that are prevalent on the Internet today.
He also initiated the Design by Numbers project, a global initiative to teach computer programming to visual artists through a freely available, custom software system that he designed. He has displayed his work at numerous exhibitions, lectured extensively worldwide, and has published several books featuring his graphic designs.
Previously associate director of Research at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he managed relationships for a $32 million laboratory, he also held the E. Rudge and Nancy Allen Professorship of Media Arts and Sciences. On June 1, 2008, he became the sixteenth president of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island, the preeminent college of art and design in the United States.
In 1999, Maeda was included in Esquire’s list of the 21 most important people for the twenty-first century. He is also the recipient of the highest career honors for design in the United States (2001, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award; 2008, Art Directors Club Lifetime Achievement Award), Japan (2002, Mainichi Design Prize), and Germany (2005, Raymond Loewy Foundation Prize). In May of 2003, he received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
He is the recipient of the highest career honors for design in the United States, Japan, and Germany and serves on the board of trustees for the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He has had major exhibits of his work in Paris, London, New York and Tokyo, and has written several books on his philosophy of “humanizing technology” through his perspective on the future of creative uses of technologies, including “The Laws Of Simplicity” (MIT Press) published in 14 languages. His design work and consulting for organizations like Google, Cartier, Samsung, Shiseido, Reebok, Chanel, Philips and Sony have led to seminal advances in how digital thinking meets the analog world with the greatest respect for humanity.
He received both his B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT, and received a Ph.D. in design from Tsukuba University Institute of Art and Design in Japan. He also holds an M.B.A. from Arizona State University. Maeda is the author of four books, including Maeda@Media and The Laws of Simplicity.
Omid Moghadam, M.S., M.B.A.
Member of Staff
The Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics
Omid Moghadam is a member of staff at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Biomedical Informatics, focusing on applications of next generation sequencing and personal genomics. He is also the chair of National Development Board for the Ignite Institute for the Individual Health (www.ignitehealth.org), a newly formed research institute in personalized medicine.
Previously, he was the global director for Intel Genomics, an Intel division focused on providing services to the Genomics market. Prior to joining Intel Genomics, he founded Dossia Corporation (www.dossia.org), a corporation that has created a national network for storing life long consumer owned health records. Moghadam served as Dossia chief executive for three years. Before Dossia, Moghadam was the head of product strategy at Intel, where he led the transition of the corporation from single to multiple core processors.
Prior to joining Intel, Moghadam was a principal of the American Management Systems (AMS), a management consultancy based in Washington, D.C. At AMS, he focused his efforts on serving clients strategy needs in healthcare, finance and government.
Before AMS, Moghadam spent seven years with Eastman Kodak Company in various technical and general management roles. His assignments ranged from creation of the digital angiography business, to managing regional sales and marketing for the newly created digital imaging business and leading mergers and acquisition deals in the printing and semiconductor sectors.
An expert in medical imaging, Moghadam holds bachelors and masters degrees in electrical and computer engineering, with concentration in biophysics. He also holds an M.B.A. in finance.
Moghadam is an entrepreneur in Residence at the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and also serves on the advisory boards of Markle Foundation’s Personal Health Technology, Children Hospital Boston’s Gene Partnership Program, CITL Personal Health Records, and Robert Wood Johnson’s Project HealthDesign. A prolific inventor, he holds 32 patents, and has received the honor of being named an Eastman distinguished inventor.
Paul C. Tang, M.D., M.S. (Chair)
Internist, Vice President, and Chief Medical Information Officer
Palo Alto Medical Foundation
Paul Tang, M.D., M.S., is an internist and vice president, chief medical information officer at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF). He is also consulting associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. At PAMF, Dr. Tang is responsible for clinical information systems, including an enterprise-wide electronic health record system and an integrated personal health record system.
Dr. Tang is immediate past chair of the board for the American Medical Informatics Association. He is a member of the National Committee on Vital Health Statistics, the federal advisory committee to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt regarding health information policy, and the Consumer Empowerment Workgroup of the American Health Information Community, which Secretary Leavitt chairs. In addition, Dr. Tang chairs the Robert Wood Johnson National Advisory Committee on personal health records and the National Quality Forum's (NQF) Health Information Technology Expert Panel, and co-chairs the Quality Alliance Steering Committee Measurement Implementation Strategy committee. He is a member of NQF's Consensus Standards Approval Committee.
Dr. Tang is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and serves on the Health Care Services Board. He chaired the IOM Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety whose reports, "Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard for Care" and "Key Capabilities of an Electronic Health Record System," were published in 2003. He is currently a member of the IOM Committee on the Future Health Care Workforce for Older Americans.
Dr. Tang has served on numerous committees of the National Institutes of Health, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, and Computer Science and Technology Board. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Medical Informatics, College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
Dr. Tang received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and his M.D. degree from the UCSF School of Medicine. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Stanford University and is board certified in internal medicine.
