Scientific Advisory Board

Paul Bleicher, MD, Ph.D., currently serves as Humedica's Chief Medical Officer.  Previously, he was founding CEO and Chairman of Phase Forward, a leading provider of integrated data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety, where he continues as a Director.  As co-founder of Phase Forward, he was instrumental in defining and guiding corporate strategy.  Before Phase Forward, Paul led clinical research in the biopharmaceutical industry, and was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.  He received his MD and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, trained in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, and in dermatology at MGH/Harvard Medical School.

John D. Halamka, MD, MS, is Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Chief Information Officer of Harvard Medical School, Chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network (NEHEN), Chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), co-Chair of the HIT Standards Committee, and a practicing emergency physician.  As CIO of Beth Israel, 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 clinical and administrative data exchange in Massachusetts.  As Chair of HITSP/co-Chair of the HIT Standards Committee, he coordinates the process of electronic standards harmonization among stakeholders nationwide.
 

Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Staff Physician at VA Boston Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  He also serves as a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Health of the Veterans Health Administration, focusing on clinical quality and patient safety.  Dr. Jha has worked in areas evaluating the quality of hospital care, especially hospitals that care for large minority populations, and delineating the relationship between hospital quality and efficiency.  Much of Dr. Jha’s current work focuses on the current state of health information technology use in the U.S. and its impact on the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care.  Dr. Jha received his MD degree from Harvard Medical School and his MPH from Harvard School of Public Health.

Kenneth Kaitin, Ph.D., is the Director of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, a position he has held since 1998.  He is also a Professor of Medicine and Professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Tufts University School of Medicine.  Dr. Kaitin is an internationally recognized expert on the science of drug development and publishes extensively on the factors that contribute to the slow pace and high cost of pharmaceutical R&D.  He also testifies before Congress on drug development issues and is frequently quoted in the business and trade press on R&D trends in the research–based pharmaceutical industry.  His work covers the entire value chain of pharmaceutical innovation, from discovery to manufacturing to sales and marketing.

Isaac (Zak) Kohane, MD, Ph.D., is the Director of the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program as well as the Henderson Professor of Pediatrics and Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard Medical School (HMS).  Dr. Kohane also serves as co-director of the HMS Center for Biomedical Informatics and Director of the HMS Countway Library of Medicine.  Dr. Kohane has led the development of cryptographic health identification systems, automated personal health records, and peer-to-peer pathology information networks.  He also has developed several systems to allow multiple hospital systems to be used as “living laboratories” to study the genetic basis of disease while preserving patient privacy.  He continues his own practice in pediatric endocrinology at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Dr. Barbara McNeil is the Ridley Watts Professor and was the founding Head of the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School in 1988. She is also a Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She continues to practice nuclear medicine at the BWH. She was interim dean of Harvard Medical School in summer, 2007. Dr. McNeil received her A.B. degree from Emmanuel College, her M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and her Ph.D.in Biological Chemistry from Harvard University. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (where she was recently chair of its Board of Health Care Services) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is now vice chair of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences.