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Todd Park

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Todd Park is the Chief Technology Officer of the United States[1], replacing outgoing CTO Aneesh Chopra.

Todd was formerly the CTO of the US Department of Health and Human Services, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. At HHS, he has been a leader in bringing the notion of "big data" to healthcare. He has expressed his ambition to create an open health data platform analogous to the National Weather Service, which feeds data to commercial weather sites and applications.[2] He has also described his desire to create a "holy cow machine for healthcare" that shows waste[3].

At HHS, he has been a champion of applying open innovation and the Lean Startup approach to government initiatives.[4] Under Park, HHS has applied open innovation -- sometimes called crowdsourcing -- to leverage the distributed intelligence of people outside of government. According to the New York Times, Park believes that releasing health data through HealthData.gov will support the agency's public health goals and catalyze new business opportunities in mhealth and eHealth. [5] It's for reasons like this that in 2010, Fast Company magazine named him one of the 100 Most Innovative People in Business.[6]

Park has been running his part of the massive government agency "like a Silicon Valley company," according to the Atlantic.[7] That approach was particularly relevant in the development of HealthCare.gov, the first government website that provides consumers with a searchable database of public and private health insurance plans available across the U.S. by zip code.[8]

The initial version of HealthCare.gov, which was deployed on July 1, 2010, was built in 90 days.[9] HealthCare.gov was cited by the Kaiser Family Foundation as one of the early highlights in the implementation of the healthcare reform implementation progress.[10] Healthcare.gov was also the first website ever "demoed" by a sitting president[11]

At HHS, Park also launched the Community Health Data Initiative, a developer conference and showcase to encourage the development of innovative healthcare applications using open government data. Now in its third year, the event, renamed the Health Datapalooza, receives coverage from Silicon Valley technology blogs and attention from venture capitalists[12], providing a vivid example of new ways that government can engage with the private sector.

Prior to joining HHS, Park was the co-founder of two successful health information technology companies, athenahealth and Castlight Health, named by the Wall Street Journal as the #1 venture-backed company in America for 2011.[13]. In one interview, he noted that his goal at athenahealth was "Healthcare IT, not technology sitting there naked and expensive and not very effective and efficient at actually helping, but technology utilized to help re-architect the business and care processes in healthcare to make it more efficient and effective and to help consumer-directed healthcare and pay-for-performance move along more expeditiously."[14]

Park also served a volunteer senior advisor to Ashoka, a global incubator of social entrepreneurs, where he helped start a venture called Healthpoint Services, which brings affordable clean water, drugs, diagnostics, and telehealth services to rural villages in India. In 2011, Healthpoint Services won the Sankalp Award for the “most innovative and promising health-oriented social enterprise in India. [15]

He was born in 1973 in Salt Lake City, Utah to Korean immigrant parents. His father was a chemical engineer, who reportedly had "more patents than anybody in Dow Chemical’s history except for Dr. Dow himself."[16] Todd graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics.

He is married, with two children.

References

  1. ^ HHS CTO Todd Park to serve as the second chief technology officer of the United States, Alexander Howard, O'Reilly Radar, March 9, 2012
  2. ^ Making community health information as useful as weather data, Alexander Howard, The O'Reilly Radar, June 2, 2010
  3. ^ Creating a Holy Cow Machine For Healthcare, O'Reilly Media Gov 2.0 Summit, September 8, 2010
  4. ^ Innovation: It's a question of leadership
  5. ^ Innovation for the People, by the People
  6. ^ Beth Noveck and Todd Park Named Two of Most Creative People in Government, Executive Gov, May 28, 2010
  7. ^ Can Todd Park Revolutionize the Health Care Industry?
  8. ^ The Social Return on Data
  9. ^ Behind Healthcare.gov: How Washington Is Drawing Inspiration From Silicon Valley, Twitter
  10. ^ Health reform's six-month checkup
  11. ^ President Obama demos healthcare.gov
  12. ^ Health Datapalooza Takes the Pulse of mHealth, Jody Rank, GigaOM Pro, March 7, 2012
  13. ^ The Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies, Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2011
  14. ^ HISTalk Interviews athenahealth co-founder Todd Park
  15. ^ Healthpoint Services wins prestigious Sankalp Award
  16. ^ HISTalk Interviews Athenaheath co-founder Todd Park


External Links

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