With no small task on his hands, the Obama admininistration has tapped Harvard professor David Blumenthal to be the national coordinator for health IT, says the Boston Globe.
Blumenthal will be responsible for watching over the $20 billion dollars in the economic stimulus package allocated for health information technology and modernizing the healthcare system. One of the keys, of course, is not just building the systems, but getting doctors to use them. As both a physician and a scholar on health policy, and Director of the Institute of Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Obama administration has picked someone whom they hope as both the knowledge and practical wisdom to get this enormous job done.
Summer Johnson, PhD