Blumenthal to lead U.S. health IT expansion

Executive Summary

HHS names David Blumenthal, most recently director of the Institute for Health Policy at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners Health Care System in Boston, as the national coordinator for health information technology. In this role, Blumenthal is tasked with implementing a nationwide health IT infrastructure, a daunting task based on results of small-scale rollouts (1"The Pink Sheet," March 2, 2009, p. 36). Blumenthal was a senior health advisor to President Obama during the campaign; he also has ties to Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., as a staffer on the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research in the 1970s. Blumenthal appeared on a preliminary list of candidates for FDA commissioner, but it was expected that he would land somewhere else within the administration (2"The Pink Sheet," Nov. 3, 2008, p. 25)