Susannah Fox, long a proponent of the “data liberación“ strategy in government and champion of engaged patients, has been named chief technology officer of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Fox, most recently entrepreneur in residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and for 14 years before that, director of health and technology at the Pew Research Center, announced her appointment Thursday.
Writing on the HHS Idea Lab blog, Fox said that the offer to take on this role was too good to pass up, despite her love for the RWJF appointment that she had held since September.
“One morning a few weeks ago I went for an early-morning run. I thought about the thousands of people who have shared their stories with me over the last 15 years, hoping that I could find a way to channel their ingenuity, humanity and hard-won experience to heal healthcare,” the cerebral Fox wrote. “Not to be too metaphysical, but I felt all of them with me at that moment. I knew then that I would serve them by taking on this role if it was offered to me.”
Fox replaces Bryan Sivak, who left HHS in April. She is a longtime ally of the first HHS CTO, Todd Park, who coined the phrase “data liberación,” and Fox said she will “support and expand” this effort to free all kinds of health data stored in government databases.”I’m a health data geek from way back and think we’ve only just begun to harness its power,” Fox said.
In this new role, Fox will be a major presence at the sixth-annual Health Datapalooza, which starts Sunday in Washington. (MedCity News will be there.) Health Datapalooza was another Park brainchild.
Photo: susannahfox.com
