For six weeks, Paul Tang, MD, has dived into his new position as IBM Watson Health's chief health transformation officer. This is a newly created position for IBM Watson Health, one in which Dr. Tang will find ways to aggregate large sets of data and apply learnings at the individual level.
Dr. Tang has been heavily involved in the health IT industry for more than 30 years. In the 1980s, he directed a research group at Hewlett Packard Laboratories to create EHR systems. He helped guide the Palo Alto Medical Foundation's EHR implementation in 1998 and helped the medical foundation work with Epic to create the MyChart patient portal.
Dr. Tang also is vice chair of HHS' Health IT Policy Committee and chair of its Meaningful Use workgroup, in addition to being an elected member of the Institute of Medicine.
In an IBM blog post, Dr. Tang wrote that healthcare is at a turning point where the amount of data generated and disruptive innovation need to come together to improve health and lower costs.
"IBM established Watson Health to address this opportunity and to serve as a catalyst for and collaborator with health and life sciences entities worldwide," Dr. Tang wrote. "I see the potential of Watson health to help us collectively discover what matters most and see my mission as chief health transformation officer to make a difference with that insight."
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