“This Man Wants to Heal Health Care,” is how Business Week described Dr. David J. Brailer. They say he’s “slick and funny” and has “the deft delivery of the software company CEO he once was.” Many of us know him as our nation’s first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology – leave it to the government to give the most boring titles to the most interesting people. But Dr. Brailer has been trying to heal health care his entire career. Dr. Brailer holds doctoral degrees in both medicine and economics. He earned his M.D. from West Virginia University and his Ph.D. in economics from The Wharton School. He became board certified in internal medicine after internship and residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and practiced in HIV medicine and immune deficiency until 2002. Dr. Brailer was appointed a Charles A. Dana Fellow and a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Brailer founded and was chairman and CEO of CareScience, Inc. CareScience set a new standard for health care quality and accountability by developing the nation’s first online physician and hospital quality reports, the first health care Internet-based Application Service Provider and the first health information exchange. Under his leadership, the company built a network of hospitals and physicians that is still improving quality of care today. In May 2004, President Bush tapped him to be the nation’s change agent and chief evangelist for health IT. Dr. Brailer led federal and private sector efforts to improve health care quality, accountability and efficiency through widespread deployment of health information technology. Dr. Brailer was voted the Most Powerful Person in Health Care by the readers of Modern Healthcare in 2004. In just two years, Dr. Brailer set the nation’s health care industry on a course toward modernized health information standards, certification of health information tools, state-of-the-art information sharing architectures and new policies for protection of consumer privacy. He pushed IT solutions for adverse drug events, bioterrorism, pandemic flu and other public health threats. Having set the foundation for the nation’s digital era of medicine in place, Dr. Brailer left the federal government to return to the private sector. In May 2007, Dr. Brailer founded and became chairman of Health Evolution Partners, a private equity fund focused on transforming the health care industry. Health Evolution Partners finances innovative ways for health care to be financed, organized and delivered. Through his work as an investor, Dr. Brailer empowers the companies and ideas that can make health care more efficient, higher in quality and more responsive to consumers.

David Cutler has developed an impressive record of achievement in both academia and the public sector. He served as Assistant Professor of Economics from 1991 to 1995, was named John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences in 1995, and received tenure in 1997. He is currently Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economics and Kennedy School of Government, and Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Honored for his scholarly work and singled out for outstanding mentorship of graduate students in 1999, Professor Cutler’s work in health economics and public economics has further earned him significant berths in the public sector. Professor Cutler served on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton Administration, and among other affiliations, he has held positions with the National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences. Currently, Professor Cutler is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Institute of Medicine. Professor Cutler is the author of Your Money Or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America’s Health Care System, published by Oxford University Press. He is associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives and former co-editor of the Journal of Health Economics.

Thomas Gustafson, Ph.D., is an advisor in the health care practice group at Arent Fox LLP, a Washington-based law firm. He concentrates on Medicate payment issues and on health policy. Tom comes from a distinguished 30-year career at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Most recently, he served as acting director of the Center for Medicare Management (CMM), which coordinates the fee-for-service portion of the Medicare program and sets payment rates for more than a million providers. Tom joined HHS in 1976 as an economist concentrating on welfare and retirement issues. He moved to the Health Care Financing Administration, now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in 1985, where he held several executive posts responsible for Medicare and Medicaid legislation, research and demonstrations, strategic planning, and regulations. He led the development and implementation of hospital outpatient prospective payment system and oversaw major improvements in Medicare’s other payment policies and systems. In 2003, Tom became deputy director of CMM, where he supervised the development of coding and payment policies affecting approximately $300 billion in Medicare spending on hospitals, physicians, nursing facilities, home health agencies and other providers. He also oversaw a sweeping reform, intended to improve accountability and efficiency, of Medicare’s administrative structure for paying claims.

Thomas H. Lee, MD, is an internist and cardiologist, and is Network President for Partners Healthcare System, the integrated delivery system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Chief Executive Officer for Partners Community HealthCare. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Cornell University Medical College, and Harvard School of Public Health. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research interests include risk stratification and optimal management strategies for common cardiovascular problems, and improvement of quality of care, with a particular focus on critical pathways, guideline development and implementation, and managed care. Dr. Lee is co-chair of the Committee for Performance Measures of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and has been the Chairman of NCQA’s Cardiovascular Measurement Advisory Panel since 1996. He is a member of the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council. He is a member of the Boards of Directors of Geisinger Health System and of Bridges to Excellence. He is a member of the Board on Health Care Services of the Institute of Medicine. He is the Editor-in-Chief for The Harvard Heart Letter and Associate Editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.