The U.S. Health and Human Services and products filled three fresh key technology roles this month. The agency has drawn from the non-public sector, the White Condo and at some level of the division for top synthetic intelligence and digital technology jobs within its Assistant Secretary for Expertise Coverage division.
- Alicia Rouault, who beforehand served in the White Condo’s United States Digital Carrier, will became the ASTP’s affiliate deputy assistant secretary for technology coverage and chief technology officer.
- Dr. Meghan Dierks, veteran chief recordsdata officer at Komodo Health, will abet as its fresh chief synthetic intelligence officer.
- Kristen Honey, beforehand the chief recordsdata scientist in the Position of enterprise of Science and Remedy, will now abet as ASTP’s chief recordsdata officer.
WHY IT MATTERS
HHS has introduced Dierks relieve to the agency no longer easiest as ASTP’s CAIO nonetheless as a go-setter in its Position of enterprise of the Chief Expertise Officer.
At Komodo, Dierks led the fashion and evaluation of AI-powered healthcare analytics tools for lifestyles sciences companies, healthcare practitioners and affected person advocacy groups, to boot to the firm’s recordsdata approach and governance. In step with her fresh agency profile, her accolades encompass advancing generative AI capabilities per foundational language fashions, recordsdata graph-essentially based entirely machine studying and Bayesian reasoning systems.
Rouault is taking the helm of ASTP’s Position of enterprise of the Chief Expertise Officer as the first particular person to absorb that characteristic since Ed Simcox left the predicament in 2020. Simcox immediate filled the characteristic when HHS reassigned CIO Beth Killoranto the Position of enterprise of the Surgeon General in 2018.
As the agency CTO, Rouault is accountable for riding the mission of the high federal health agency by fostering innovation in technology through recordsdata, digital services and public-non-public partnerships.
In step with her ASTP leadership profileRouault became beforehand with the White Condo’s U.S. Digital Carrier, which spoke back to deliver governments at some level of the COVID-19 pandemic. She directed the service’s monetary hardship program, which spanned five agencies. Before the public health emergency, she led a nationwide implementation of Unemployment Insurance Modernization beneath the American Rescue Opinion.
Honey, who joined HHS in 2018, beforehand served in the White Condo Position of enterprise of Management and Funds. Before OMB, she led the birth recordsdata portfolio on the White Condo Position of enterprise of Science and Expertise Coverage from 2015 to 2017, per her biography page.
As ASTP’s CDO, she will be able to lead recordsdata initiatives “across all HHS divisions to guide Departmental decisions, inform actions, and deliver results with a bias for action.”
Honey most lately heralded datathonsspearheaded the HHS Human-Centered Invent program and more. Of ticket, particular person-centered, inclusive create is the first precedence of the Federal Health IT Approachthat HHS and ASTP finalized in October.
FedScoopreportedthat Dierks began Dec. 30 and Rouault and Honey moved into their roles this week.
THE LARGER TREND
Final July, HHS supplied a mammoth reorganization of its AI, cybersecurity and IT capabilitieswhich incorporated renaming the National Coordinator for Health Files Expertise to ASTP and transferring the 405(d) Program to the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response’s Position of enterprise of Serious Infrastructure Safety to approach the agency’s methodology to cybersecurity.
In it, the high federal health IT agency took on more responsibilities and deliberate to reinstitute the CTO characteristic that Rouault has now filled and plan out the fresh CAIO characteristic that Dierks has taken.
The reorganization “builds on those capabilities to advance all our strategic, mission-focused technology, data, and AI policies and activities,” Andrea Palm, HHS deputy secretary, acknowledged in an announcement on the time.
ON THE RECORD
”I’m extremely proud to love shepherded ASTP to its next chapter guiding the division in technology, AI and recordsdata approach,” Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi told Healthcare IT News by email on Wednesday. “I’m therefore excited to peek three executed experts admire Alicia, Kristen and Meghan join ASTP to support force that broader imaginative and prescient for HHS.”
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media newsletter.
