Fridsma also was involved in transitioning federal control over development of a proposed Nationwide Health Information Network to a public-private partnership, the eHealth Exchange, DeSalvo noted, adding that his work with the federally chartered Health IT Standards Committee, an advisory panel to her office, “helped lay the foundation for ONC's approach to supporting nationwide interoperability.”
“Doug has also worked closely with many of our federal partners while directing the efforts of the Federal Health Architecture,” DeSalvo said. The FHA is a collaboration of federal agencies with healthcare responsibilities, including HHS, the Defense Department, the Veterans Affairs Department and the Social Security Administration.
AMIA board Chairman Dr. Blackford Middleton said in a statement that Fridsma “has rich experiences in both academic and government settings where he has focused his energy toward advancing state-of-the-art health informatics technologies.”
“As a longtime AMIA member and national leader, he has a keen understanding of the science of informatics as well as the application of informatics to transform care,” Middleton said. “He brings a well-informed perspective from the practitioner, policymaker and investigator points of view to help define not only what informaticians know, but also what informaticians do to transform care."
Prior to his four-year stint at the ONC, Fridsma was an associate professor and director of academic programs at the joint biomedical informatics department at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. He has also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona Medical School and was an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh's departments of medicine and biomedical informatics.
He has a doctorate in medical informatics from Stanford University and is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Medicine.
Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn
