Indian American Mickey Tripathi Tapped as Biden Administration’s National Coordinator for Health IT
- Tripathi is a well-known name in health IT circles and is considered an interoperability and standards guru.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has announced on its website that Micky Tripathi, Ph.D., a nationally renowned expert on interoperability, will be the National Coordinator for Health IT for the Biden administration, adding to the at least 20 other Indian Americans to be named to key positions in the Biden-Harris administration.
ONC, the health IT arm of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), is at the forefront of the administration’s health IT efforts, and is the principal federal entity charged with coordination of nationwide efforts to implement and use the most advanced health information technology and the electronic exchange of health information.
Tripathi was named to the role January 20 as part of a slate of new HHS appointments.
Tripathi is a well-known name in health IT circles and is considered an interoperability and standards guru.
A familiar face as a proponent of standards-based interoperability – and an expert with deep knowledge of the nuts and bolts behind it, Tripathi was the longtime CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, a pioneering group that launched way back in the pre-HITECH Act days of 2005 and became a national exemplar as the healthcare industry moved from manila folders to electronic health records.
Last spring, he was named chief alliance officer for population health management solutions company Arcadia following the vendor’s acquisition of certain assets of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC), a non-profit health IT advisory and clinical data analytics company of which Tripathi was president and CEO.
In a statement to Healthcare Innovation, Sean Carroll, Arcadia’s CEO, noted, “It is a pleasure to congratulate Mickey on his appointment to serve our great nation in this capacity.”
He added, “I can personally attest to Micky’s industry-wide leadership on healthcare interoperability and to his vision for the value that shared, timely, and accurate data provides for improving healthcare delivery and reducing costs. No one is better suited for this absolutely critical mission.”
As the head of ONC, Tripathi’s key priorities will be strengthening health data sharing as the nation continues to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and implementing new interoperability regulations.