Hey! I’m nobody’s messenger boy, all right? I’m a delivery boy! This is not what the new pope said when he addressed the crowd at St. Peter’s Basilica this week, but he is reportedly interested in less talk and more action on social issues. This is actually what the ogre Shrek said when he tried to rescue Princess Fiona for the vertically-challenged Lord Farquaad in the animated fairy tale movie Shrek. In the One Thoughtful Paragraph below, I explain how lots of people are getting new action-oriented jobs that will impact our healthcare system.
Other people with interesting new jobs in healthcare:
- The American Telehealth Association (ATA) elected Nate Lacktman, a Partner and Chair of Foley & Lardner’s national Telemedicine & Digital Health Industry Team, as the Chair of the ATA Board of Directors.
- Karen DeSalvo, M.D., Google‘s first Chief Health Officer and former U.S. National Coordinator for Health IT, announced she will retire this summer after five years of leading health tech and AI initiatives at Google Health. Michael Howell, M.D., Google’s current Chief Clinical Officer, will be DeSalvo’s successor.
- Innovaccer appointed Lisa Bari as its Head of External Affairs. Bari most recently served as the CEO of HIE Civitas Networks for Health and led interoperability policy initiatives at CMMI.
I’m not a puppet, I’m a real boy! Pinocchio says this in the movie Shrek as he protests the fairy tale character workforce reduction by the evil Lord Farquaad. I imagine the federal workers that have been similarly forced out of the D.C. “swamp” probably had other choice words, but this post is not about those who were let go – it’s about who has been hired recently. For instance, we congratulate Peter Bowman-Davis, a former Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) fellow and student taking a break from his undergraduate studies at Yale, on his new role as HHS acting Chief AI Officer. Another person newly charged with using AI to speed up the FDA approval process for drugs and medical devices is Jeremy Walsh, previously Chief Technologist at federal contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and now the FDA’s first-ever Chief AI Officer. Unlike the new pope, these new appointments were not publicly announced and followed with a public-facing crowd address. But like Pope Leo XIV, we expect these new American leaders will bring serious change to traditionally old school platforms. This is not going to be easy. As Donkey says to Shrek: I just know, before this is over, I’m gonna need a whole lot of serious therapy. Look at my eye twitchin’.
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