David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Care Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System and Harvard Medical School, is chairman of The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System. From 2009 to 2011, he served as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Barack Obama, charged with building a nationwide interoperable, privacy-protected health information technology infrastructure. Previously in his career, he held posts as senior vice president at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and executive director of the Center for Health Policy and Management at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. During the late 1970s, he was a professional staff member on Senator Edward Kennedy's Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research. Dr. Blumenthal is the founding chairman of AcademyHealth, the national organization of health services researchers; national correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine; and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.