David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., is the former president of the Commonwealth Fund, a national philanthropy engaged in independent research on health and social policy issues.
Dr. Blumenthal is formerly the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief Health Information and Innovation Officer at Partners Healthcare System in Boston (now Mass General Brigham). From 2009 to 2011, he served as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, with the charge to build an interoperable, private, and secure nationwide health information system and to support the widespread, meaningful use of health IT. He succeeded in putting in place one of the largest publicly funded infrastructure investments the nation has ever made in such a short time period, in health care or any other field.
Previously, Dr. Blumenthal was a practicing primary care physician, director of the Institute for Health Policy, and professor of medicine and health policy at Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School. He is the author of more than 300 scholarly publications and books, including Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on a number of boards, including the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, The Carol Emmott Foundation, and the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, and is the founding chairman of AcademyHealth, the national organization of health services researchers.
Dr. Blumenthal received his undergraduate, medical, and public policy degrees from Harvard University and completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. With his colleagues from Harvard Medical School, he authored the seminal studies on the adoption and use of health information technology in the United States. He has held several leadership positions in medicine, government, and academia, including senior vice president at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and executive director of the Center for Health Policy and Management and lecturer on public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He served previously on the boards of the University of Chicago Health System and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and is recipient of the Distinguished Investigator Award from AcademyHealth, the Graham Prize for Health Services Research, an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Rush University and Honorary Doctors of Science from Claremont Graduate University and the State University of New York Downstate.
