Speaker:

Mark Braunstein

Title:

 Healthcare at the Tipping Point?

Abstract:

Dr. Braunstein’s last talk at GVU focused on the adoption of health IT being spurred by new federal programs and initiatives and the underlying problems of the healthcare system driving them. Today, adoption is well along and some 50% of physicians and 75% of hospitals now have an EMR system capable of achieving the goals of more coordinated care. As a byproduct those systems are producing mountains of new digital health data. Some are calling adoption the “first revolution in healthcare” and figuring out what to do with the resulting data its “second revolution”. This talk will briefly review the first revolution and focus on some interesting exemplars of the second done both here at Georgia Tech and around the world.

Bio:

Dr. Braunstein teaches health informatics and is involved in fostering research and community outreach aimed at the wider and deeper adoption of health information technology to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery.

He received his BS degree from MIT in 1969 and his MD degree from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in 1974. After an internship at Washington University he joined the faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy at MUSC where he developed one of the first four ambulatory electronic health record systems working in a clinic that had many of the key attributes now attributed to the patient-centered medical home model of care. There he co-authored the first paper in the literature describing a comprehensive system for the clinical management of ambulatory medications and A Guide to Drug Interactions, one of the first digitally composed books ever published.

Immediately prior to joining Georgia Tech, he was co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Patient Care Technologies, Inc. (“PtCT”), a graduate of the institute’s Advanced Technology Development Center, a 1998 Inc 500 company, and a leading provider of home care electronic patient record and home-based patient care management systems. PtCT was acquired by MEDITECH in 2007.

Earlier he co-founded PROHECA, a company which commercialized the pharmacy work he had done at MUSC. The company was acquired by National Data Corporation (NDC) in 1981 and was the seed for NDCHealth which he ran as a division of NDC for five years before becoming the company’s President and COO.

He is the author of over fifty papers; articles and book chapters devoted to various aspects of clinical automation. His most recent publication, Health Informatics in the Cloud, is a brief text on contemporary health information technology written for a general audience but with health care practitioners particularly in mind. He also teaches the first public Mass Open Online Course (MOOC) devoted to health informatics based on the book (and of the same name) to a global class of thousands of students.

He is Senior Adviser Emeritus for health information technology to Focus, LLC, an investment banking firm that provides a range of services tailored to the needs of emerging growth and middle market businesses from offices across the country.

He is the immediate past Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Advanced Technology Ventures (GATV) -- a corporation that supports the Advanced Technology Development Center, a technology incubator operated by the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a past Chairman of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Southeast Region and of the Atlanta Chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum.

He was a 1996 Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Southeast Region, received a 1995 Innovation in Medical Management Award from the American Society of Physician Executives and received the 2006 Founder’s Award from the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Southeast Region. In 2013 he was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by MUSC.

He lives in Atlanta with his wife, a family physician and co-author of the book "Your Body, Your Health". They are the proud parents of two children and grandparents of grandchild #1.