The Health Data Consortium, noted for throwing annual Health Datapaloozas, has appointed Chris Boone as its new executive director.
Boone, an expert in health systems design, health informatics, health IT policy and the use of health data to improve patient care, will join the consortium Nov.3, replacing Dwayne Spradlin, who acted as interim CEO for HDC and but will continue to serve on its board of directors.
Chris Boone (Credit: Boone)A few years in now, the consortium is at a critical point for growth, scaling and sustainability, and Boone said that will be his focus when he steps in to his executive role.
“The first thing we have to do is really build a sustainable business model for the Health Data Consortium,” he said. “We’ve been operating heavily upon grants and revenues we received from the Datapalooza, but there’s an opportunity for us to do greater things by essentially building out a plan that aligns with out business model that allows for expansion.”
To be successful in the coming years, Bonne said it’s imperative to focus on branding the health data movement. “It’s part of getting people to buy into what open data really means,” he said. “We’re challenged with branding the movement in a way that people are drawn to it and branding the consortium and really drawing out those distinguishing factors.”
That also includes fostering community around the consortium and encouraging collaboration to get more organizations involved.
“We’ll continue to focus on the government data and making that open, but we also ultimately would like to make this more collaborative, which includes potentially even private data being open data as well,” Boone said.
Prior to joining the Health Data Consortium, Boone was a vice president in Avalere Health’s evidence translation and implementation practice and served as the director of outpatient quality and health IT for the American Heart Association. Boone will be the third to take the chief executive position with HDC, behind the aforementioned Spradlin and health data champion Todd Park, who since moved on to a role as chief technology officer for the federal government and now holds a position in Silicon Valley as a government liaison. Building off of their momentum will be one of Boone’s focuses.
“Dwayne [Spradlin] has been highly instrumental in where the organization is today,” Boone said. “If you think about it, Todd Park had the vision of doing Datapalooza. Dwayne was challenged with coming in and operationalizing that vision, and making and building HDC what it is today. So really what I want to take what Todd envisioned and Dwayne build the foundation for and build on top of those things, to really build and expand that community and foster that innovation.”
