August 4th, 2009
Todd Park draws good reviews in debut as HHS CTO
The nomination of Todd Park to be Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Health and Human Services is drawing strong reviews.
Park is best-known as co-founder of AthenaHealth, a practice management company with expertise in getting money out of insurance companies, which is now worth about $1.2 billion. (It was listed as the 41st largest Health Informatics company by Healthcare Informatics in 2005.)
Park contributed the maximum allowed to the Obama campaign, as well as the transition team, but he is also listed as a director of Forbes. He keynoted last year’s Draper Fisher Jurvetson CEO conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Athena co-founder Jonathan Bush is a first cousin of former President George W. Bush.
Like many Obamacrats Park has a compelling life story.
Park told HIStalk (from which this picture was taken) that his father emigrated from rural South Korea in the 1960s, but he grew up on Ohio, and saw his father as a chemical engineer who eventually earned 72 patents, more than anyone in the history of the company “other than Mr. Dow himself,” he recalled.
Open source advocate Scott Shreeve has called AthenaHealth one of his all-time favorite companies for building a company that “could actually manage the insurers and their crazy denial rules,” taking a percentage of the money they made for doctors.
As CTO, Park’s job will be to translate the agency’s hopes for health IT into meaningful action. Or as he put it in a press statement, to “explore and catalyze new ways to improve the health status of the United States through the power of data, technology, and innovation.” He speaks fluent buzzword.
A SaaS entrepreneur, beloved of an open source advocate, but with many close Republican friends as well. Park has officially resigned from AthenaHealth, with the company’s good wishes, and he has mine as well.
Does he have yours?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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