NominationToAHIC

= US National Health Information Network - AHIC Advisory Committeee Nomination =

'''On June 29, 2005, the Ontolog Community adopted a motion to nominate Mark Musen, M.D. Ph.D., Head of Stanford Medical Informatics and the Protégé project, as a candidate to the 17-member Advisory Committee of the American Health Information Community (AHIC) that is being set up by the US Federal Department Health and Human Services (HHS). This commission is expected to develop a process for selecting standards and an architecture for the National Health Information Network.'''

Unfortunately, our nominee did not make it onto the list of advisors selected for the AHIC commission, which was officially announced on "HHS News" released Sep. 13, 2005. See: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//health-ont/2005-09/msg00025.html


 * HHS AHIC Announcement and Related Information
 * http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/ahic.html
 * http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/qa.html
 * June 9, 2005 Article on Federal Computer Week mentioning the establishment of the AHIC - ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//ontolog-forum/2005-06/msg00012.html
 * ...(add content or link here) ...


 * Discussion thread on [ontolog-forum] relating to the nomination and the adoption of the motion - see:
 * see discussion thread that started with: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//ontolog-forum/2005-06/msg00024.html
 * Motion to nominate Dr. Mark Musen adopted: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//ontolog-forum/2005-06/msg00071.html


 * References & Resources
 * ...(add content or link here) ...


 * The announcement stipulates: "send all nominations for the AHIC via email with a letter of intent and resume to onchit.request@hhs.gov"


 * Here's a third draft of the nomination letter (by KurtConrad and BobSmith):

Draft Nomination Letter
Note that the submission is due Friday, Aug. 5th, 2005

Mari Rose Johnson, MPA Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 200 Independence Ave., SW, Room 517D Washington, DC 20201 (202) 690-7385 (p) (202) 690-6079 (f) mari.johnson@hhs.gov

Subject: AHIC Nomination

Draft language (v3):

The Ontolog Community of Practice is pleased to nominate Dr. Mark A. Musen, M.D., Ph.D., and Head of the Stanford Medical Informatics Program, to be appointed to the Advisory Committee of the American Health Information Community (AHIC). We are sure that his background, talents, and insights will prove to be invaluable to the US Department of Health and Human Services in the establishment of standards and architectures in support of the Nation-wide Health Information Network.

For the AHIC Commissioners to successfully navigate the many challenges that have been well-documented, they will need to be informed by a balanced set of perspectives. Towards this end, Dr. Musen provides a unique synthesis of expertise reflecting a number of critical knowledge domains:


 * Medical practice in multiple settings
 * Multi-disciplinary educational programs
 * Architecture of health informatics systems
 * Management of semantic interoperability initiatives funded by NIH and DARPA
 * Design and deployment of software development platforms and supporting toolkits that are used both inside and outside of the medical domain
 * Ontological engineering as it is applied to the establishment of standardized medical vocabularies

Dr. Musen has participated in a large number of events sponsored by Ontolog and a companion organization - the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice, which is chartered under the Federal CIO Council. We have been continually impressed with his ability to trustfully present complex issues and sophisticated solutions in clear, well-articulated, and easily-understood terms. Likewise, we expect that AHIC will find his participation in their efforts to be critical to the success of the Nation-wide Health Information Network initiative.

Members of the AHIC candidate nomination working group, on behalf of the Ontolog Forum


 * Rex Brooks, Starbourne Communications Design
 * Patrick Cassidy, Ph.D., The MITRE Corporation
 * Anthony Tze-Wai Cheung, Ph.D., UC Davis School of Medicine
 * Kurt Conrad, Sagebrush Group
 * Peter Elkin, M.D., Dir., Laboratory of Biomedical Informatics, Mayo Medical School
 * Michael Hogarth M.D., UC Davis School of Medicine
 * Duane Nickull, Adobe
 * Leo Obrst, Ph.D., The MITRE Corporation
 * Nicolas F. Rouquette, Ph.D., Jet Propulsion Laboratory
 * Bob Smith, Ph.D. Tall Tree Labs
 * Marc Wine, GSA Health IT Coordination
 * Peter Yim, CIM3

Additions, amendements and modification suggestions solicited, please enter below:

 * ...(add comments here) ...

(Please sign and date your entry to help us contact you, if needed.)


 * Peter's Comments: (=ppy/2005.07.28-09:38)
 * consider getting into the letter body: "Dr. Mark Musen, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Medicine and Computer Science at Stanford University ..."
 * maybe, one more bullet to Mark's domain expertise: "semantic interoperability of disparate systems -- which is crucial, as we move from today's data network, to tomorrow's semantic network architecture"
 * suggest replacing "Dr. Musen has participated in a large number of events sponsored by Ontolog and a companion organization, the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice, which works in conjunction with the Office of Management and Budget." with "As an active participant of the Ontolog, Dr. Musen has provided leadership and made significant contribution to this (Ontolog) community as well as to our e-Government counterpart, the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP), which is sponsored by the Best Practices Committee of the Federal Chief Information Officers Council."
 * who signs this letter? -- I like the idea that Bob brought up once, that of a nomination committee, made up of people who has been outspoken about supporting this nomination. .... signed by "xxx, yyy, zzz, ... Members of the AHIC candidate nomination committee, on behalf of the Ontolog Forum"
 * active involvement in ontology and data integration initiatives involving NIH institute
 * attach Mark's CV (without the ssn)
 * do we attach, say, the Executive Summary of our NHIN-RFI response? pros & cons? - ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NhinRfi#nid921 -- the consensus is no.


 * Bob's further comments -
 * mentioning Dr. Musen's [support of] or [contributions to] broad bio-engineering initiatives of DARPA and DoD in initial knowledge management and data intergation developments {spearheaded by Mark and his team}


 * Kurt and Bob reached a concensus on a version that met the ONC requirements and as many of the Forum's suggestions as possible. We needed confirmation of title and organization from one individual; a decision was made to send this version as a Word document along with the edited CV

Mari Rose Johnson, MPA                                                           August 1, 2005 Office of the National Coordinator, HHS mari.johnson@hhs.gov


 * Subject: AHIC Nomination, CV attached


 * The Ontolog Community of Practice is pleased to nominate Dr. Mark A. Musen, M.D., Ph.D., and Head of the Stanford Medical Informatics Program, to be appointed to the Advisory Committee of the American Health Information Community (AHIC). We are sure that his background, talents, and insights will prove to be invaluable to the US Department of Health and Human Services in the establishment of standards and architectures in support of the Nation-wide Health Information Network.


 * For the AHIC Commissioners to successfully navigate the many challenges that have been well-documented, they will need to be informed by a balanced set of perspectives. Towards this end, Dr. Musen provides a unique synthesis of expertise reflecting a number of critical knowledge domains:
 * Medical practice in multiple settings;
 * Multi-disciplinary educational programs;
 * Architecture of health informatics systems;
 * Management of semantic interoperability initiatives funded by NIH & DARPA;
 * Design and deployment of software development platforms and supporting toolkits that are used both inside and outside of the medical domain;
 * Ontological engineering as it is applied to the establishment of standardized medical vocabularies;
 * Semantic interoperability of disparate systems -- which is crucial, as we move from today's data network, to tomorrow's semantic network architecture.


 * Dr. Musen has participated in a large number of events sponsored by Ontolog and a companion organization - the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice, which is chartered under the Federal CIO Council. We have been continually impressed with his ability to trustfully present complex issues and sophisticated solutions in clear, well-articulated, and easily-understood terms. Likewise, we expect that AHIC will find his participation in their efforts to be critical to the success of the Nation-wide Health Information Network initiative.


 * Members of the AHIC candidate nomination working group, on behalf of the Ontolog Forum include:
 * Rex Brooks, Starbourne Communications Design
 * Patrick Cassidy, Ph.D., The MITRE Corporation
 * Anthony Cheung, Ph.D., UC Davis School of Medicine
 * Kurt Conrad, Sagebrush Group
 * Peter Elkin, M.D., Dir., Mayo Medical School
 * Michael Hogarth M.D., UC Davis School of Medicine
 * Duane Nickull, Adobe
 * Leo Obrst, Ph.D., The MITRE Corporation
 * Nicolas F. Rouquette, Ph.D., Jet Propulsion Laboratory
 * Bob Smith, Ph.D. Tall Tree Labs
 * Peter Yim, CIM3


 * CV attached
 * Sent at 1pm, Monday, Aug 1st, 2005