Some of the most influential healthcare executives are all about information exchange

Can a top 50 list tell us something about the role of information exchange in healthcare?  Modern Healthcare's list of the most influential physician executives shows the growing importance of informatics. Although mostly filled with CMOs and CEOs of big healthcare providers and professional associations, the top spot is held by David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS. Then there's a sprinkling of informaticians and information exchange advocates such as Donald Berwick, President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a driving force behind the movement to make health information more transparent to patients, and Paul Tang, Vice President and chief medical information officer the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.Other awardees certainly get it such as Robert Wachter, Chief of the division of hospital medicine at UCSF and healthcare quality expert and blogger, Carolyn Clancy Director of the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Thomas Frieden, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and originator of the first municipal diabetes registry in the world when he was Commissioner of Health for New York City.

With friends in high places, maybe we can get some progress in using all those bits of data to help people live better!