Ronald A. Paulus.

Ronald A. Paulus, MD, MBA, chief health information technology venture officer and special assistant to the chief executive officer at Geisinger Health System in Lewisburg, Pa., has been named to a national work group on the functionality of inpatient electronic health records. Work group members were selected by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) based in Chicago. In September 2005, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services awarded CCHIT a three-year contract to develop and evaluate certification criteria and create an inspection process for HIT in three areas: ambulatory electronic health records for office-based physicians or providers, inpatient electronic health records for hospitals and health systems, and the network components through which ambulatory and inpatient providers interact and share information. Paulus co-founded CareScience, Inc., a company that commercialized health care technology developed at the University of Pennsylvania. He jointly built and grew CareScience to nearly 200 hospitals and health system clients in more than 30 states nationwide. Under his leadership as president and CEO, CareScience pioneered the nation's first company that provided an Internet-based quality management software solution to health care organizations and also created one of the first regional clinical data sharing networks. Paulus was chief health care officer at Quovadx and responsible for health care strategy before joining Geisinger. Paulus received both his Master of Business Administration and his MD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania before undergoing training in internal medicine at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He has been published in numerous medical journals and speaks nationally on health care technology and management issues.

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