In August 2019, Jitin Asnaani, executive director of the CommonWell Health Alliance since 2015, announced that he would be leaving the organization. Now the trade group has named Paul Wilder, former chief innovation officer of the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), as its new executive director.
CommonWell provides a vendor-neutral platform and interoperability services for its members—most of which are electronic health record (EHR) vendors. It was founded in 2013 with the overarching goal of improving healthcare interoperability. Six years later, the organization’s officials say, its platform has more than 66 million individuals enrolled, and services are live at more than 15,000 care provider sites nationwide. To date, more than 119 million health records have been retrieved.
Wilder has held various roles focusing on imaging, clinical informatics and interoperability. Most recently, he was vice president of strategy and business development for Philips Interoperability Solutions. He spent close to 10 years with NYeC, including as program director for NYeC’s Regional Extension Center. Prior to joining the NYeC, he worked at McKesson, Fujifilm Medical Systems and GE Healthcare.
“It was more by chance than plan that my career path, almost from the start, was focused on health IT; however, I quickly became both personally and professionally passionate about helping transform our healthcare delivery system and data access,” said Wilder in a prepared statement. “In just six years, CommonWell has made huge progress in enabling nationwide interoperability, and I’m honored to lead the organization as it continues to make its mark in improving health and care outcomes.”
