CommonWell Health Alliance Names Executive Director

CommonWell Health Alliance, a nonprofit trade group comprised of major electronic health record (EHR) vendors trying to create a national health identifier, has named Jitin Asnaani its founding executive director.

Asnaani, who has a background in public and private interoperability efforts, comes to CommonWell from athenahealth (Watertown, Mass.), where he headed up product innovation and interoperability. Before that, he was involved with technical standards development at the Office of National Coordinator (ONC), product management at a health IT startup and strategy consulting at Deloitte. He has also been involved with CommonWell, as athenahealth is one of the founding members.

“Jitin has been instrumental in the CommonWell Health Alliance since its founding,” Rod O’Reilly, President of McKesson Health Solutions, said in a statement. “In addition, his leadership on both the National HIT Standards and Policy Committees, his strategic mindset, and his ability to execute while collaborating with a wide array of stakeholders makes him the perfect executive director for the Alliance at this critical juncture.”

At athenahealth, Asnaani was involved with the creation of the Technology Standards and Policy (TSP) program, which aims to drive increased HIT interoperability. From a national perspective, he has also been involved with the Argonaut Project and DirectTrust.org.

To date, over 26,000 unique persons have consented to enroll in CommonWell’s network. The organization has come under fire from representatives at Epic Systems, a Verona, Wisc.-based EHR vendor that is a major holdout to joining CommonWell. Epic accused CommonWell of selling data downstream. CommonWell responded by calling those accusations an inaccurate potshot.