About NHII Advisors
NHII Advisors was founded by William A. Yasnoff, MD, PhD, who serves as
Managing Partner. Prior to establishing the firm in early 2005, Dr. Yasnoff
served as Senior Advisor, NHII, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. Beginning in late 2002, he initiated, organized, and developed the
HHS activities directed at promoting and encouraging the NHII, which led
to an additional $50 million in the President's FY05 budget request and the
Presidential creation of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health
Information Technology, establishing the NHII as a widely recognized goal
for the nation. Dr. Yasnoff organized and served as Program Chair for the
first national NHII Conference in 2003, where a consensus action agenda
was developed and the Secretary of HHS announced the historic Federal
government license agreement for the comprehensive standard medical
vocabulary SNOMED. In recognition of his pioneering contributions to
the field of public health informatics and the development of the nation's
health information infrastructure, he was awarded an honorary DrPH by the
University of Louisville in May, 2006.
He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics, and
the primary author of the chapter on public health informatics and health
information infrastructure in the recently published 3
rd edition of the
textbook Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Healthcare
and Medicine. Dr. Yasnoff is also Adjunct Professor of Health Sciences
Informatics at Johns Hopkins, Professor (gratis) of Health Management
and Systems Sciences at the University of Louisville, and served as a
Board Member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)
in 2003-4.
Before coming to the Washington, DC, area, Dr. Yasnoff was
Associate Director for Science, Public Health Practice Program Office,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he became well
known for his work in public health informatics, including co-editing the
textbook Public Health Informatics and Information Systems, and serving
as Program Chair of the AMIA 2001 Spring meeting, "Developing a
National Agenda for Public Health Informatics." He came to CDC from the
Oregon Health Division, where he developed and deployed both a statewide
immunization registry (still operating successfully today) and an electronic
information network for public health officials.
Prior to his government service, Dr. Yasnoff spent many years in
the private sector, including entrepreneurial businesses, initially as Vice
President of Research for Cell Analysis Systems, Inc., where he developed
the first PC-based commercial system for quantifying DNA content of
cells on slides in 1986, and then as founder and CEO of his own company
that developed image analysis solutions such as quantifying brain blood
flow defects in SPECT scans. He later served as Medical Director of
AMA/Net, the American Medical Association's first online electronic
information system for physicians, developing and implementing the
marketing plan that expanded the subscriber base tenfold to 40,000 in 60
days. He subsequently restarted the network as U.S. HealthLink, a publicprivate
partnership in Oregon. He has done consulting work for a variety
of commercial, academic, and government clients, addressing a wide range
of health informatics challenges, including reviewing and evaluating hightech
business plans and participating in site visits for Columbine Venture
Partners.
He received both his Ph.D. in computer science (pattern recognition
and image analysis) and M.D. from Northwestern University, and completed
an internal medicine internship at Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical
Center in 1980. Dr. Yasnoff has been a faculty member for numerous
informatics courses, is the author of over 350 scientific publications and
presentations, and was elected a Fellow of the American College of Medical
Informatics in 1989.
