Biography

 

Dr. Robert M. Cothren is responsible for Cognosante’s scientific and technical strategy. He leads the critical assessment of emerging health technologies, applying novel approaches to health information networks that enable clinical analytics, population health applications, and decision support to transform public health, clinical practice, and life science. Dr. Cothren participates in establishing national standards for clinical interoperability as a member of the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, and HL7 standards organizations. He participates in the eHealth Initiative and the Markle Connecting for Health to help set national priorities and policies in health information exchange. Dr. Cothren acts as a senior architect within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Federal Health Architecture program, helping produce an open-source gateway for nationwide health information exchange and advising on business, technical, and governance strategy for widespread interoperability of electronic health information. He participates in the New York eHealth Collaborative work group establishing an architecture and standards for the Statewide Health Information Network for New York. He has advised on technical and operation strategy for a number of health information exchange organizations ranging from medium-sized regional not-for-profits to state Medicaid departments.

Dr. Cothren was formerly CTO and Chief Scientist of Northrop Grumman’s health practice and Director for its Clinical Information Systems Division. During his tenure at Northrop Grumman, he led a diverse team of IT and health professionals delivering electronic health records, health information exchange, and semantic interoperability solutions. He managed development and maintenance of AHLTA, the largest enterprise EHR in the world, for the DoD, and the Bi-directional Health Information Exchange, a set of technologies delivering interoperability of health information between the DoD and VHA. He led development of a NHIN architecture demonstrating national interoperability of health information, initiated a project in the Trial Implementation NHIN phase 2 in collaboration with The Cleveland Clinic, and continues his involvement with NHIN and ONC through the current Limited Production phase 3 activities.

Dr. Cothren has over 20 years of professional experience in health, medical, and biological research in academic, public, and private industries, and has lead development efforts in medical devices, diagnostic software systems, and clinical and public health IT solutions. He was a Northrop Grumman IT Technical Fellow, has over 100 peer-reviewed articles and speaking invitations, and holds 18 patents with 3 more pending. Dr. Cothren received his PhD in Medical Engineering from the Harvard / MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, and previously served as a member of the professional research staff at The Cleveland Clinic and a member of the faculty of The Ohio State University’s Biomedical Engineering Center.