Building Careers and Shaping Public Policy

14 April 2003

Mr. James Scanlon
Executive Secretary
HHS Data Council
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Room 440-D
200 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20201

Dear Mr. Scanlon:

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - United States of America (IEEE-USA) would like to nominate Michael J. Rozen, MD, for membership to the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS). Dr. Rozen is Vice-Chair of the IEEE-USA Medical Technology Policy Committee and has been very active for several years with IEEE programs including leading our task force on Privacy, Security and Confidentiality of Health Information. During the past year, he has been Co-Chair of the IEEE-USA Technology Policy Council Symposium on "The Use of Space Technologies for Disaster Mitigation and Global Health" and has presented papers at the HII 99 on "Guiding Principles for Privacy Security and Confidentiality of Health Information," "Consumer Health Information: What the Private Market and Government are Doing" and "The Case for Urban and Telehealth."

Dr. Rozen has long been an activist for health care change and reform including empowerment of the health consumer/patient. Most of his projects have centered around the health consumer as evidenced by his development of the School Screening Program for Spinal Deformity in 1974 and continuing into the 1990's with his leadership as Chair of Tri-State Health Decisions Resources. This organization with widespread community involvement created the Greater Cincinnati Community Health Information Workgroup, ultimately bringing connectivity to hospitals, physicians and payers. Other projects included the creation of a community-based Center for Healthcare Ethics, an Outcomes Analysis Taskforce, and a health status evaluation of the Greater Cincinnati Community. Dr. Rozen has also worked at the state level being a member of the Board for the Ohio Corporation for Health Information and the Quality and Assurance Committee of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

After leaving the active practice of Medicine because of illness, Dr. Rozen became President and CEO of the National Emergency Health Data Center which created the first consumer-based electronic medical record. The goal of the organization was to empower health care consumers by helping them to be in control and in touch with their health information anywhere, anytime in the world. In addition, the record could speak to their wishes when they were incapacitated. The company recently merged with WellMed and now has a product line Mr. James Scanlon which includes online health risk profiling tools and have expanded the medical record to include personalized content delivery using concept unique identifiers and a consumer health thesaurus integrated into Lexical's Metaphrase Vocabulary.

At WellMed, Dr. Rozen is Vice President of Consumer Affairs and Director of Health Record Security. As such, he is responsible for guiding the company in the development of and compliance to policies and procedures for consumer Privacy, Security and Confidentiality. His responsibility includes making sure technological changes in security are continually evaluated and incorporated into WellMed's products and for employee and user education. In addition, he is responsible for procedures and policies for risk analysis of the potential de-aggregation of aggregate data.

We highly recommend Dr. Rozen for this important position and know he will be an asset to its deliberations.

IEEE is the world's largest technical professional association with approximately 334,000 members worldwide. IEEE-USA promotes the career and technology policy interests of the nearly 225,000 electrical, electronics and computer engineers who are U.S. members of the IEEE. If you need any additional information, please contact Deborah Rudolph at IEEE-USA at (202) 785-0017.

Sincerely,

James V. Leonard, P.E.
President, IEEE-USA