Dr. Brailer was appointed the first National Health Information Technology Coordinator on May 6, 2004. Dr. Brailer's duties as National Coordinator are to execute the actions ordered by President George W. Bush in the Executive Order that he issued on April 27, 2004, which called for widespread deployment of health information technology within 10 years to help realize substantial improvements in safety and efficiency. Dr. Brailer is recognized as a leader in the strategy and financing of quality and efficiency in health care, with a particular emphasis on health information technology and health systems management.

Prior to his appointment, Dr. Brailer was a Senior Fellow at the Health Technology Center in San Francisco, CA, a non-profit research and education organization that provides strategic information and resources to health care organizations about the future impact of technology in health care delivery. At the Center, he advised a variety of regional and national data sharing projects.

Dr. Brailer also served for ten years as Chairman and CEO of CareScience, Inc., a leading provider of care management services and Internet-based solutions that help reduce medical errors and improve physician and hospital-based performance. While at CareScience, Dr. Brailer led the company in developing groundbreaking inventions with major research institutions, establishing the nation's first health care Application Service Provider (ASP) and creating a care management business process outsourcing partnership that allowed hospitals to outsource their care management functions on an at-risk basis. Dr. Brailer also designed and oversaw the development of one of the first community-based health information exchanges in Santa Barbara County, California.

Dr. Brailer holds doctoral degrees in both medicine and economics. While in medical school, he was a Charles A. Dana Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine and was the first recipient of the National Library of Medicine Martin Epstein Award for his work in expert systems. Dr. Brailer was among the first medical students to serve on the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association. He completed his medical residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and became board certified in internal medicine along the clinical investigator pathway. Dr. Brailer was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and, until recently, was active in patient care delivery with an emphasis on immune deficiency. He earned his M.D. degree at West Virginia University and his Ph.D. in managerial economics at The Wharton School.