Dr. William Richard Braithwaite M.D.

William R. “Bill” Braithwaite, MD, PhD, FACMI, FHL7, aka Dr. HIPAA, is a retired physician who does not see patients anymore. Dr. Braithwaite dedicated his career to improving the quality and efficiency of health care for patients and practitioners through information technology, but is best known as the author of the Administrative Simplification Subtitle of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and as a major contributor to the subsequent regulations setting U.S. federal standards for transactions, code sets, identifiers, security, and privacy of personal health information. Before he retired in 2017, he provided strategic advice on health information policy to private corporations and federal government agencies and occasionally served as an expert witness in HIPAA privacy and security related legal cases. A pioneer in the field of medical informatics, Dr. Braithwaite envisioned a critical role for computers in clinical practice as a medical student at the University of Chicago. After his graduation, residency, and military service, he followed that vision to get a doctorate in Medical Information Science from the University of California, San Francisco. Until 1994, he was Associate Professor and Head of the Section on Medical Informatics, which he established at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. On a health policy sabbatical with the U.S. Senate Finance Committee health staff in 1993-94, he was able to promote his vision by developing the legislative language that became the Administrative Simplification Subtitle of HIPAA. In 1994 he became the Senior Advisor on Health Information Policy in the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). After 7 years at HHS, he served from 2001 to 2003 as National Director of HIPAA Advisory Services in the Washington DC office of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and from 2005 to 2006 as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at the eHealth Initiative (eHI), a non-profit organization dedicated to driving improvement in the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare through information technology. He practiced as an independent consultant in health information policy and strategic planning from 2003 to 2005 and from 2006 to 2017. Dr. Braithwaite has an eclectic background, from practicing medicine as a submarine doctor to teaching epidemiology, biostatistics, and medical informatics to medical and graduate students and teaching practicing physicians to improve their clinical practice with information technology. He has done laboratory research, health services research, and research and development of computer-based tools for clinical and research environments. He has served on the boards of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), Health Level Seven (HL7), the Workgroup on Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), and the Association For Electronic Health Care Transactions (AFEHCT); served as the Policy Committee Co-chair and member of the Steering Committee of the Markle Foundation’s Connecting for Health project; and has played an active role in other standards activities by ASC X12, ASTM, and the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS). He staffed the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) to help produce the June 2004 Report, “Revolutionizing Health Care Through Information Technology,” and served as Vice-Chair of the Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) for its 5 year run. He chaired the HIMSS Identity Management Task Force and was an active member of the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG) Healthcare Work Group. He received a number of awards in recognition of his contributions to the field, including election by his peers to Fellowship in the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), Fellowship in HL7, the President’s Award from AMIA, the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service from HHS, the second Louis W. Sullivan Award from WEDI which “recognizes individuals who have distinguished themselves through their leadership, vision, and achievements in advancing the overall quality and efficiency of healthcare,” and the 2011 HIMSS ‘50 in 50’ Award, recognizing ten individuals for each of the last five decades for their “memorable achievements to the field or body of knowledge of healthcare information technology and management systems.”