2026 Glaser Award Recipient — David Blumenthal, MD, MPP
The McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston is honored to announce that the 2026 John P. Glaser Health Informatics Innovator Award will be accorded to David Blumenthal, MD, MPP. Blumenthal, a nationally and internationally revered physician-leader, innovator, academician, and author will be formally inducted into the Glaser Society by its Founding Member, John P. Glaser, PhD and McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics Dean and Professor Jiajie Zhang, PhD.
In 2015, The John P. Glaser Health Informatics Society (Glaser Society) was initiated by McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston in recognition of the expertise and leadership of Dr. Glaser; a universally recognized thought leader in the field of health informatics. The Glaser Society was created to acknowledge outstanding innovators in the field of health informatics through the John P. Glaser Health Informatics Innovator Award. The annual Glaser Society Proceedings and related events provide education, collaboration, and networking opportunities for the broader community of health informatics professionals, clinicians, and students.
This year’s Glaser Award recipient, Dr. Blumenthal, serves as professor of Practice of Public Health and Health Policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is also the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School.
From 2013 to 2023, Blumenthal was president and CEO of the Commonwealth Fund, a health care philanthropy based in New York City with the mission of improving the functioning of the US health care system. From 2011 to 2013, he was Chief Health Information and Innovation Officer at Partners Health System (now Mass General Brigham), where he led the implementation of the EPIC electronic health record system.
Blumenthal served as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Obama from 2009 to 2011. During his tenure, he launched the implementation of the HITECH Act which resulted in the adoption of electronic health records by virtually all US physicians and hospitals. Prior to 2009, Blumenthal was a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Director of the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at MGH and Harvard. He is also an author of more than 300 scholarly publications and books, including Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office (U. of Ca Press, 2009) and Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science (Yale University Press, 2026).
Dr. Blumenthal is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine, where he has also served as a National Correspondent. He is a member of the board of New England Journal of Medicine AI, a new publication focusing on artificial intelligence in medicine and health. He serves on the board of Aledade, a company supporting value based primary care, and chairs the board of the Carol Emmott Foundation, which is devoted to promoting the careers of women in health and health care. He has served previously on the boards of the Josiah Macy Foundation, University of Chicago, and University of Pennsylvania health systems. He holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Rush University and Honorary Doctors of Science from Claremont Graduate University and the State University of New York Downstate.
Blumenthal has a BA from Harvard College, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
This year’s Glaser Society Proceedings will take place on Friday, October 30. For details on the event, please visit our Glaser Society webpage. Immediately after the induction ceremony, we will host an open forum discussion with Dr. Blumenthal, followed by a reception in his honor.
Previous Glaser Award Recipients
In 2016, Ivo D. Nelson, a notable health information technology entrepreneur, was accorded the first John P. Glaser Health Informatics Innovator Award (Glaser Award). Dr. David Westfall Bates, Harvard’s internationally renowned patient safety expert, was presented the Glaser Award in 2017. H. Stephen Lieber, former President & CEO of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) received the 2018 Glaser Award. Grahame Grieve, Founder of HL7 FHIR and FHIR Product Director at HL7 International, accepted the 2019 Glaser Award. After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, Dr. Clement “Clem” J. McDonald, Chief Health Data Standards Officer of the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine, earned the 2022 Glaser Award. Dr. Marion Jokl Ball, an extraordinary proponent of health informatics and technologies that ameliorate health and healthcare, received the 2023 Glaser Award. In 2024, Judy Faulkner, Founder and CEO of Epic and one of the early developers and champions of electronic medical records, received the 2024 John P. Glaser Health Informatics Innovator Award. Dr. Patricia Flatley Brennan, former director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the most recent awardee as she was honored with the 2025 Glaser Award.