Ken Kizer, MD, is CEO and Chairman of the Board of Medsphere, the leading commercial provider of open source technology for the healthcare industry, which is delivering commercially supported software based on the proven VistA electronic health record developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Ken has long been an advocate of information technology as an enabler for improving healthcare safety and quality. As Under Secretary for Health in the VA, from 1994 to 1999, Ken is widely credited with being the chief architect and engineer of VA's remarkable transformation, including VistA, a system-wide implementation of an electronic health record, bar code medication administration, and other IT innovations years before the healthcare industry embraced the importance of IT. Today, Medsphere offers a portfolio of products and professional services for hospitals, clinics and integrated delivery networks, under the brand name of OpenVista®.

While with the VA, Ken was the highest-ranking physician in the federal government and CEO of the Veterans Healthcare System, the largest integrated healthcare system in the U.S., having a present budget of some $30 billion, about 200,000 staff and more than 1,300 sites of care delivery. Between working for the VA and Medsphere, Ken was President and CEO of the National Quality Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based private, non-profit healthcare quality improvement and standards setting organization. In recognition of his efforts to improve healthcare quality, he was awarded the 2005 Ernest A. Codman Award (individual category) by JCAHO. Before being named California’s top health official, as the Director of the Department of Health Services, Ken worked in both the private and academic practice of emergency medicine, from 1984 to 1991.

Ken serves as a Trustee of Trinity Health; Member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force; and consultant to several organizations and foreign countries. He is an honors graduate of Stanford University and UCLA, is board certified in six medical specialties or subspecialties, and has contributed 400+ publications in medical and healthcare literature.