Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) — The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest U.S. pension fund, is betting as much as $1 billion that it can remake the $2.5 trillion health- care industry one startup at a time.

CalPERS is the sole investor in Health Evolution Partners, a two-year-old private-equity firm in San Francisco run by David Brailer, a first-time money manager and former aide to President George W. Bush. Brailer, 50, coordinated Bush’s planning for an electronic health-records network; Calpers is counting on him to earn its members 20 to 30 percent returns.

Read the article on bloomberg.com here

On one proposal for health care reform at least, there is a rare bipartisan consensus: the push to computerize patient records.

The goal of moving paper medical records into the digital age has been championed for years by health care policy makers across the political spectrum, from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Newt Gingrich. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama, too, was an advocate, and the economic crisis opened the door for an ambitious step — $19 billion put into the recovery package to encourage doctors and hospitals to install and use electronic health records.

Read the .pdf from The New York Times here

Part two of a two-part series: Cloud computing is not just on the healthcare horizon. Partial and pure-play cloud computing architectures are already serving healthcare information technology needs in the U.S.Denver Health uses outsourced IT for a majority of its applications. Its service provider is Siemens, whose services meet most—but not all—of the essential characteristics in a definition of cloud computing released this summer by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Read the article on modernhealthcare.com here

July 8 (Bloomberg) — The health care overhaul pending in Congress neglects $100 billion in potential yearly savings from using the government’s power to demand better quality care, said David Brailer, a health care adviser under former President George W. Bush.

Read the article on bloomberg.com here

Caution was the refrain that punctuated many of speakers’ remarks at a summit on adoption of health care information technology and economic stimulus organized by Nashville Health Care Council in Cool Springs on Thursday.

“Is health IT going to change anything?” asked David Brailer, chairman of Health Evolution Partners and inaugural director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. “Yes, depending on the way IT is implemented.”

Read the .pdf article from the Nashville Post here

FederalNewsRadio has been bringing you expert analysis regarding the federal government’s response to pandemic flu. We turn to Dr. David Brailer, Chairman of Health Evolution Partners, to assess what the federal response has been like. In 2004, Dr. Brailer was appointed by President Bush as the first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Listen to the interview on Federal News Radio here

GE, Google, and others, in a stimulus-fueled frenzy, are piling into business. but electronic health records have a dubious history.

Neal Patterson likens the current scramble in health information technology to the 19th century land rush that opened his native Oklahoma to homesteaders. Cerner (CERN), the large medical vendor Patterson heads, is jockeying for new business spurred by a $19.6 billion federal initiative to computerize a health system buried in paper. “It’s a beautiful opportunity for us,” the CEO says.

Read the article, and watch the video on businessweek.com here

Software marketer and kidney cancer survivor Dave deBronkart thought he was being smart when he downloaded his health records from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston into his account at Google Health, a new site that promises to help patients control their personal health records online.

Read the article on forbes.com here

Today, we invite Dr. David Brailer, Chairman of Health Evolution Partners and former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, to give us more insight about this new office. 

Listen to the interview on Federal News Radio here

SAN FRANCISCO – Amid the “most perilous time we’ve ever seen,” healthcare IT and innovation can drive fundamental changes in the U.S. healthcare system, David Brailer, MD, former federal healthcare IT czar, told attendees at the Health Tech Investment Forum here on Tuesday.

Read the article on healthcareitnews.com here