HHS names three officials to lead AI, technology and data portfolios

The Department of Health and Human Services has three new officials to lead its artificial intelligence, technology and data work.

According to biographies posted to the department’s website Monday, Alicia Rouault is the department’s new associate deputy assistant secretary for technology policy and chief technology officer, Kristen Honey is the department’s chief data officer, and Meghan Dierks is the chief artificial intelligence officer.

The three new officials join the department after it announced a reorganization of its health, data, AI and cyber portfolios in July. 

As part of those changes, the chief technology, data and AI roles moved from the department’s Assistant Secretary for Administration, where the Office of the Chief Information Officer is housed, to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Micky Tripathi, the existing national coordinator for health information technology, also was named assistant secretary for technology policy, and what was once ONC became ONC/ASTP. 

In an interview after the reorganization, Tripathi told FedScoop that finding officials to fill those three vacant roles was “job one.” As of Monday, that first task is complete. Dierks began on Dec. 30 and Rouault and Honey began Monday, an agency spokesman said in an email.

Rouault joins HHS from the White House’s U.S. Digital Service, where she most recently directed a program to improve outcomes for Americans facing financial hardship and provide rapid-response to state governments during the COVID-19 pandemic, per her biography. 

Before her work at USDS, she also served in leadership roles at the General Services Administration’s 18F, which is focused on improving user experience for government services. Earlier in her career, she worked as a senior adviser to Jennifer Pahlka at Code for America and was CEO and founder of LocalData, a technology startup, the bio said.

As CTO, Rouault is heading the newly established Office of the Chief Technology Officer, which houses the chief data and AI officers as well. She will be the first person in that role since Ed Simcox left the position in 2020. The reorganization partly sought to institutionalize the role, Tripathi told FedScoop this summer.

Honey, meanwhile, takes on the CDO role after helping to initially establish the Office of the Chief Data Officer in 2020 as part of the pandemic response and serving as its acting director at that time, according to her bio. 

Prior to her selection as CDO, Honey was the chief data scientist and executive director of HHS InnovationX, a collaborative, data-driven problem-solving program within the agency, and previously led on COVID-19 diagnostics informatics. Before her time at HHS, where she’s been for six-and-a-half years, Honey worked on policy in the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. 

Finally, Dierks joins HHS by way of industry and academia. Before her selection as CAIO, she was the chief data officer of San Francisco-based health care software company Komodo Health. In that role, she “spearheaded the development and evaluation of AI-powered healthcare analytics tools for life sciences companies, healthcare practitioners, and patient advocacy groups,” according to her HHS bio. 

Since 2001, Dierks has been a professor at Harvard Medical School. While much of Dierks’ career has been spent in industry as a leader at companies like GE Healthcare, Magellan Health, and Lumeris Health Outcomes, she has some experience at the health agency as well. Dierks served in the Office of the Center Director at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health in 2006 to 2009.

Dierks took over the role after Tripathi served as acting CAIO. Greg Singleton, the previous permanent CAIO, moved out of the role after the Biden administration’s requirement that those top AI officials within agencies were designated at the executive level. While the requirement for CAIOs in federal agencies is fairly new, HHS has had such an official for years.