CapMed Advisory Council

Daniel Z. Sands, MD MPH,
Senior Medical Informatics Director, Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco Systems. Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Daniel Z. Sands, MD MPH, is an internationally recognized lecturer, consultant, and thought leader in the area of clinical computing and patient and clinician empowerment through the use of computer technology. Dr. Sands is the Senior Medical Informatics Director at Cisco Systems, where he provides both internal and external health IT leadership and helps partners with business and clinical transformation using IT. Prior to that, he was Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Zix Corporation, where he helped the company to become a leader in e-prescribing, and previously was Clinical Systems Integration Architect at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he developed and implemented numerous systems to improve clinical care delivery and patient engagement. He earned his baccalaureate at Brown University, medical degree at Ohio State University, and a master’s degree at Harvard School of Public Health. He did residency training at Boston City Hospital and an informatics fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and maintains a primary care practice in which he makes extensive use of health information technology.

Dr. Sands is the recipient of numerous health IT awards, sits on the board of the American Medical Informatics Association, and has been elected to fellowship in both the American College of Physicians and the American College of Medical Informatics.

Paul Tang, M.D., M.S.

Dr. Paul Tang is an Internist and VP, Chief Medical Information Officer at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF), Sutter Health. He is also Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. At PAMF, Dr. Tang is responsible for clinical information systems, including an enterprise-wide electronic health record (EHR) system and an integrated personal health record (PHR) system. PAMF has been using an EHR system since 1999 and deployed its PHR system in 2002. Over 58,000 patients are actively using the online PHR system.

Dr. Tang received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University and is a Board-certified practicing Internist.

Prior to his position at PAMF, he was Medical Director of Information Systems at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University Medical School. At Northwestern, Dr. Tang implemented a computer-based patient record (CPR) system, for which he received the 1998 Nicholas E. Davies Award for Excellence in CPR System Implementation.

Dr. Tang is Chairman of the Board for the American Medical Informatics Association and is a member of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, the advisory body on health information policy to the Secretary of HHS. Dr. Tang serves on the IOM’s Health Care Services Board and chaired the most recent IOM patient safety committee whose reports were published in 2003-4: Patient Safety: A New Standard for Care, and Key Capabilities of an Electronic Health Record System. He is a member of Markle Foundation’s Connecting for Health Steering Committee and its Personal Health Technology Council.

Dr. Tang has served on numerous committees of the National Institutes of Health, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, and Computer Science and Technology Board. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Medical Informatics, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.