Former Chief Privacy Officer at HHS Office of the National Coordinator Will Oversee Company’s Regulatory Compliance, including handling of Personal Health Information
San Francisco, CA; (February 21, 2017) – Omada Health today announced that former Chief Privacy Officer at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) Lucia Savage has joined the company as Chief Privacy and Regulatory Officer. Lucia will expand Omada’s legal and compliance team, and drive the company’s continued commitment to advancing digital health, including the safe, secure, and effective handling of participants’ personal health information (PHI).
“In the evolution of a young company, opportunities to add industry leaders with the depth and breadth of Lucia’s experience don’t come along often,” said Omada CEO and co-founder Sean Duffy. “As Omada continues to expand our partnerships with health plans and health systems, and as we prepare to begin offering diabetes prevention to Medicare beneficiaries in 2018, there is no one we’d rather have shepherding Omada’s privacy, regulatory, and compliance efforts. Lucia will also continue her work demystifying HIPAA across the industry, and lead the way in demonstrating that regulatory infrastructure and innovation are fully compatible."
In her role, Savage will be responsible for leading Omada’s regulatory strategy, ensuring the privacy and security of participant PHI, and enabling Omada and its healthcare partners take advantage of Omada’s industry-leading digital platform. She will work to coordinate seamless integration of the Omada program with electronic medical and patient data record systems, and to allow Omada customers to integrate the company’s program into clinical processes, while empowering participants to achieve even better outcomes.
“One of my proudest accomplishments at ONC was bringing clarity to millions of patients, caregivers, providers, and health care organizations on how HIPAA supports our national goals for better health at lower cost through information-sharing for patient health and learning,” said Savage. “With Omada, I have the chance to join an organization at the cutting edge of digital health. I am excited by the opportunity to lead work with state and federal regulators on how Omada can help patients get personalized, life-saving interventions that respect the patient’s dignity and privacy, driving us towards a truly a 21st century health care system.”
Savage’s career has spanned healthcare across the private, non-profit, and governmental sectors. Most recently, she served as Chief Privacy Officer at the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. At ONC, Lucia and her team advised the National Coordinator, HHS offices, and other federal agencies about appropriate electronic health information privacy and security policies and technologies. Issues included HIPAA, state privacy law, research on human subjects, the Privacy Act, and security engineering. In that role, Savage collaborated regularly with other federal and state agencies; independent commissions including the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commissions; and foreign countries. Prior to joining ONC, Lucia served as the Senior Associate General Counsel at United Healthcare, where she supervised a team that represented United on its work with large data transactions related to health information exchanges, healthcare transparency projects, academic research, and other data-driven health care innovation projects.
Lucia has a B.A. from Mills College in Oakland, CA, and received her Juris Doctor summa cum laude from New York University School of Law in May 1989, where she was awarded the Order of the Coif. She is a Member of the State Bar of California
ABOUT OMADA HEALTH
Omada Health is a digital behavioral medicine company that inspires and enables people at the tipping point of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease to change the habits that put them most at risk. Working with health plans, health systems, and employers, Omada provides scalable, effective lifestyle interventions that deliver clinically-meaningful results. The company's flagship program is a digitally-based, remotely-delivered intensive behavioral counseling program. The program integrates smart technology (including a wireless scale pre-synced to a participant’s account), a proprietary curriculum, ongoing access to a personal health coach, and a like-minded online peer network for support. In doing so, it combines proven behavioral science and the power of social networking with cutting-edge tech and world-class design.
Since its founding, Omada has enrolled more than 90,000 participants across all 50 states, who have collectively logged more than 14 million weigh-ins. Omada operates on a pay-for-outcomes pricing model that aligns the company’s incentives with the goals of its partners and participants. Health insurers like Humana and Kaiser Permanente, as well as employers like Lowe’s, Iron Mountain, and Costco are among Omada’s clients.