Leonard D'Avolio: Putting health data to work for veterans

Name: Leonard W. D'Avolio

Age: 35

Organization: Veterans Affairs Department

Title: Associate Center Director for Biomedical Informatics, Office of Research and Development

Nominated for: Overseeing the development and deployment of the Genomic Information System for Integrative Science, or GenISIS, a system for managing data on 1 million veterans enrolled in a health research program.

First IT mentor: Louis Fiore. On the long list of lessons, he taught me how to organize a team around great ideas.

Latest accomplishment on the job: I'm most proud of the team we've assembled.

Career highlight: Using electronic medical records to conduct point-of-care clinical trials, thereby turning routine clinical care into evidence. Also, enrolling the first veterans in the Million Veteran Program to use DNA-related data to improve care.

Your advice for a government IT wannabe: Find an organization within government with a track record of getting things done.

What you enjoy most about working in government IT: Our mission is to improve the care of veterans, not increase shareholder value. If we do our jobs right, the effects can be national in scope.

Dream non-IT-related job: I know it's horribly cliché, but leading efforts to transform clinical care and science is my dream job.

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