Laura Adams is a nationally known digital health, innovation, and person-focused healthcare expert and speaker. Health Data Management named her one of their 2018 Most Powerful Women in Health IT in the Thought Leader category and Becker’s Hospital Review named her to the 2018 inaugural list of Female Health IT Leaders to Know and to its 2019 list of Women in Health IT to Know. Prior to joining X4Health in April 2019, Laura was the founding President and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), a center of collaborative innovation that advances health and healthcare transformation. She is currently co-chairing the National Academy of Medicine’s Health Data Trust Initiative Steering Committee. Laura serves on the Oversight Council for the MA Center for Health Information and Analysis and served on the Rhode Island Governor’s Workgroup on Healthcare Innovation. Laura served on the ONC’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee’s Governance Panel for the Nationwide Health Information Network. She chaired the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Planning Committee for the “Digital Infrastructure for Population Health and a Learning Healthcare System” initiative.
Laura traveled in the U.S. and Europe with W. Edwards Deming in the study of statistical-based quality improvement. She was Founder, President and CEO of Decision Support Systems, a New York-based company specializing in Internet-based healthcare decision support. She has been a faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston since its inception. She directed the IHI Idealized Design of the Intensive Care Unit project and served as faculty in the VHA’s ICU improvement collaborative and was the Principal Investigator on the RI Statewide ICU Collaborative. She was among the first to bring the principles of healthcare QI to the Middle East, in conjunction with Donald Berwick, MD and the Harvard Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East. She served as IHI faculty at the inaugural IHI Middle East Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare in Doha, Qatar.
Her publications include co-authoring with Gustafson, et al, Developing & Testing a Model to Predict Outcomes of Organizational Change, Health Services Research, 38(2), 751-776 and co-authoring “Collaborating with Consumers to Advance Health Knowledge and Improve Practice” Herzlinger, R, Consumer-Driven Health Care: Implications for Providers, Payers and Policymakers, 2004. She also co-authored “A Draft Framework for Measuring Progress Towards the Development of a National Health Information Infrastructure, BMC Medical Informatics Decision Making, June 2005. Laura co-authored “Improving comfort and communication in the ICU: a practical new tool for palliative care performance measurement and feedback”, Nelson, J., Mulkerin, C., Adams, L. and Pronovost, P.; Quality and Safety in Health Care (QSHC), Aug 2006. She co-authored with Peter Pronovost, MD, et.al.; The Rhode Island ICU Collaborative: A Model for Reducing CLABSI and Ventilator-associated Pneumonia Statewide, QSHC, 2010;19:555-561. She also co-authored publication with M. Vigorito and B. Sexton entitled Collaborative Improvement in Sepsis Identification & Treatment, JQPS, Vol. 37, No. 11, Nov. 2011.
Laura has delivered conference keynotes in nearly every state in the union and in 13 different countries. Under her leadership, RIQI won the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Excellence Award for Impact in serving those with behavioral health and substance abuse challenges. She has received citations from the RI Congressional delegation for her visionary leadership and contributions to improving the healthcare system in Rhode Island. Laura received University of Northern Colorado’s Distinguished Alumni award and her company is a multi-year winner of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce’s Exemplary award for Worksite Wellness. RIQI was named RI’s Most Innovative Company in Healthcare in 2015; was named 2017 Employer of Choice by the Employer’s Association of New England; and is a multi-year winner of RI’s Best Places to Work award from the Providence Business News. RIQI won the 2017 Innovation Award in Healthcare in Rhode Island, a national 2018 Healthcare Informatics Innovation Award for impact on the opioid crisis and was named a finalist for the 2018 New England Business Innovation award, again for impact on the opioid crisis.