AcademyHealth announced Paul Wallace, M.D., as the new executive editor of its peer-reviewed open access journal eGEMs. Wallace is the former Chief Medical Officer at OptumLabs, and current AcademyHealth senior scholar in residence. A national leader in population health research and the use of evidence to improve health care, Wallace was also an early advocate for the use of electronic health data for delivery system transformation.
“eGEMs fills a critical role in the field by providing open access to seminal manuscripts focused on the challenges of implementing new methods, data, and governance needed to build learning health systems,” said Wallace. “I’m honored to be part of this vibrant community of multi-disciplinary experts and authors working to shape the next generation of learning health systems and provided a publishing platform for practical lessons learned not often published in other journals.”
eGEMs (Generating Evidence & Methods to improve patient outcomes) is AcademyHealth’s open access, peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to accelerating research and quality improvement using electronic health data. Launched in 2013, eGEMs has published over 160 papers with more than 160,000 downloads — all highlighting cutting-edge projects from leaders in the field and sharing emerging approaches to redesigning the health system. Readers include health services researchers, care providers, policymakers, patient advocates, and other health system stakeholders.
“We are delighted to have someone of Paul’s caliber lead one of AcademyHealth’s critical efforts to accelerate learning at this time of innovation in health data and systems. eGEMs has proven to be an important tool to build and foster community and accelerate the generation and application of evidence to improve health care,” said AcademyHealth President and CEO Lisa Simpson. “I know under Paul’s leadership eGEMs will only increase its ability to do this.”
Wallace was most recently chief medical officer and senior vice president for clinical translation at OptumLabs, an organization designed to develop and sustain a community of research and learning partners to work collaboratively on some of the most critical problems in health care. Before joining OptumLabs, he was a senior vice president and director of the center for comparative effectiveness research at the Washington DC based Lewin Group, where he and his colleagues led policy and business development to manage, promote, and support the use of comparative effectiveness research to inform decisions that help achieve the most effective patient outcomes, health care policies, and deployment of health care resources. An oncologist, Wallace previously spent 22 years as a medical director and clinician with Kaiser Permanente.
eGEMs is led by an editorial board of experts from across the country and is a premier journal for approaches to redesigning the health system, including methods, interoperability, and governance. Visit the eGEMs website to learn more about the journal, how to submit a manuscript, or to serve as a reviewer.