There are 25 assistant advisors in the White House who report directly to President Obama. One of them is the President's Chief Technology Officer. Anish Chopra has been in Seattle this week, meeting with all kinds of players - in everything from energy and education to global health.
"There's a lot to learn in Seattle - I'm excited about hearing all of your stories," he told computer sciences professor Ed Lasowska, who interviewed him live on stage at the Westin Hotel as the keynote attraction for the annual State of Technology luncheon put on by Seattle's Technology Alliance.
Chopra is big on supporting small start ups. And he has a background not just in technology, but also in health care. He told the crowd, health care providers will soon be able to take advantage of data that's being collected about communities.
"You now have what we're calling the rocket fuel, for new products and services that will help those caregivers deliver quality care," he told the Technology Alliance luncheon. "The race is on to see who will invent the best solutions that will keep me healthy, keep your families healthy - and in the process of doing so will make a ridiculous amount of money."
He says, for example, a start up could do this by providing a software interface to handle data on where the most premature babies are being born and other indicators of public health and wellness.
He described that, among the many investments the Obama administration is making in health-sector research and development, is $28 (B) billion dollars for digitizing medical records.
After the Tech Alliance luncheon, he attended an event at the lab of human genome mapper LeRoy Hood, at Seattle's Institute for Systems Biology.
