Former CMS Leader Elizabeth Fowler Joins Humata Health to Advance Innovation in AI-Driven Medical Review

Healthcare policy veteran and former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation brings deep experience in payment innovation, law and bipartisan collaboration

WINTER PARK, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Humata Health, the leader in AI-powered medical review technology, today announced that Elizabeth Fowler, PhD, has joined its board of directors. The federal health policy veteran, who until last year served as deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) with a focus on innovation, will help Humata expand and accelerate its mission to enable patients to get the care they need, as quickly as possible, by removing the friction between payers and providers that historically has plagued the industry.

At CMS, which provides health coverage to more than 160 million people through its various programs, Fowler was director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). She led the agency’s effort to identify, test and implement new ways to pay for and deliver better care in Medicare and Medicaid in order to promote value-based care on a national scale.

Prior to leading CMMI, Fowler was involved in the drafting, passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act and served as executive vice president of programs at The Commonwealth Fund and vice president for global health policy at Johnson & Johnson. Fowler, who is also an attorney, is currently a Distinguished Scholar on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Carey Business School.

“Liz is a unicorn, a rare leader with deep experience in all realms of the healthcare ecosystem,” said Jeremy Friese, MD, Humata’s co-founder and CEO. “She understands the inherent complexities of the health system, and her expertise will be instrumental as we work toward our mission of solving these challenges. From her role driving innovation at CMMI to her track record of bipartisan work on federal health legislation, Liz’s experience will be an invaluable asset as we make AI-driven medical review a seamless process that ensures every patient receives the right care as quickly as possible.”

Humata was chosen as a technology partner for the WISeR model, a pilot program focused on safeguarding patients and protecting Medicare funds. Fowler will work closely with Friese and the board as the company delivers a solution that combines the power of AI, automation and connectivity between payers and providers to create a frictionless process.

“Medicare is a crucial program for millions of seniors and people with disabilities, but the program is at an inflection point. Innovation in payment and care-delivery models are necessary if it is to continue to serve the beneficiaries who rely on it,” said Fowler. “Ensuring access to appropriate care and reducing low-value care are problems in our health system worth solving. I’m thrilled to join the board at Humata, which is innovating intelligently and responsibly with the goal of promoting better, faster and more consistent care for all patients.”

Through intelligent automation, AI-driven policy matching and real-time payer connectivity, Humata simplifies and accelerates every step of the medical review process. Provider results show that by turning prior authorization from a manual, time-consuming process into an exception-based system, Humata’s technology eliminates 45% of manual touches and achieves 96% first-pass approval rates so that patients get faster access to care. Founded in 2023, Humata’s technology is deployed at hundreds of hospitals nationwide.

About Humata Health

Humata Health is the leader in AI-powered, touchless prior authorizations. A health tech company “Built for Yes,” its mission is to make prior authorization easy and seamless for providers, payers and the patients they serve. With the industry’s largest ecosystem of integrations and proprietary technology that gathers the right clinical information required for fast approval, the Humata platform is the only truly end-to-end prior authorization solution for all services and procedures. Humata is a physician-led company that is backed by a syndicate of strategic healthcare investors including Blue Venture Fund, LRVHealth, 406 Ventures and Highmark Ventures.