Rick Keller

Rick Keller serves as Altarum’s Vice President of Public Health Systems, where he leads the work of two practice areas—Public Health Interoperability and Public Health Information Technology (IT) Systems. Both practice areas seek to advance public health and health care delivery through development of novel applications and information exchange solutions. They comprise experts in health information integration and interoperability, population health surveillance and disease reporting, and the development of implementation guides, standards, infrastructure design, and data quality validation tools for EHR and public health system connectivity.

Under Rick’s leadership, the Public Health IT Systems practice area is modernizing the Michigan Disease Surveillance System with an innovative architecture and expanded monitoring and reporting capabilities that will better prepare the state for tomorrow’s public health challenges. The Public Health Interoperability practice area is providing states with architectural guidance on complex systems issues and building online resource centers to provide interoperability training, assess state interoperability readiness, and help them reach specific interoperability objectives.

Since joining Altarum in 2003 as a senior software engineer, Rick has managed the development of highly technical health care software systems that support disease reporting, syndromic surveillance, public health registries, and applications for clinical decision support. Clients include multiple agencies within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), the National Network of Depression Centers (NNDC), the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), among others.

Rick holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in computer science from the University of Michigan and Oakland University, respectively.