Jeffrey Lerner, PhD

President and CEO of ECRI, an independent nonprofit health services research agency.

Dr. Lerner previously held the position of vice president for strategic planning at ECRI, where he played the key role in setting the course for ECRI's transition from its origins as a medical device evaluation laboratory to a broader health services research organization that assesses clinical procedures and drug therapies in addition to medical devices. ECRI's technology assessment information programs are now used worldwide by ministries of health, U.S. federal agencies (such as the Social Security Administration, Medicare and Medicaid programs, FDA, CDC, and AHRQ), state governments, private health plans (such as Kaiser Permanente), clinical specialty societies (such as the National Kidney Foundation and the American Academy of Pediatrics), hospitals, and other professional constituencies and by consumers directly.

Dr. Lerner is a member of the Technical Board of the Milbank Memorial Fund in New York. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Academies, a program for high-school students living in poverty areas. He is former President of the Board of the Health Strategy Network, a society of healthcare planners and managers. Dr. Lerner is an associate editor of the Journal of Ambulatory Care Management and is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine. He is an Adjunct Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Over the past 25 years, he has made major presentations to government agencies and professional organizations worldwide and has written articles, editorials, and book chapters such as “The National Patient Library: Evidence-based Information for Consumers,” which appeared in the winter 1998 issue of the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care.