Bryant Thomas Karras MD, MD

Dr. Karras joined Washington State's Department of Health in 2007 following an academic appointment at UW. He lead the cross-divisional efforts to prepare public health for meaningful use and changes to practice that Statewide Health Information Exchange and HealthIT bring. As Chief Medical Informatics Officer, he leads the informatics and interoperability roadmap for the enterprise-wide agency effort and data modernization strategy. Dr. Karras was a founding faculty member of UW's Biomedical & Health Informatics program, and the Center for Public Health Informatics where he lead development of the original Competencies for PH Informaticians. He is active in public health practice nationally and internationally supporting other jurisdictions including a PHII project in the Common Ground Program, serving on national Federal Advisory Committees, always a strong voice for PH Informatics. During the pandemic, he successful developed and implemented new innovations such as Bluetooth Exposure Notification (WANotify.org) and SMART Health Cards (WAverify.org) into practice.