Enterprise EVP & Chief Innovation & Commercialization Officer, Advocate Health

Rasu B. Shrestha, MD, MBA, is enterprise executive vice president & chief innovation and commercialization officer for Advocate Health, one of the largest non profit and leading academic health systems in the United States. As a member of the executive leadership team, Dr Shrestha is responsible for Advocate Health’s enterprise innovation portfolio, including strategic industry partnerships, and Advocate Health’s strategic investment fund. In addition, he spearheads a renewed focus on commercialization, launching new healthcare inventions, discoveries and ideas to benefit our patients and the communities Advocate Health serves, and beyond.

Dr Shrestha has nearly 30 years of industry experience as a transformative physician leader experienced in delivering results across strategy, innovation, health information technology, marketing, communications, strategic investments and commercialization. He joined Advocate Health, as part of Atrium Health, in January 2019 as EVP and Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, leading the strategic transformation of the organization and charged with the creation and implementation of IMPACT 2025, its multiyear strategic plan. Dr Shrestha was previously with UPMC where he led the payor provider organization’s innovation and strategy, and built the industry’s largest and most successful innovation, commercialization and venture capital engine. In addition to leading innovation at UPMC, Dr Shrestha also served as executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises.

In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM), as well as Academy Health, and was the chairman of the HIMSS Innovation Committee, and co chair of Health Datapalooza . Shrestha also serves on the Board of the Blumenthal Performing Arts.

Among his many achievements, Shrestha was recognized as “Executive of the Year” by Healthcare Dive and was acknowledged as one of the “Top 20 Health IT Leaders Driving Change” and as a “Top Healthcare Innovator” by InformationWeek.

Shrestha was the youngest student in his college in Malaysia and holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from CCS University in India. He has received training in radiology and has held a fellowship in informatics at the University of London. Shrestha also a holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.