Amy Abernethy is the Cofounder of Highland Health. She was most recently the President of Product Development and Chief Medical Officer at Verily, where she leaded teams in the development and delivery of solutions that bridge the gap between clinical research and care. Amy previously served as Principal Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drugs of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the agency’s acting Chief Information Officer. Prior to her role at the FDA, Dr. Abernethy was Chief Medical Officer, Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Oncology of Flatiron Health.
Before joining Flatiron, Amy was professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, and ran the Center for Learning Health Care in the Duke Clinical Research Institute and Duke Cancer Care Research Program in the Duke Cancer Institute. For more than a decade, she has pioneered the development of technology platforms to spur novel advancements in cancer care, including the development of systems by which aggregated clinical data can support personalized medicine, outcomes research, cancer care quality monitoring, and scientific discovery.
With over 400 peer-reviewed publications, Amy is an internationally recognized expert in clinical trials, cancer outcomes research, health policy, health services research, patient reported outcomes, clinical informatics and patient-centered care. She maintains a close affiliation with Duke, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s National Cancer Policy Forum, past president of the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine, recent member of the Board of Directors for the Personalized Medicine Coalition, and recent leader within several federally-funded research networks. She also served on the Board of Directors for athenahealth.
Amy received her MD at Duke University, where she also did her internal medicine residency, served as chief resident and completed her hematology/oncology fellowship. She has her PhD from Flinders University in Australia, focused on evidence-based medicine and clinical informatics, and her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.