Professor Linda Travis Macomber’s interprofessional career and life journey across all 50 states and five continents started in healthcare delivery and nursing in Michigan and Boston. She then progressed to consulting and software development, enriching human health and healing healthcare through tech innovation, AI, informatics, higher education, etc. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Professor Macomber to discuss her extensive background, current National University roles, and directions. The interview follows.
Background – Early Beginnings:
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): I understand that you grew up in Birmingham, Michigan.
Professor Macomber: Yes, my mom was a research pharmacist who developed Caladryl lotion, and my dad was a WW II Naval officer and engineering and energy leader.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How did their influence shape your career choices?
Professor Macomber: My mom’s work in research and development sparked my interest in healthcare and innovation, while my father instilled values of loyalty and perseverance. My family valued education, and I enjoyed my time at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where I earned my RN BSN.
Nursing and Transitions to HealthTech
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): So, you started your career as a pediatric and then an ICU RN at Boston Children’s Hospital. What led you there and to transition into Health Tech?
Professor Macomber: The multidisciplinary ICU experiences and opportunities gave me an excellent broad perspective by caring for complex patients with many health conditions. Boston was a great place for grad school.
Then, I transitioned to consulting and software, focusing on advancing health through technological innovations. While working in the Cambridge, MA, area, I designed and deployed various digital health systems across Boston hospitals. I taught myself to create software in the Mumps programming language to meet client needs. These experiences provided perspectives of many professionals and departments through healthcare applications. I also went to Boston Computer Society meetings and learned about expert systems and AI directly from Marvin Minsky, a founding father of AI. Boston was the significant high-tech hub at the time, while Silicon Valley software and startup VC ecosystems were just getting started.
A Chance Encounter Becomes a Moonshot
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): OK, so you attended the international healthtech symposium Medinfo/SCAMC in DC, where you met Dr. Don Linberg from the National Library of Medicine. How did this encounter shape your future?
Professor Macomber: Dr. Linberg’s vision for healthcare and technology inspired me. While at the conference networking reception held at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, I discussed his vision of connecting digital medical libraries and healthcare delivery to make better decisions. Gazing up at the actual Apollo command module, my career moonshot took off.
California Dreaming: Soon, I was on a plane to California and a new career and life, leaving behind the familiarity of Boston for global health innovation and AI career adventures.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): So, you joined DiStar Medical Systems, a small San Francisco Bay startup of twelve people, and worked on the historic multi-billion-dollar CHCS system for the Department of Defense. What was it like working on this project?
Professor Macomber: Imagine being a pediatric nurse from Michigan in my twenties, driving my Mustang convertible into a foreign world of PhD physicists and engineers in the Reagan years military-industrial complex – with a billion-dollar award on the line.
An incredibly small team in a work-hard/play-hard culture developed the original core of CHCS tech (Comprehensive Health Care System) in a few short months during the summer of 1987. We trailblazed early expert/AI decision support capabilities and advanced systems integration, traveled, scaled adoption, and realized effective results, especially given what tech we had to work with then. This comprehensive patient care system has since served over ten million people each year globally for over 35 years. Most did not adopt such advanced systems until 25 years later with the HITECH Act, and most still consider such complex digital health programs highly challenging today. Actual NASA engineers told me these medical systems were harder than man’s missions to the moon.”
Impact on the Industry
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How did your health tech work on CHCS shape the industry?
Professor Macomber: Sometimes, a handful of people do extraordinary things with an incredible, lasting impact. Only through the test of time is the value fully realized. Our work provided early glimpses of humanity moving from the information to the intelligence age. The advanced medical communications, information access, and technology to assist with health and care decisions paved the way for what we take for granted today.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): That must have been a hard act to follow. What did you do next?
Professor Macomber: After a few years, I felt like I had done my military contractor tour of duty. I wanted a family and to get off airplanes. At the time, the University of California, where the La Jolla medical campus is a significant medical city today, was just an empty field of dreams. I had the opportunity to help build new systems and medical centers together.
I started my firm, Healthcare Technology Consulting, in 1994, and with new access to high-speed internet, I trailblazed working from home. I cared for my new baby daughter while contributing to newly emerging World Wide Web research initiatives for health. This grew into Cancer.gov and ClinicalTrials.gov.
I then enjoyed leading a national requirements team for Kaiser Permanente, launching pilot projects for what later grew into KP HealthConnect with Epic. I first demoed EHR software to Kaiser in 1988, yet by the late 1990s, the hardware had advanced, making usable systems much more possible.
As the clock turned to the dawn of the new millennium and the year 2000, over the next decade, career highlights included:
- Mobile – Leveraged new wireless laptop capabilities and designing clinical systems to leverage mobile laptops for a Children’s hospital.
- Award – Won the top Meditech User Conference Award and overcame challenges speaking in South Africa when the 911 planes hit the towers at the World Trade Center.
- Davies – Chaired the HIMSS Davies Award and initiated EHR grant work with Community Health Centers.
- White House – Designed people process and health tech for the White House.
- Startups/AI/Decision Support – Assisted Google Health, IBM, Healthlink, Anvita Health, and others, coaching startups on device integration and advanced algorithmic/AI decision support.
- HITECH – Spoke with Congress advocating/preparing for the HITECH ACT.”
Academia and Primary Responsibilities Today
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): You transitioned to academia in 2010 and started the MS Health Informatics program at National University. What are your primary responsibilities at the university?
Professor Macomber: As an Associate Professor, my primary responsibilities include teaching, service, and scholarship. I enjoy preparing graduates for their futures, helping heal healthcare, advancing human health, and leveraging tech and AI opportunities. I held the program leadership role until I transitioned in 2021. Today, I focused on empowering more graduates across the School of Health Professions programs with technology application/adoption and now AI literacy expertise. I also serve on the university’s AI Council and work with our strategy and innovation team to identify signals and emerging practices, especially for AI applications in healthcare and education.
Favorite Memory
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What has been your favorite memory working for the university so far?
Professor Macomber: My favorite memories are receiving LinkedIn messages from graduates advancing their careers in new ways and putting all they learned into action to do great things.
Challenges Faced –
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What challenges have you faced in your work?
Professor Macomber: There have been many. Recently, the rapid evolution of AI in healthcare and education has posed challenges and opportunities. I dove extensively into using generative AI and helping lead initiatives to integrate emerging conversational AI and gen AI literacy into our university and curriculum to ensure we prepare our graduates for a tech and AI-driven future.
Future Goals
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What are some of your future goals?
Professor Macomber: I created and curated Renaissance. Health as a platform of multimedia experiences and stories. This help us expand awareness and explore digital health and AI applications. It has had over 30,000 views, and I hope it can grow to help others. I aspire to provide more human, valuable, and next-generation education in an engaging and personalized way where graduates demonstrate new capabilities through their professional portfolios.
Looking ahead, I see great potential and parallels as technology, and AI empowers us personally and in healthcare and education; as tech advances, more personalized and proactive systems like conversational spoken and better decision science – beyond data science – systems. I have extensively used AI for 40 years and natural AI-enabled voice systems like PI.AI for the past year. We all have a personal assistant, and all who want to learn have personal conversational tutors. I hope to expand the use, reach, and deepen our university’s impact on digital health education responsibly and creatively using generative AI and other digital system opportunities in healthcare and education.
Additional Thoughts
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Any other topics to discuss?
Professor Macomber: I hope my stories help to inspire others, as sometimes we need to look back to look forward – the past is prologue to our future. I am particularly interested in exploring strategic collaborations to advance this field and bring better and more proactive healthcare and education to more people. Many potential ways to use digital and AI systems to have a positive and meaningful impact are just starting to unfold.
