Dr. Kush is the President of Catalysis and Founder and President Emeritus of CDISC. Dr. Kush served for 20 years as President and CEO of CDISC, which was initiated in 1997 as a volunteer organization. It was incorporated as a non-profit standards development organization (SDO) in 2000. CDISC has developed and harmonized a suite of global clinical research data standards to support clinical research in therapeutic areas that affect well over 1.5 billion lives. While at CDISC, Dr. Kush also advanced the use of electronic data capture for research, data sharing and the use of healthcare data and standards in sync to streamline research and support the acceleration of learning health cycles.
Prior to founding CDISC, Dr. Kush worked with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, academia, a global clinical research organization (CRO) and biopharma companies in the U.S. and Japan. She served on the U.S. Federal Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC), the DIA Board and the HL7 Board during the time FHIR was adopted. She is currently on founding Boards for the Learning Health Community, ACRES, and the Steering Board of the HL7 Vulcan Accelerator for which she Co-chairs the Advisory Council. She is an Associate Editor of the Learning Health Systems Journal.
Dr. Kush earned her doctorate in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry with honors from the University of New Mexico. Publications she has authored are included in journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, Science Translational Medicine, International Clinical Trials, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, the DIA Journal, Applied Clinical Trials, and the Learning Health Systems Journal. She authored chapters for a CenterWatch book on eClinical Trials and chapters on Data Sharing for three editions of the Springer Clinical Research Informatics textbook.