Rebecca Freeman is Vice President of Health Informatics at the University of Vermont Health Network, where she leads the intersection of clinical practice, data, and emerging technology across a multi-hospital system. Dr. Freeman is a nationally recognized leader within health information technology, bringing nearly three decades of expertise having served in positions at the Hospital Corporation of America and the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Freeman’s leadership is driven by her commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and bridging the gap between what health IT promises and what frontline health care professionals actually experience.

As the first professional to ever serve in the role, Dr. Freeman was selected as Chief Nursing Officer at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this role she was instrumental in shaping national health IT policy, guiding the development of a landscape analysis on standard nursing terminologies, advising on the frameworks governing the safety of electronic health records, and providing input on a variety of policies which included 21st Century Cures.

As artificial intelligence moves into inpatient care, Dr. Freeman has become a leading voice in championing nursing’s role in driving technological change rather than automating its existing, legacy-driven workflows. She has published and conceptualized The Clean Slate Imperative, outlining how the profession must pause and structurally reimagine how nursing work is captured, valued, and governed — before AI is built on top of a broken foundation. This imperative advances the foundation that AI and data must be addressed at the leadership and governance level, and not viewed as merely a technological implementation. Dr. Freeman is a formidable advocate within the executive and policy communities who promotes nurses’ authority over how AI is designed, deployed, and evaluated in practice.

Currently, Dr. Freeman co-chairs the Nursing Knowledge and Big Data Science Initiative at the University of Minnesota. She is an alumni of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow and Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.