Dan Drawbaugh, Steadman CEO, Wins ORBIE Leadership Award

Dan Drawbaugh, CEO of The Steadman Clinic and the Steadman Philippon Research Institute (SPRI), has been honored with the 2023 Colorado ORBIE Leadership Award presented by ColoradoCIO.

For more than 20 years, the CIO ORBIE Awards have recognized technology executives for leadership, innovation, and excellence in this rapidly growing, CIO-led national professional association. This recognition is a Lifetime Achievement Award and reflects Drawbaugh’s career from Chief Information Officer (CIO) to CEO.

“I feel privileged to be among so many exceptional CIO leaders across the country who have received the ORBIE leadership award,” stated Drawbaugh to OTW. “For me, this really encapsulates my career both as a technology leader and as a CEO. Innovation has been a central tenet of my career, and I’m honored to receive an award recognizing that.”

Before lending his talents to the Steadman group, Drawbaugh spent over three decades at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center as the CIO and in other roles, overseeing information and biomedical technologies.

Drawbaugh left a long list of accomplishments while at the University of Pittsburgh, and the schools was recognized in publications such as Information Week, Health Imaging and IT Magazine, Hospital & Health Networks Most Wired, among others. Drawbaugh was recognized four times in CIO Magazine as a top-100 CIO, earned “Chief of the Year” from InformationWeek and received the InformationWeek: Global CIO 50 honor of being recognized as a top CIO in healthcare and as one of the most innovative business technology executives of any field.

Both The Steadman Clinic and SPRI have expanded into new markets under Drawbaugh’s tenure. On the funding front, SPRI had no federal awards before Drawbaugh arrived in 2015, but now is active on five federally funded clinical trials from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense, and is the recipient of three other NIH awards.

Originally from Fayetteville, Pennsylvania, Drawbaugh developed an interest in healthcare management after watching his mother contend with a cancer diagnosis, as well as witnessing his father’s profession as an engineer. Drawbaugh holds a bachelor’s degree in biomedical and electrical engineering technology from Temple University and an MBA from Duquesne University

OTW asked Drawbaugh about his guiding principle as far as innovation is concerned and he said, “Although innovation implies change—the evolution of technology, new advancements, etc.—innovation is also a constant. It’s always happening, and the best leaders are ones that are agile, adaptive, and persistent. Embracing innovation requires a commitment to lifelong learning—to be responsive and stay on top of trends, it takes a learning mindset.”

Looking out over the healthcare innovation landscape, Drawbaugh sees a lot of possibility. “I’m excited to see how artificial intelligence (AI) transforms healthcare technology,” he told OTW. “We already see how predictive analytics and machine learning have allowed practices to become more efficient, and we’ve seen data accessibility benefit both patients and providers.”

“In the next 5–10 years, we’ll begin to see some of the next generation AI tools come into practice, and really see the transformative possibility for AI—diagnosis tools, treatment plans, more advanced imaging, etc. The most important aspect of healthcare is the patient, and beyond broader industry improvements, we also need innovations that are centered around improving the patient experience.”