Vid Desai

Vid Desai spent six years modernizing the technology backbone of the FDA, first as Chief Technology Officer and then as the agency’s first Chief Information Officer reporting directly to the Commissioner. He architected the agency’s Technology Modernization Action Plan and Data Modernization Action Plan, built the Office of Digital Transformation, and managed a technology budget of roughly $1 billion with 2,500 staff and contractors.

In 2023 he was named to the Forbes CIO Next list, the only federal CIO to make it. His healthcare career began at Glaxo in the mid-1980s and spans senior technology leadership across pharma and health technology. He calls his FDA years the best six of his career, and the lowest paid. He now advises and consults across the health technology sector.

Desai appeared on Open Door Salon alongside Robert Califf, the two-time FDA Commissioner, for a conversation with host Lori Ellis about the cost of losing institutional knowledge at a federal health agency. He explained why the FDA’s Elsa AI tool ran into trouble for budgetary rather than technical reasons, why durable change at the agency requires rewiring funding rather than announcing policy, and why China overtaking US research spending should concern every American.