About Us
Used in Over 20 Countries, Impacting Over 200 Million Lives
The ACG® System has been used in commercial and research settings worldwide, longer and more extensively than any other system on the market today. The software component is tried and true, continuously undergoing improvements and modifications in response to user needs.
Backed by Johns Hopkins University
The ACG System continues to evolve through research and development conducted at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a world renowned institution. Over the past 30 years, the ACG System has been maintained and supported by dedicated Johns Hopkins faculty and staff in medicine, biostatistics and health economics. Johns Hopkins University also offers support services by academic professionals to ensure appropriate implementation of the ACG System as well as accurate interpretation of the results.
Our Commitment to Generating and Sharing Knowledge
Users of the ACG System have access to a community of interest and access to case studies from around the world. The ACG System Bibliography contains close to 1,000 published articles and reports from around the globe demonstrating its robustness in varying health care system contexts.
Supporting Users to Improve Patient Outcomes
We support users of the ACG System to ensure they are able to maximize the potential of the System. We also work closely with users to ensure they can accurately interpret the outputs of the System and align the data with their business and clinical objectives.
The ACG System Team
In addition to the staff at Johns Hopkins University who support our R&D work, there is a team of population health experts, data scientists and others who contribute to the development of the ACG System and support users from across the globe.
Meet Our Team
The Johns Hopkins ACG® System was developed and continues to be validated and improved by experts at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Center for Population Health IT). The diverse ACG System team is comprised of Johns Hopkins faculty and staff including clinicians, health services researchers and Health Information Technology experts. Johns Hopkins HealthCare Solutions is comprised of experts in population health as well as business, marketing and product development. Together, we develop, maintain and offer the ACG System to commercial health plans, governments, health systems, large employers and researchers worldwide.
- Jonathan P. Weiner, DrPH Learn More
- Hadi Kharrazi, MD, PhD, FACMI Learn More
- Chintan Pandya, PhD, MPH, MBBS Learn More
- Elham Hatef, MD, MPH Learn More
- Klaus W. Lemke, PhD, MS Learn More
- Craig A. Williams, PhD Learn More
- Renee Towne, EdD Learn More
- Stephen P. Sutch, DrPH, MAppSc Learn More
- Harriet Martyn, MSPH Learn More
- Melissa White Davis Learn More
Remembering Barbara Starfield
Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Professor Barbara Starfield, M.D., M.P.H., was recognized world-wide as an expert in primary care, casemix methodologies and promotion of equity in health. One of her profound insights was that systems of care organized around individual diseases were not optimally beneficial to patients, especially those who are chronically ill. Her defining work with patterns of morbidity forms the basis of the ACG System, which she co-developed.
Research by Prof. Starfield and her colleagues in the early 1980s showed that children using the most health care resources were not those affected by single chronic illnesses, but rather they had multiple, seemingly unrelated conditions. Prof. Starfield was able to extend these findings to all ages of patients and ultimately demonstrate that the clustering of morbidity is a better predictor of health services resource use than the presence of specific diseases.
Focusing on the patterns of morbidity forms the basis of the current ACG System and remains the fundamental concept that differentiates the ACG System from other casemix adjustment methodologies.
When Prof. Starfield passed away in 2011, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health established the Barbara Starfield Scholarship Fund to support doctoral students who pursue study and research that continue Dr. Starfield’s primary areas of focus. In continuing to honor her legacy, the ACG System Team instituted the Starfield Award.
- About the Starfield Award. Learn More
- Read more about Dr. Starfield’s life and career. Learn More
- View Dr. Starfield’s Wikipedia page. Learn More
Dr. Sutch holds an associate faculty position at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and is an associate professor of population health data analytics at Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. Dr. Sutch has worked with the ACG System team since 2007 and has a special interest in patient classification and population health analytics.
As Vice President of Health Care Innovation and Management Solutions, Craig is responsible for leading a business unit that brings together Johns Hopkins HealthCare Solutions and Venture businesses to form a single platform that partners with Johns Hopkins faculty to advance applied solutions to meet health care challenges in the marketplace.
Kumar Subramaniam is the associate vice president of the Johns Hopkins HealthCare Innovation business unit. In this role, he both leads the Solutions team and supports the development of the business unit’s Ventures portfolio. He also is an associate faculty member in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Lemke is a senior member of the ACG System R&D team at the Center for Population Health IT (CPHIT) in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He actively contributes to the process of moving new tools for health care administration from software specification to testing and validation. He has also been a frequent presenter at ACG User conferences and has co-authored multiple academic papers that have featured ACG System components.
Dr. Weiner is a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is also a professor of biomedical informatics and data science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Population Health IT (CPHIT). He is an internationally regarded researcher and lecturer.
Melissa White Davis has more than 20 years of marketing, business development and strategic partnership experience. Her expertise includes building quantifiable marketing strategies, brand management, product marketing and navigating the evolving digital health and wellness industry. As the director of product marketing & business development for the population health analytics team, Ms. Davis is dedicated to advancing our mission to showcase the Johns Hopkins’ population health analytics capabilities to ultimately improve the health outcomes of patients and populations through the use of an analytics-driven interventions. In addition to driving the Johns Hopkins ACG System’s product marketing strategy, Ms. Davis also provides leadership and direction to the team’s market intelligence and business development activities.
Harriet leads global new business development and customer success efforts for our population health analytics solutions outside the U.S. She manages an international team with deep expertise across diverse health systems and is passionate about building strong relationships with both new prospects and existing clients to ensure continued value from our analytics tools. In addition, Harriet oversees product management for solutions offered to the U.S. employer and provider market, with a focus on improving population health and provider education.
Dr. Kharrazi is a professor of health policy and management, and health informatics at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (JHSPH), with a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (JHSOM). He is the co-director of the JHSPH Center for Population Health IT (CPHIT) and co-leads the R&D of the Johns Hopkins ACG System. He is also the director of the DrPH Informatics track at JHSPH and the director of Health Informatics PhD and MSc programs at JHSOM.
Dr. Pandya is an Associate Research Professor at the Center for Population Health IT (CPHIT) in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), where he manages the operationalization of R&D work into the ACG System. As a health services researcher with clinical and informatics experience, Dr. Pandya’s research interests are at the intersection of health policy, clinical informatics, and the outcomes and quality of health care delivery. Broadly, he is interested in understanding the health systems and information technology drivers and determinants of high-quality care, and in particular, care for vulnerable populations, including the elderly and those that are at risk of health disparities.
Elham Hatef, MD, MPH, FACPM, is an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine and Clinical Informatics in the Division of General Internal Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She also serves as a core faculty at the Center for Population Health IT (CPHIT) in the Department of Health Policy and Management and as the Associate Director of the General Preventive Medicine Residency Program at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH).
Renee Towne brings more than a decade of experience in population health, value-based care and improvement science, with a strong focus on aligning analytics to real-world health care challenges. As Director of Population Health Analytics Solutions & Strategies for the Johns Hopkins ACG System, Dr. Towne leads efforts to expand the use of data-driven insights that support outcomes improvement across diverse health care settings.
Sarah Kachur is part of the population health analytics leadership team at Johns Hopkins HealthCare Solutions. She is responsible for a portfolio of analytic products and engagements providing real world business analysis and actionable expertise within the institution and to Solutions’ external customers. Together with an experienced team of analysts and product managers, she develops data-driven patient and population-level solutions to address the most pressing clinical and financial challenges, leads analytic consulting engagements and plays a key decision-making role in the ACG System product management lifecycle and new product development.