Clinical Innovation Center



Jessica Chao

Director
Clinical Innovation Center

Jessica overseas day-to-day operations and leads CIC partnerships with industry and academia. Previously, she has led product design in various San Francisco startups as well as co-founded Healtho, a consumer health information company. She is also the co-founder of one of the largest health meetups in Seattle, the Seattle Health Innovators.

Jessica received her MBA from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in 2012 while she concurrently completed her Residency in Health System Pharmacy Administration at Johns Hopkins Medicine. She also holds a Doctorate in Pharmacy and BS in Biochemistry from the University of Washington. While in college, she attended the UW Academy, an early entrance program for young scholars to attend university at an early age.

Ralph Gonzales, MD, MSPH

Chief Innovation Officer
Clinical Innovation Center

Dr. Ralph Gonzales is Associate Dean for Clinical Innovation and Chief Innovation Officer for UCSF Health. His research has played a significant role in national and global efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance by improving antibiotic prescribing practices - the body of which provides a successful roadmap for translating evidence into practice, policy and public health. Dr Gonzales’ research is multidisciplinary, patient-centered, and informed by relevant stakeholders and policy makers such as the CDC, NCQA, professional societies and community clinicians and patients. It represents the full spectrum of translational research - from practice guideline development, to implementation of innovative health care interventions, to conducting larger community-based trials to examine the comparative effectiveness of different health care interventions.
In addition, Dr. Gonzales is currently leading several project teams in designing, implementing and evaluating new ways to improve primary care-specialty care communication and care coordination, focusing on strategies that achieve the triple aim of improving quality, outcomes and decreasing costs. One includes the use of eReferrals and eConsults to streamline the referral and coordination process; another project is evaluating new team-based strategies to reduce unnecessary follow-up visits in specialty care.