Palantir Technologies today announced the hiring of Dr William J. Kassler, MD, MPH, as its first US Government Chief Medical Officer, bringing years of clinical and public health expertise to Palantir as it continues its expansion in the private and public health sectors.

Dr. Kassler is joining Palantir from IBM Watson Health and worked throughout his career at the intersection of clinical care and population health. He will lead the Public Health and Life Sciences teams across Palantir’s USG and international business.

Over the past few years, Palantir has grown its healthcare business and in recent months made significant new senior hires with deep domain expertise in life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and public health. Dr. Kassler and the expanded team will continue to build on Palantir’s success in public and commercial healthcare around the globe, putting its technology to work to solve the world’s most important health problems.

“Palantir has played a key role in mitigating the global Covid-19 pandemic, supporting more than 100 organizations in their response to the pandemic, and helping the U.S. and the U.K with vaccine distribution,” said Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s COO. “Palantir software has also been used in drug discovery, biotechnology, scientific research, and to mitigate disparities in public health. Dr. Kassler will play a key role in ensuring our healthcare work continues to prosper.”

“Palantir’s ability to lead so many international public health initiatives from the start of this pandemic was truly impressive and serves as a model for the type of technology investments governments around the world need to make,” said Dr. Kassler. “I’m inspired by Palantir’s mission and team, and excited to get to work. To emerge from this pandemic stronger, society will need to make significant improvements to how we approach public health.”

Dr. Kassler was IBM Watson Health’s Deputy Chief Health Officer and Chief Medical Officer for Government Health & Human Services and led their population health efforts. Before joining the private sector, he was Chief Medical Officer for the New England Region of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the State Health Officer for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Kassler started his career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

He received his MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, an MS in nutrition from Case Western Reserve University, and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed a primary care internal medicine residency at Brown University and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco.