James D. Ralston, MD, MPH, is a general internist with Washington Permanente Medical Group and a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. Dr. Ralston conducts health services research focused on improving chronic illness care and the patient services aspects of medical informatics. He is also an affiliate professor in the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington (UW) School of Public Health and in the UW’s Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics. Through grants from AHRQ, the NIH, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, he has led and collaborated on several user-centered design projects to improve chronic illness care.