Asad Akhtar
Vice President, Federal Health Practice, ECS
Asad Akhtar oversees teams that support scientific discoveries, biomedical breakthroughs and health care innovations to improve public health. They work with agencies across the Department of Health and Human Services, including NIH, ARPA-H, CMS and FDA, to reorganize, prioritize and reshape operations.
The goal: delivering a more streamlined, effective approach to addressing the nation’s biggest health challenges. This includes piloting and prototyping new innovations, using AI-enabled tools and platforms, and staffing experts to advance health-related research and development.
“Aided by our efforts, HHS is improving the nation’s health infrastructure, including access to care, and collaboration across health care systems, as well as fundamentally transforming the IT ecosystem that supports these efforts,” Akhtar said.
Why Watch
In 2025, Akhtar’s team is focused on helping federal health agencies become faster, more effective and more entrepreneurial, measuring progress in days and weeks instead of months and years. They support rapid prototyping and deployment of enterprise AI and machine learning solutions across research, patient care and operations. They also tackle long-standing IT issues with fast, iterative fixes instead of temporary solutions. Akhtar said he’s incredibly proud of the ECS HHS teams.
“They continue to lead some of the most important work to accelerate our nation’s scientific breakthroughs and improve public health,” he said. “The key element to our success is our teams’ mindset. They constantly challenge the conventional approach and embody an entrepreneurial mindset to solve complex problems. Whether the focus is new biomedical discoveries and innovations or establishing brand-new organizations, processes, and AI-enabled platforms, ECS remains committed to serving as a partner to HHS. We will help the agency deliver better, faster and more impactful outcomes for all.”
That work includes enabling and accelerating scientific breakthroughs and patient innovations across the government, spanning cancer and infectious diseases; reshaping the landscape of diagnostics, therapies, and treatments; and enhancing health care access and delivery to all.
“Asad exemplifies the results-oriented leadership that defines ECS, and our approach to empowering and enabling the federal government,” said Peter Santighian, ECS senior vice president of defense and health. “He’s been committed to growing our federal health portfolio into a powerhouse of impact and bold innovation to accelerate HHS’s goals. This has elevated ECS’ role in the market while helping deliver measurable results for public health.”