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He was once dubbed “the most important man at Microsoft,” a prodigiously talented software engineer who shepherded the company’s Windows franchise through the tumultuous start of the smartphone era and led the development of products such as Xbox and Surface.

Now Terry Myerson is leading an equally bold — and treacherous — second act: He is the newly minted chief executive of Truveta, a company formed by 14 U.S. health systems to aggregate and sell de-identified data on millions of American patients to help answer some of medicine’s most pressing questions.

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When he talks about the origins of the company, seeded as Covid-19 began its initial surge, Myerson’s voice races like a Ferrari careening into a vast expanse: “It was a real eye-opener for me. This was like March, April. The stock market was crashed. Your kids are home. Everything’s closed. Everyone’s home. And it’s like, we can’t put data together” to answer questions about Covid-19? Myerson said, his voice rising. “Truveta went from being a really good idea to an imperative for these health systems to create.”

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