Who: Deborah C. Peel, M.D.

Current position: Founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation and the Coalition for Patient Privacy; practicing psychiatrist

Location: Austin, Texas

Fast facts: One of the nation's best-known advocates for the privacy of healthcare information, Peel got her start in the privacy arena in 1993 in opposition to the Clinton administration's proposal to have every patient encounter registered in a federal database. Peel was a plaintiff in a 2002 case that sought to eliminate the "treatment, payment and healthcare operations" exemption to the HIPAA privacy rule. She formed the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation in 2004 and the broad-based Coalition for Patient Privacy in 2006.

What makes her so disruptive: Always controversial and occasionally dismissed as a radical or a Luddite, Peel fights tirelessly for strong protections of patient data, electronic or otherwise, even if it means holding back the national push for electronic medical records. Peel loves to speak her mind (or cite Paris Hilton's sex tape as an example of a privacy breach that spread like wildfire over the Internet and then lives on in cyberspace forever), which makes her a must-call source for journalists and a fixture at congressional hearings and on the health IT speaking circuit. Plus, she has a way of earning the respect of even her harshest critics.