House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday named L.A. billionaire surgeon and cancer research leader Patrick Soon-Shiong to an advisory committee on health care information technology.

Soon-Shiong confirmed the news, first reported by Politico, Wednesday afternoon.

“It is an honor to have been asked to serve on this committee,” Soon-Shiong said. “I view this as an opportunity to transform the delivery of health care and try to get high-quality outcomes at lower cost.”

Soon-Shiong is one of eight congressional appointees to the 25-member Health Information Technology Advisory Committee. The committee was authorized under a law signed in December by former President Barack Obama; the committee’s job is to advise presidential administrations on the growing role of information technology in health care.

Soon-Shiong said he saw this committee’s role as trying to break through the hyperpartisan atmosphere surrounding health care reform.

“Health care is about patients, not politics,” he said. “For the millions of Americans dealing with lower quality health care, we have an obligation to ensure that this not be a partisan issue. We need to imagine and then work toward a health care system that lowers cost, increases access, and improves quality of care. We can do this by integrating the information knowledge domain with the (health care) delivery domain and the payee domain.”

Soon-Shiong, who once again this month topped the Business Journal’s list of Wealthiest Angelenos with a net worth of $18 billion, helms NantWorks, a group of bioscience research companies with a central focus on combatting cancer. He created this research network using some of his $9 billion in proceeds from selling two pharmaceutical firms, American Pharmaceutical Partners and Abraxis BioScience.

Public policy and energy reporter Howard Fine can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @howardafine.