HIMSS Chair
George T. Hickman, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the Albany Medical Center, a 164-year old free-standing medical college/hospital system. As Senior VP and CIO at the Medical Center, Hickman is responsible for overseeing all information technology activities throughout the institution, which includes the Albany Medical Center Hospital Main and South Clinical Campuses, the Albany Medical College, and the Physician Group Practice. AMC is Hickman’s third academic health system CIO role.
Hickman is Fellow of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and sits on the Technical CPHIMS Committee and the HIMSS Analytics Board. He has participated in numerous HIMSS’ roles and activities across his 22-year involvement. Hickman currently sits on the Executive Council for the Editorial Advisory Board of ADVANCE for Health Information Executives.
He was a vice president with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and a partner of Ernst & Young LLP. He also has worked with Price Waterhouse Coopers and started his career as a project engineer at a community hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee, his hometown. He has performed consulting engagements across the U.S. as well as for the Ministry of Health in Singapore and the U.K Health Authority and publishes frequently on healthcare IT and operational change topics.
Hickman holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in industrial engineering from the University of Tennessee.
HIMSS Vice Chair
Dr. Marion J. Ball, Ed.D, FHIMSS, is Vice President Clinical Informatics Strategies Adjunct Professor Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Health Sciences.
Dr. Marion Ball is an international innovator, educator, author, and leader with over thirty years of experience in the health care IT community.
Through her work on behalf of the National Library of Medicine and its Board of Regents, Dr. Ball is well acquainted with the mission and promise of programs in the federal, academic, and private sectors, and has published some of the core texts in the field She is the co editor of the health informatics series for Springer-Verlag, New York. This year her books Healthcare Information Management Systems and Consumer Informatics have appeared in print.
She is a founding board member of the Health on the Net (HON) and an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) where she earlier served as a member of the IOM Committee to improve the patient record. Dr. Ball has received numerous academic, national and international awards for her contribution to the medical and information technology industry. She is the recipient of such coveted awards as the Distinguished Service Award from the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the Pioneer Award for Computer in Healthcare and is a two-time recipient of the President's Award from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). In 2002, she received the Morris F. Collen Lifetime Achievement Award from ACMI/AMIA. Dr. Ball has twice served on the board of the College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME). She also acts as a consultant to the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, and was a member of the National Long Range Planning Committee for the Office of Informatics at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Ball is an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, School of Nursing and an affiliate faculty of Information Systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in the department of Biomedical Informatics. As an educator and speaker, Dr. Ball has led workshops and lectured on various aspects of health informatics worldwide. Most recently, she has concentrated on patient safety and the role of enabling technologies. As Vice President for Clinical Informatics Strategies at Healthlink Incorporated, Dr. Ball helps healthcare companies with their integrated computing services from planning, developing, selecting, training and implementing to optimizing their clinical systems.
John Wade, FCHIME, FHIMSS is the Vice President and Chief Information Officer (VP/CIO) for Saint Luke's Health System (SLHS) of Kansas City, a multi-hospital (10 inpatient facilities) Healthcare provider servicing eastern Kansas and western Missouri within 150 miles of Kansas City.
Saint Luke’s received the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in November, 2003 and was awarded the Missouri Quality Award in 1995, 1999, and 2003, the only organization in Missouri to win this award three times. SLHS has been recognized since 1999 (6 consecutive years) as one of the “100 Most Wired” Hospitals and was the winner of the National Innovators Award for Technology in 2000. Computerworld Magazine has recognized SLHS since 2002 as one of the best 100 IT employers in the United States, finishing 45th, 7th and 27th respectively. Saint Luke’s also placed 29th on Information Week Magazine’s Innovators award in 2004.
Mr. Wade, prior to joining Saint Luke's, was a principal and national healthcare practice director with the consulting firm of Logica North America headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Previously Mr. Wade has also served as the Senior Information Executive at the University of Alabama Health Systems at Birmingham, Northwestern Memorial Health System - Chicago and Children's Hospital Medical Center - Boston. Mr. Wade is an honor's graduate of Boston College where he pursued his Master's in Business Administration and is a Fellow of both HIMSS and CHIME. He has been a featured speaker at HIMSS, HFMA, NMHCC and National VHA conferences. He was recently recognized as one of the top 100 CIO’s in the US by Computerworld publications.
Victoria Bradley, RN, DNP, CPHIMS, FHIMSS is the Director of Health Information at the University of Kentucky HealthCare, Lexington, Kentucky. She is administratively responsible for the hospital medical records department and project director for implementation of an enterprise wide integrated clinical information system. Her experience includes system selection, contract negotiation, implementation and evaluation. She discovered her passion for informatics by leading a project to develop a computerized tracking system for an emergency department.
Dr. Bradley was active for many years in the specialty of emergency nursing as an educator, director, speaker and author. She is a past president of the Emergency Nurses Association and the Emergency Nurses Foundation. She has received the Pillar Award of the ENA Foundation and the Judith C. Kelleher Award from ENA.
Dr Bradley is a HIMSS Fellow and has served on a variety of HIMSS committees including Chair of CPHIMS Committee and Co-Chair of Nursing Informatics Symposium Planning Committee. She is a recipient of the HIMSS Informatics Nursing Leadership Award.
Dr. Bradley received her bachelor and masters in nursing from Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. She is a recipient of a Wright State University Wall of Fame Award. She recently received a Doctorate in Nursing Practice from the University of Kentucky. This program, begun in 2001, was the first of its kind in the country. It is designed to prepare expert clinical nurse leaders to change direct care practice or to change health care systems to address safety issues and to improve health care outcomes. Dr. Bradley’s doctoral project was a survey of nursing acceptance of CPOE and description of reported medication errors before and after CPOE implementation.
Karen J. Ondo, FHIMSS, has 30 years of healthcare technology, systems, business and clinical experience as a result of positions including: VP/CIO of a multi-entity IDN (49 sites); Director of Laboratories (450 bed hospital with Academic affiliation and School of Nursing); vendor (product design, development and installation of integrated systems); and now Executive Vice President, KLAS Enterprises, a market intelligence firm specializing in healthcare IT performance monitoring. She is currently engaged in various consulting and advisory capacities to assist both provider and vendor organizations in the US and Canada and is Principal in her consulting firm Computer Systems Associates. Recent published articles, reports and speaking engagements involve local, national and international settings and she is a seven times HIMSS national speaker.
As VP/CIO organization named in the 100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems, by Hospital & Health Networks (1999, 2000 and 2001). She was identified as “one of Healthcare IT’s Most Influential People” by Advance for Healthcare Information Executives Magazine; named 1999 South Florida IT executive of the Year by ITEC; and a South Florida HIMSS Chapter President 1998-2002. As Director of Laboratories also served on Hospital Board of Directors, schools faculty and admission committee and co-lead conversion from total manual to automation with both clinical and financial systems.
Ms. Ondo has served as adjunct faculty member in the IT program at the University of Alabama, an instructor in the School of Nursing, St. Peter’s Medical Center, an instructor to Medical Technology Interns associated with Rutgers University, New Jersey and most recently as a faculty member for the Partnership in Productivity Colloquium, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria. She received her bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University, is certified by the American Society of Clinical Pathologists and serves on the Advisory Board of DocuSys, Inc.
Ray Gensinger Jr. MD, CPHIMS, FHIMSS is the Deputy Medical Director, Medical Informaticist, for the Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis, Minn. With a focus on medical ethics and information technology, he joined HCMC in 1996 as Director of Medical Informatics and Associate Medical Director. He is also an assistant professor and faculty mentor at the School of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Before coming to the Hennepin County Medical Center, he served as Director of Medical Informatics, from 1994-1996, at the Springfield (Illinois) Health Information Network Enterprise. He received his medical degree from Southern Illinois University in 1990 and studied medical informatics at Baylor College of Medicine. He is a member of the American College of Physicians. At the Hennepin County Medical Center, he is chair of both the Biomedical Ethics and Electronic Health Record Steering Committees. Active in statewide health IT initiatives, Dr. Gensinger is a member of the Hennepin Medical Society Board of Directors and an appointee of the State of Minnesota eHealth Initiative. He has shared his expertise on health IT security and administrative/clinical workflow systems as a speaker at HIMSS. Dr. Gensinger is a member of the HIMSS Board of Directors through 2007.
Margret Amatayakul, RHIA, CHPS, CPHIT, CPEHR, FHIMSS is president of Margret\A Consulting, LLC and co-founder and member of the board of examiners of Health IT Certification. As an independent consultant, Margret brings over 35 years of dedication to advancing electronic health records to her clients. She provides health information technology consulting services to hospitals and clinics, newly forming regional health information organizations, and government agencies/contractors. She conducts training programs and writes extensively to share lessons learned that will help achieve clinical transformation through IT adoption. She recently published books on electronic health records for AHIMA, HC Pro, and MGMA, and has published on HIPAA-related topics for several medical specialty societies, AHIMA, AMA, BCBSA, and HC Pro.
Previous to her current activities, Margret “A” helped found and was the executive director of the Computer-based Patient Record Institute (CPRI), she held the position of associate executive director of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), she served as associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and was director of health information management services at the Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary. She is currently adjunct faculty at the College of St. Scholastica in their health informatics masters program. She is active in standards setting organizations and is currently a member of the HIMSS board of directors.
Margret holds a bachelors of science degree from the University of Illinois at the Medical Center in health information management and a masters in business administration with concentrations in marketing and finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
John Hansmann, CPHIMS, FHIMSS is currently the Urban South Region Manager of Management Engineering for Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, Utah. He has over 20 years of healthcare experience in operations, strategic and IT analysis. His current focus is facilitating the development of standardized nursing care models and staffing practices, optimizing patient throughput, and leading the workflow analysis supporting Intermountain’s development of a state of the art clinical information system in partnership with GE Healthcare.
Mr. Hansmann is a Fellow of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS.) He is the board liaison to both the Advocacy and Public Policy Steering Committee and the CPHIMS Technical Committee. Mr. Hansmann has been an active member of HIMSS, serving on numerous committees such as CPHIMS committee (chair), Health Leadership Alliance Expert Panel, Annual Conference Education Committee, and elected member of the Nominating Committee. He has been an annual conference paper reviewer/coach and presenter numerous times. Mr. Hansmann was the author of two chapters in the HIMSS Guidebook Series: Management Engineering. In 2002, he received the prestigious HIMSS Leadership award. Mr. Hansmann is also a senior member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), and Diplomate within the Society for Health Systems (SHS), a society within IIE. He has served in many different roles in IIE and SHS, culminating with being the national President for SHS in 1999/2000.
Mr. Hansmann currently serves on the Advisory Board for the school of Industrial Engineering at North Dakota State University, chairing the curriculum and healthcare subcommittees. He is a frequent speaker at student chapter events, guest lecturer in the classroom and recently was the keynote speaker at the senior Capstone Banquet. Mr. Hansmann also is the chair of the Logistics Committee for the Susan G. Komen Foundation Race for the Cure event in Salt Lake City.
Mr. Hansmann received his BSIE and MSIE from North Dakota State University.
Barry P. Chaiken, MD has over 20 years experience in medical research, continuous quality improvement, risk management and patient safety. As founder of his own company, he worked on quality improvement studies and clinical investigations for the National Institutes of Health, the Framingham Heart Study, and Boston University Medical School.
Over the past 15 years Chaiken provided expertise in quality and patient safety to provider and payor organizations helping them utilize information technology to improve clinical and administrative activities. He has served as guest lecturer and consultant on topics including patient safety, clinician adoption of information technology, quality improvement and managed care. Chaiken also assisted hospitals and technology firms in the creation of medical software products and authoring of marketing communication materials.
Chaiken is board certified in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health as well as Health Care Quality Management. He is currently Associate Chief Medical Officer at BearingPoint, Inc., an international consulting company, where he provides thought leadership, assists in business development and offers clients his expertise in clinical transformation and quality improvement. Chaiken has delivered more than 50 CME lectures, and is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Patient Safety, the Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management, and the journal of Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare. He currently writes a column on quality and technology for the journal of Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare.
Chaiken received his medical degree from SUNY Downstate Medical Center, NYC, his masters in public health degree in health services administration from the Harvard School of Public Health and his bachelors of arts degree in psychology from the University at Albany. He acquired his specialty training from the Centers for Disease Control as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and from the New Jersey State Department of Health as a preventive medicine resident. He is also a Board Member and a Fellow of the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS), and serves on the Policy Committee of the National Association for Health Information Technology..
Charles E. Christian, FCHIME, FHIMSS is the Director of Information Systems and CIO of the Good Samaritan Hospital, a 98-year old free-standing, acute care, community hospital in southwest Indiana. Christian is responsible for all information technology activities throughout the enterprise; which includes Good Samaritan Hospital, Samaritan Center, Good Samaritan – Lincoln Trail Hospice, as well as several outpatient/outreach clinics. Christian is serving his 17th year in this role and his 35th year in healthcare.
Good Samaritan Hospital received the McKesson VIP Award in 2004, identified as a Solucient Top 100 Hospital – Quality Improvement Leader in 2005, listed as Most Wired (small and rural) in 2004 & 2005, and a 2006 recipient of the VHA Leadership Award for Clinical Excellence.
Christian is a Fellow of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and sits on the HIMSS Analytics Board. Christian serves as the board liaison for the Enterprise Integration and Privacy & Security Steering Committees. Christian is a Fellow and charter member of CHIME and served on the CHIME BOD from 2003 through 2004. Christian is a charter member of the re-established Indiana Chapter of HIMSS and servers as a member of the board of directors. Christian is a member of the advisory board for Advance for Health Information Executives magazine, member of the Technology Advisory Committee for the Vincennes City Schools, and a member of the Curriculum Advisory Committee for Vincennes University.
Prior to joining Good Samaritan Hospital, Christian worked in healthcare IT for Compucare and Baxter Travenol, in both management and implementation roles. Christian started his career in healthcare as a Radiologic Technologist, serving in various Radiology roles for 14 years. Christian studied natural sciences at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Lacrosse University. Christian has presented at the SHS Management Engineering Forum, HIMSS Annual Conference, and HIMSS Summer Conference.
Liz Johnson, FHIMSS is the Vice President of Clinical Informatics for Tenet HealthSystem. In this capacity she has responsibility for the strategic vision and the tactical plan for all clinical systems used throughout the Tenet organization of 72 provider organizations. Today the clinical application suite of products for Tenet includes over 3,000 clinical applications and 5,000 custom interfaces. Under Ms. Johnson’s leadership, Tenet has developed and is implementing a comprehensive clinical informatics vision and strategy. Liz speaks nationally and internationally on clinical applications particularly focused on their strategic use as a tool for enhanced patient safety.
Prior to joining Tenet, Liz was and Executive Vice President and National Practice Leader for HIPAA for Healthlink, Inc. As a nationally recognized HIPAA expert, she has shared her in-depth knowledge of HIPAA in over 150 presentations. A partial list of her HIPAA speaking engagements includes ACHE, CHIME and HIMSS. Additionally, Ms. Johnson has directed numerous HIPAA consulting engagements, including readiness assessments, offices of project management, HIPAA planning and training. During her 6 years as an executive with Healthlink, Liz performed a variety of management roles assisting in the migration of a small boutique consulting firm into a major consulting presence in the healthcare market.
With 30 years experience in executive and staff positions throughout provider organizations she understands provider operations from every perspective, and the role IT plays in enabling best practices to be deployed by healthcare providers.
Jay Srini, FHIMSS is an experienced professional with more than 20 years of hands on operational, technology and executive leadership experience. She has proven expertise in multiple industries (financial, manufacturing, logistics and healthcare) and diverse organizations that include startup, large brick and mortar as well as academic institutions. Her background includes extensive healthcare experience and very strong operational and technical experience encompassing strategic and tactical planning, product design and development, personnel management and organizational startup activities. Jay currently provides strategic direction and input regarding emerging technologies and solutions to University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) through her current role as Vice President, Emerging Technologies.
Jay was a managing director for e-Health Initiatives at Internet Venture Works where she led technology and industry assessments of opportunities presented by strategic partners, investors and external sources and served in interim executive management roles for its’ portfolio companies. She has formed a niche consulting firm, Strategic Consulting Solutions, focusing on the integration of technology and business operations for established institutions and startup ventures. Jay has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from New York University and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Bucknell University and has completed an Executive Education course in E-commerce at the Kellogg's School of Business. She serves on the Advocacy Committee of HIMSS and chairs their Legislative Review taskforce in addition to serving on the advisory board of select technology firms in Pittsburgh. Jay has served on the advisory committee of several national conferences and co chaired their events. She is an active board member of Pennsylvania e-Health Initiative and Rainbow Kitchen in Pittsburgh and is a current board elect for HIMSS.
Advisory Board Member
Simon Cohn, MD, MPH is the Associate Executive Director, Health Information Policy for Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser Permanente is the nation's largest nonprofit integrated healthcare delivery system serving 8.2 million members. He has been a leader in Kaiser Permanente's efforts to develop and implement comprehensive health information systems to support both the delivery of health care and health research.
Dr. Cohn is Chair of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS), the main public advisory committee to U. S. Department of Health and Human Services on health information policy, HIPAA and the national health information infrastructure. The NCVHS has played a key role in laying the foundation for interoperable health information technology. Dr. Cohn is also a member of the federal Commission on Systemic Interoperability. Additionally, he is a member of the AMA Common Procedural Terminology (CPT) Editorial Panel and the National Uniform Claims Committee (NUCC). He was a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety. In 2002, Dr. Cohn was a recipient of the President's Award from the American Medical Informatics Association for his contributions to the field and was also elected a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics.
He is board certified in Emergency Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Advisory Board Member
Janet M. Dillione
Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President, Siemens Medical Solutions Health Services
As Chief Operating Officer for Health Services, Ms. Dillione is passionate about having a positive impact on patient care through the use of information technology. With her in-depth knowledge of the healthcare environment and her long-standing partnerships with customers, Ms. Dillione understands that information technology is a great enabler, giving nurses and physicians more time to spend with patients, delivering quality care.
Ms. Dillione has more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare information services industry. With Siemens since 2000, Ms. Dillione most recently served as senior vice president of US Siemens Health Services Business Management, with operating responsibility for profitability, market share growth and customer satisfaction throughout the U.S.
Prior to Siemens, Ms. Dillione spent 18 years at Shared Medical Systems (SMS), starting as a systems consultant and moving into positions of increased responsibilities on a regular basis. Her years at SMS gave Ms. Dillione a well-rounded view of the healthcare information systems landscape since she worked in both the financial and clinical solutions arenas as well as in technical and management positions.
A frequent speaker at industry forums, user-group meetings and investor conferences, Ms. Dillione passionately espouses the localness of healthcare delivery and how technology today supports that. Ms. Dillione was recently named an Advisory Member of HIMSS Board of Directors, currently is a Senior Member of HIMSS, and participates on the Society’s Integration and Interoperability Steering Committee. Ms. Dillione has a bachelor of arts degree in bio-medical ethics from Brown University and is a graduate of the Wharton School’s Executive Management Program. She lives in West Chester, Pa., with her husband and two daughters.
Advisory Board Member
Steve Fox
Advisory Board Member
Miriam Paramore is the CEO of Louisville, KY based AdvantageMD LLC, a physician revenue cycle management company delivering cash flow and information technology solutions. During Ms. Paramore’s 21 years in the healthcare industry, she has held a number of executive management positions including CEO of a consulting company, CEO of a healthcare clearinghouse, General Manager of operations for a physician/hospital receivables company, and senior healthcare consultant with Ernst & Young. She is the Vice Chair and Chair-Elect of the Association for Electronic Health Care Transactions, a national policy group for HIT vendors. She currently serves as the interim chair for the Louisville Health Information Exchange, and is a member of the Kentucky state-wide Health Information Security and Privacy Collaborative Variations Workgroup. She is a member of the Healthcare Billing and Management Association Publications Committee. She co-founded and served on the board of the HIPAA Action Workgroup of Kentucky (HAWK), a state-wide not-for-profit organization, and served as an Advisory Board member of the Southern Healthcare Administrative Regional Process (SHARP), a 13-state not-for-profit collaboration. She served as a member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association national HIPAA@Work committee, the WEDI Regional Affiliate Leadership committee, and JCAHO/NCQA HIPAA Privacy Review and Appeals Committee.
