As the healthcare industry embraces digital transformation, Emory Healthcare stands out for its strategic and innovative technology solutions. In this interview, Scott Smiser, CTO of Emory Healthcare, shared insights with Anthony Guerra, Editor-in- Chief of healthsystemCIO, into Emory’s approach to digital transformation, the potential of AI to enh…

In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, AI and other emerging technologies are redefining how large health systems approach patient care, cost-efficiency, and physician satisfaction. Dr. Matthew Sullivan, CMIO for the Southeast Region of Advocate Health, recently shared his insights with healthsystemCIO Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra afte…

The rapid evolution of AI in healthcare is driving new approaches to patient care and clinician support. In this interview, Dr. David Linz, Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) at Naples Comprehensive Health, shared insights from his recent presentation at the CHIME Fall Forum with Anthony Guerra, Editor-in- Chief of healthsystemCIO. Listen to …

While there are major benefits to having all clinicians working off the same PACS, sometimes exceptions have to be made and physician preferences accommodated, said Chuck Barkey, Associate Vice President of IT Enterprise Clinical Inpatient & Ancillary Systems at WVU Medicine. Luckily, technologies like the VNA make such flexibility possible, he add…

In an era where healthcare systems are prime targets for cyberattacks, experts are broadening their focus to encompass not just IT systems, but also operational technology (OT) security. Christopher Lau, Director of Cyber Security, Proactive Security, and IoT Risk at Advocate Health, shared his expertise in a recent interview, emphasizing the uniqu…

In this interview, Anthony Guerra, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of healthsystemCIO, sits down with Jeremy Meller, CIO of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA)​. ​ Jeremy provides insight into his organization’s recent achievement – the construction of the Arthur M. Blank Pediatric Hospital, a state-of-the-art facility that spans two million square…

In this interview, Dr. Matthew Sullivan, CMIO of Advocate Health Southeast Region, delves into the topic of clinical decision support (CDS), exploring its evolution from basic alerts in EMRs to the potential of AI-enhanced tools. Dr. Sullivan emphasizes the importance of CDS in improving patient care and highlights the challenges of integrating AI …

In this interview, Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra speaks with Emory Healthcare’s Chief Technology Officer Scott Smiser; and VP of Applications and Digital Experience Laura Fultz, about their transformative digital health initiatives. They share how Emory is integrating cutting-edge technology to enhance both clinical and operational efficiency, mos…

The medical imaging industry, particularly radiology departments and practices, are facing numerous challenges, including expanding ecosystems, increasing imaging exam volumes, complex cases, and staff shortages, all while striving to maximize staff efficiency and create a sustainable work-life balance. These issues are exacerbated by tight budgets…

In this healthsystemCIO interview, Anthony Guerra, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, sits down with Dr. Zafar Chaudry, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Seattle Children’s. In this discussion, Dr. Chaudry covers the topic of his CHIME Fall Forum presentation – “Stay Calm and Operate On: Cybersecurity Meets Patient Care C…

In this interview, Dr. Ram Chadalavada, Vice Chair of Radiology Informatics at the University of Cincinnati & UC Health, discusses the evolving field of enterprise imaging. He explains his role in managing imaging data across various medical specialties, emphasizing the importance of consolidating imaging data from different departments, such as ra…

In this healthsystemsCIO interview, Anthony Guerra engages with Chris Paravate, CIO of Northeast Georgia Health System, Dr. Ron Lewis, Medical Director for Perioperative Services, and Dr. Chad Copper, a robotic surgeon, to explore the collaborative relationship between IT and clinical teams in the context of robotic surgery. Emphasizing the importa…

A key principle of most successful businesses is this—make it easy for consumers to buy. Unfortunately, health systems with disparate applications, diverse service lines, multiple portals of entry, and fast-paced environments, often fall short of this standard. Their culture and processes have not yet matured enough to support the level of data ste…

In this interview with healthsystemCIO, Baptist Health’s CMIO Dr. Deborah Abram, VP & Chief Nursing Officer Tammy Daniel and Director of Clinical Transformation Bonnie Williams discuss their efforts to enhance nursing workflows using AI technology. Baptist Health, a six-hospital system in Jacksonville, Fla., identified nursing burnout and documenta…

This interview with Dr. Christopher Longhurst and Dr. Ryan Broderick, both of UC San Diego Health, explores their pioneering work using Apple Vision Pro for clinical trials in spatial computing within the OR. The doctors highlight the innovative efforts at UC San Diego to solve healthcare challenges through cutting-edge technologies and explain how…

In this interview, Eric Jimenez, CIO of Artesia General Hospital, a 25-bed hospital with 16 clinics in southeastern New Mexico, discusses the hospital’s initiatives and challenges as a rural healthcare provider. Jimenez talks about going from many EMRs to standardizing on TruBridge; a recently completed on-premise data center; and how they are inte…

Data quality is a huge issue in healthcare – and the impacts of it will continue to grow as that data is increasingly relied upon with advances in automation & AI. It's so big, yet it is often not addressed in a planned way. Sometimes -- such as when an organization is migrating from one EHR to another, or extending its EHR to a newly acquired enti…

In this interview, Beverly Rosipko, Director of Radiology Informatics at University Hospitals of Cleveland, provides insight into her role overseeing radiology informatics and enterprise imaging. She explains the scale of imaging operations across 13 regional medical centers, 40+ ambulatory locations, and her team’s responsibility for managing over…

In this interview with healthsystemsCIO, Tommy Rowley, Senior Director of Customer Insights at KLAS, discusses the findings of the report “EHR Interoperability 2024: Clinician Needs Still Not Being Met.” Despite advancements, many clinicians still feel they are not receiving the necessary data to provide optimal patient care. Rowley highlights the …

As health systems continue to grow in size and complexity, the need for an enterprise approach to imaging becomes more acute. But while the general direction may be clear, the ultimate destination (and thus the path to get there) will look differently for everyone. That's because no one is starting from a blank slate (not to mention a blank check) …

In this insightful interview, Anthony Guerra, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of healthsystemsCIO, sits down with Tyson Blauer, Research Director at KLAS, to discuss KLAS’ latest report on Data Archiving 2024: Examining the Complexity and Content of Archive Deployment. Blauer shares his expertise on the evolving landscape of data archiving, particularl…

In a recent interview with healthsystemsCIO, Dr. Barry Stein, Chief Clinical Innovation Officer and Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Hartford HealthCare, shared insights into the organization’s enterprise imaging strategy. Dr. Stein and Anthony discuss: How Hartford is streamlining access to patient images across their vast network, and how Epi…

In this interview, Anthony Guerra, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of healthsystemsCIO, sits down with Don Seamons, Research Director for Patient Accounting & RTLS at KLAS, and Dallin Seely, Insights Manager at KLAS, to delve into the dynamic world of Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) in healthcare. With technology constantly evolving, Anthony explores…

In this interview with healthsystemCIO, Dr. Rob Bart, CMIO at UPMC, discusses the challenges and opportunities of moving towards an enterprise imaging environment. UPMC’s strategy involves consolidating various PACS, and then moving those images to a Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) to ensure they’re readily available for patient care. While the techno…

Welcome to healthsystemCIO’s interview with Dr. Mustafa Yousif, Director of Digital Pathology, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, at Michigan Medicine. Dr. Yousif has been at the forefront of a groundbreaking digital transformation in pathology at Michigan Medicine, leading efforts to implement a comprehensive digital pathology…

Welcome to healthsystemCIO’s interview with Dr. Zafar Chaudry, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Seattle Children’s. In this conversation, we dive into Seattle Children’s journey to modernize their ERP system, exploring the rationale behind this transformation, the decision-making process that led to choosing Workda…

In a recent interview with Anthony Guerra of healthsystemCIO, Kaleb Harris, Research Director at KLAS, discusses the importance of selecting the right partner for go-live support. Harris emphasizes the critical role that consulting services play in ensuring successful EHR activations, particularly in high-stakes environments involving major vendors…

Health systems are struggling with major financial headwinds that have shrunk already thin operating margins. IT can and must take a multi-pronged approach to help organizations pursue the Quadruple Aim -- reducing costs, improving population health and patient experience, and improving team well-being. First off, IT must look internally at its own…

CHIME’s policy wonks are reveling in the details of healthcare IT-related regulations and laws (all in varying stages of promulgation) so you don’t have to; that’s the message from the organization’s VP of Public Policy Mari Savickis. But what she does need from members is the willingness to keep CHIME up to date on just […] Source: Cybersecurity, …

Help desks are being inundated with cyberattacks, most of which are parried, a few of which find their mark, but all of which impact productivity and service. Why? Because agents on high alert must take more time to verify identity before they can even listen to a complaint. So what's a health system to do? What policies can CIOs and CISOs put in p…

There’s a ton of information in the EHR, but if clinicians have to spend their precious time digging around for it, the benefits can be lost. KLAS recently decided to take a look at a set of vendors focused on making it easier to surface such data. In this interview with healthsystemsCIO, Jackson Tate, Research […] Source: KLAS Looks at Vendors Aim…

Health system executives are faced with a dizzying kaleidoscope of constantly evolving privacy regulations, making compliance a full time job that spans multiple roles. In this interview with healthsystemCIO Founder & Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra, Teresa Burns, Director of Privacy Operations and Privacy Officer with Protenus, suggests strategies …

“As we understand the things we want to do from a front-end perspective, the backend becomes mission critical,” said Anika Gardenhire of Ardent Health Services. In this interview, she talks about the importance of a solid infrastructure – especially with AI initiatives, her leadership philosophy, and the true goal of innovation. Source: Q&A with An…

Considering doctors and nurses constitute the lifeblood of a health system — and any workforce report will show they are in short supply — it follows that they must be treated with the proper support and care. So when other reports come out revealing many are struggling with burnout, healthcare executives must ask why, and look to ameliorate any pa…

For CIOs, perhaps the most important objective is to provide a great experience for clinicians “without overloading on technology,” according to Michael Carr. In this interview, he talked about the bold initiatives at Health First that he hopes will move the organization toward that goal, and what it means to be a high-reliability organization. Sou…

In this interview with healthsystemCIO’s Anthony Guerra, Bob Schlofelt, Executive Director and CISO at Valleywise Health, discusses: His experience in multiple industries; Why healthcare is up there with the most difficult industries to be a CISO (hint: because every doctor is another boss); Why the fact that many health system physicians are not e…

The best way to alleviate the documentation burden is by developing “tools that can help support nurses and create efficiencies.” The problem is that “we don’t have time right now to provide input,” said Victoria Tiase. In this interview, she talks about how digital transformation has affected nursing; the question vendors need to be asked; and how…

It sounds simple and it makes sense – to ease the burden on clinicians that comes with logging into multiple systems, and thus improve patient safety, all data should reside in one place. When it comes to imaging, that means all images, regardless of how they were created or where they are currently housed (think […] Source: Q&A with Tampa General …

It makes perfect sense – study what your adversaries are doing and plan your defenses accordingly. If they’re coming in the windows every time, perhaps you don’t need to keep adding locks to the door. And studies have been done in healthcare showing there is a typical attack profile that often entails moving from a […] Source: Q&A with Intermountai…

To deliver the kinds of experiences patients expect, a healthcare system must act as just that—a unified system. This ideal system breaks down when patients are asked to re-enter their information with each care encounter or staff lose time dealing with cumbersome and repetitive processes that keep them from practicing at the top of their licenses.…

In today’s complex healthcare environment, providing a platform for users to present ideas is essential. However, “if it’s open-ended and unbounded, we’re going to be building a whole bunch of very pretty bridges to nowhere,” said David Sylvan, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at University Hospitals. Instead, “we have to be prescriptive about w…

Like any risk measure, the level of insider risk in a health system is never static, despite the fleeting comfort a snapshot might provide. Thus, it's helpful for security and privacy professionals to contemplate the reasons spikes occur so mitigation measures can be implemented at the right time and place. For example, if we consider that issuing …

The pressures that go along with leading cyber in a healthcare institution are daunting; some of which include the need to be perfect all the time, the fact that the industry is under almost constant attack, and the presence of financial margins that don’t leave IT with money to burn. Of course, combine all that […] Source: Q&A with United Musculos…

The recent rash of ransomware-induced outages has truly created a "not if, but when" dynamic for health systems. And with that feeling must come a commitment on the part of all leaders to ensure their organizations can continue safely treating patients and maintaining critical business operations during such an ordeal. To do that, downtime plans ne…

In a perfect world, the only thing imaging professionals would have to consider is how to improve clinician workflow and thus, satisfaction, along with patient safety. Of course, the world is far from perfect, as demonstrated by healthcare’s shrinking margins. So those professionals must do their part to keep the enterprise as robust as possible. […

Application rationalization is one of those thorny projects -- absolutely necessary and extremely challenging. It's absolutely necessary because millions of dollars are potentially being wasted on applications that are little used, if at all, while their mere existence increases the cyber attack surface. And it's extremely challenging because, even…

The only way to solve the many problems plaguing physicians is by involving those who “understand the work, understand the problems, and live them every day, and partnering them with technology experts.” In this interview, Eve Cunningham, MD, Chief of Virtual Care and Digital Health at Providence, talks about her team’s objectives, the clinical sup…

The community hospital market is struggling with razor-thin margins, according to John Gaede, CIO, at San Juan Regional Medical Center; the result of increasing payroll and technology costs, along with the sunsetting of pandemic-related government programs. CIOs, he says, are in the critical position of making sure every dollar of those technology …

AI has the potential to address dozens of efficiency challenges that health systems must solve in order to flourish in today's world of staffing shortages and increased burnout. As such, there is no lack of requests by users to interject it into this or that workflow. In many instances, however, the problem with moving forward is a red light put up…

For the better part of a decade – from 2010 to 2020 – CIOs were busy implementing and optimizing their EMRs. And since 2020, it’s been all about cost cutting via application rationalization, integration and, of course, security. But there’s another massive challenge that stands to benefit from CIO leadership – the journey from a […] Source: Q&A wit…