Top 25 Clinical Informaticists - 2010
Richard Ambrosino, 51, is medical director, clinical decision support and reporting, at 12-hospital University of Pittsburgh Medical Center health system, where he has worked in various informatics leadership roles for nearly a decade. He has led the system's efforts to improve functionality, rules and reports within its electronic health-record system. Before joining UPMC, Ambrosino, a physician, was co-director of the clinical informatics team at the Pittsburgh VA Healthcare System, where he helped design and implement a computerized physician order entry system. His background also includes 20 years as a primary- and emergency-care physician.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
As chief medical officer for the Premier health alliance, Charlotte, N.C., Richard Bankowitz, 53, works with clinicians at the enterprise level on a number of quality- and performance-improvement initiatives, including Quest, a multiyear collaborative with more than 200 participating hospitals. He previously was vice president and medical director of Premier Healthcare Informatics. Before joining Premier, Bankowitz, a physician, was vice president and medical director of CareScience, a clinical data-mining and quality-improvement company Premier acquired in 2007. He also spent more than a decade at the University HealthSystem Consortium, Oak Brook, Ill.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dotty Bollinger is senior vice president of medical operations at the Laser Spine Institute, Tampa, Fla. Bollinger, 46, joined the institute as vice president of quality and compliance in 2008 and was promoted to her current position in February. She helped lead the implementation of electronic medical records at the organization's three surgical centers, enabling staff to exchange patient information, track appointments and measure quality. Bollinger previously served as vice president of legal and compliance at Horizon Bay Retirement Living, also in Tampa.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
As chief medical information officer for Shriners Hospitals for Children, William Bria oversees the medical informatics plan for all of the 20 hospitals within the Tampa, Fla.-based system. Bria, 59, who has held the role since 2006, also is co-founder and president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems. Prior to joining Shriners, Bria served for more than 16 years as the CMIO and medical director of clinical information systems at 849-bed University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor. Bria is a practicing pulmonary critical-care physician.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Peggy Budnik, 62, is the project lead for clinical applications at two-hospital St. Francis Health System, Tulsa, Okla., a position she has held for more than a decade. Budnik, whose background is in clinical nursing, joined the system's information services team in 1997 as a senior management analyst. Her career also included stints as a nursing instructor and as a senior management consultant at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., where from 1988 to 1993 she helped to implement an early hospital information system.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
During Reid Coleman's tenure as medical informatics officer at Lifespan, Providence, R.I., the four-hospital system has implemented a systemwide clinical information system, computerized physician-order entry and bedside bar-coding for medication administration. Coleman, 60, whose background includes 20 years as a primary-care internist, also serves as the co-chairman of the Rhode Island Quality Institute's Health Information Technology Physicians Advisory Committee. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
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Brent James is executive director of the Institute for Health Care Delivery Research and vice president of medical research and continuing medical education for Intermountain Healthcare, a 19-hospital system based in Salt Lake City. Through a partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, James, 59, a physician, has overseen the Advanced Training Program in Health Care Delivery Improvement, a clinical quality-improvement education program completed by more than 1,200 medical leaders. James also is an adjunct professor in the department of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Elizabeth Johnson is vice president of applied clinical informatics at Tenet Healthcare Corp., a 53-hospital system based in Dallas, with annual revenue of more than $9 billion. Johnson, 58, has led electronic health-record implementations at Tenet hospitals and also heads the system's IMPACT Program (Improving Patient Care Through Technology), an initiative that utilizes clinical operations leaders and trains them in technology and workflow improvement. She joined Tenet in 2002 and previously served as the chief operating officer and executive vice president at HealthLink, a health IT services company based in Houston. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Brent Lambert, 55, is vice president and chief medical information officer at 12-hospital Carolinas HealthCare System, Charlotte, N.C. Lambert assumed the role in June. Before joining the system, Lambert, a physician, spent seven years as vice president of medical informatics and CMIO at Carilion Clinic, a seven-hospital system based in Roanoke, Va. While at Carilion, Lambert led the rapid deployment of an enterprise electronic health-record system across all of its facilities. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Howard Landa serves as the chief medical information officer at 310-bed Alameda County Medical Center, Oakland, Calif., and as CMIO at Kaiser Permanente Hawaii. In Kaiser's Hawaii region, Landa, 53, oversaw the implementation of an integrated electronic health-record system that received HIMSS Stage 6 certification. At Alameda County, Landa is leading the hospital through the process of selecting a vendor for an integrated ambulatory, inpatient and financial system. Landa is a practicing pediatric urologist.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Christopher Longhurst, 35, joined the clinical informatics team at 272-bed Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., in 2004 and has led the hospital's implementation of computerized physician-order entry. After serving as physician lead and medical director for clinical informatics, he was named Lucile Packard's chief medical information officer this year. A pediatrician, Longhurst previously worked as a hospitalist in the division of neonatology at 509-bed Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, Calif.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Blackford Middleton is director of clinical informatics research at 10-hospital Partners HealthCare System, Boston. Since joining Partners, Middleton, 53, a physician, has expanded the clinical informatics team from 12 staff members in 2001 to more than 120 staffers, researchers and contractors this year. Before joining Partners, he was senior vice president for clinical informatics and chief medical officer for MedicaLogic, an EHR vendor General Electric Co. acquired in 2002. He also held posts at Stanford University Medical Center. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Since 2008, Robert Murphy, 46, has served as chief medical informatics officer for eight-hospital Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Houston. During that time, he has spearheaded efforts to implement evidence-based order sets and automated clinical decision-support tools within the system's electronic health record. Prior to his current role, Murphy was Memorial Hermann's medical director of information systems. He also spent more than five years at Norton Healthcare, Louisville, Ky., most recently serving as associate vice president and CMIO. Murphy trained as an emergency physician.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Eric Poon is director of clinical informatics at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. Poon, 39, has held the role for four years, and has helped lead a range of initiatives, including the 776-bed hospital's implementation of an electronic medication-administration and bar-coding system. Poon, a physician who also is an assistant professor of internal medicine at Harvard Medical School, has conducted research on topics such as computerized physician-order entry adoption, and this year was the lead author on a study showing a link between bar-coding technology and improved medication safety.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
George Reynolds, 52, is vice president, chief information officer and chief medical informatics officer at 143-bed Children's Hospital & Medical Center, a free-standing children's hospital in Omaha, Neb. Reynolds joined the hospital's clinical staff in 1996 as a pediatric intensivist and became director of pediatric critical care. He has led the development of clinical analytics and enhanced clinical decision support at Children's. He previously served as director of the pediatric intensive-care unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, also in Omaha.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Jeff Rose is vice president of clinical excellence, informatics, at 75-hospital Ascension Health, St. Louis. Rose, 57, was named to the post in 2004, and has led programs focused on closed-loop medication processes, nursing informatics, medical terminology and electronic health-record implementation. Before joining Ascension, Rose, a physician, was vice president and chief medical officer at Cerner Corp., Kansas City, Mo. He also was a clinical project leader in the Rocky Mountain division of Kaiser.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Sandy Savino's career includes stints as a registered nurse, nurse educator and lead project analyst at 434-bed Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Since 2008, Savino has been a clinical systems analyst and team leader of the clinical content team at five-hospital Catholic Health Services of Long Island, Rockville Centre, N.Y. Savino has led efforts to implement clinical decision-support tools and to standardize the use of order sets in preparation for the system's future implementation of an enterprise-wide electronic health record. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Michael Shrift is vice president and chief medical information officer at Allina Hospitals & Clinics, an 11-hospital system based in Minneapolis. Shrift, 47, who has held the post for two years, has led rollouts of clinical decision-support and patient-safety compliance tools. Before joining Allina, Shrift, a physician, spent a decade at Centura Health, Englewood, Colo., where he most recently served as vice president of information technology and CMIO. He led the implementation of an electronic medical record and a picture archiving and communication system.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
For nearly a decade, Richard Snow has served as medical director for performance improvement at Doctors Hospital, a 191-bed facility in Columbus, Ohio, that is part of eight-hospital OhioHealth. Snow, 55, was chairman of the hospital's performance-improvement committee and has overseen a successful adverse drug-event prevention program and a comparative-effectiveness initiative aimed at improving outcomes and reducing mortality rates for heart attack patients. He also worked on population-based quality-of-care studies examining patient outcomes in such areas as asthma care, childhood immunizations and prenatal care. Snow planned to return to primary-care practice in October, after a five-year hiatus. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Christopher Snyder is chief medical information officer and medical director of performance improvement at 366-bed Peninsula Regional Medical Center, Salisbury, Md. Snyder, 43, who joined PRMC in 1998, has led the hospital's efforts to roll out computerized physician order entry, electronic-progress notes and closed-loop medication administration. In January, the hospital received HIMSS Stage 6 certification, the second-highest level. Snyder, who still works as a family-practice physician, also serves as a deputy medical examiner for the state of Maryland. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Khiet Trinh is the first-ever chief medical information officer for 138-bed Ephrata (Pa.) Community Hospital, a role he has held for two years. Trinh, 39, also was named the hospital's associate vice president of medical affairs in 2009. As CMIO, Trinh served as a physician champion for a hospital-wide rollout of an electronic health-record system, and also led implementation of a biometric, single sign-on system at physician workstations. Trinh is a board-certified family physician and continues to practice.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Ferdinand Velasco, 46, is vice president and chief medical information officer of Texas Health Resources, a 13-hospital health system based in Arlington. Trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon, Velasco first became interested in clinical informatics as a medical student. At THR, he has led a five-year, $200 million implementation of an electronic health record. He has also used clinical analytics to evaluate the EHR's impact on medical errors. Velasco is chairman of the National Quality Forum's eMeasure Format Review Panel.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Joel Vengco, 35, is chief applications officer and director of IT at 527-bed Boston Medical Center. Vengco assumed the post in 2007 and has led the hospital's development of a community information exchange, which enables clinical data-sharing with 15 community health centers. Previously, Vengco was a senior medical informatician at Partners HealthCare System, Boston. He also served as a consultant and senior adviser at Dimagi, a healthcare technology services company based in Charlestown, Mass.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
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