healthsystemCIO – Strategies for Hospital IT Leaders

After more than a quarter century with the organization, John Houston knows how to find his way around UPMC. And when it comes to being an effective security leader, that not only helps him move complex issues along, but also ensures everyone else knows who to come to for any security-related concerns. His guiding mantra? […] Source: Q&A with UPMC VP of Info Sec & Privacy, and Associate Counsel, J...

“If we don’t set them up for success, they’re going to have a lot of long nights. They’re going to have a lot of frustration,” said Gretchen Britt. In this interview, she talks about the importance of training, change management, and IT governance, and how she's applying lessons learned from her time as a nurse. Source: Q&A with VP of IT Gretchen Britt: “I’ve Felt the Frustration and I Want to Mak...

Having served in provider roles, as a consultant, and now as a vendor executive, Drex DeFord, Executive Healthcare Strategist with CrowdStrike, has just about seen it all. As such, it's not surprising he's picked up some best practices along the way. Among them are how important governance is to ensure the IT department is working on the right things, how to handle reduced budgets, and the benefit...

The nature of work continues to change at lightning speed. First off, workers -- both clinicians and non-clinicians -- now need to be able to access key applications from anywhere on both company-issued and personal devices. Secondly, the apps being accessed are often no-longer in tightly controlled, on-prem data centers but in the cloud (and many different clouds at that). Not surprisingly, havin...

For healthcare IT leaders, “having a balance of technical and operational leadership is increasingly important,” said Denao Ruttino, Chief Innovation Officer at Southern Illinois Healthcare. In this podcast interview, he talks about the challenges facing rural health organizations, how his team is working to improve access, and why accountability is so critical. Source: Q&A with SIH Chief Innovati...

“Everything we do has a digital component to it; therefore, everything we do has a cybersecurity component,” said Andrea Daugherty. In this podcast interview, she talks about the innovative work her team is doing, the challenges of recruiting top IT, and how she hopes to elevate cybersecurity as a career. Source: Q&A with Interim CIO Andrea Daugherty: “Cybersecurity Is at the Forefront of Everythi...

The problems facing healthcare today may not be new, but solving them is going to require a new approach, said Nicole Kerkenbush. In this podcast, she talked about the critical role technology can play in easing the burden on caregivers, why shadowing is so important, and the lessons she learned in the military. Source: Q&A with Monument Health’s Nicole Kerkenbush: “We have to adjust in ways that...

Adam Zoller, chief information security officer at Providence, a California-based health system with 53 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, says as much as he’d like to standardize things like employee access and devices management in an organization that large, it’s very hard – because so many exceptions are warranted. Instead, he focuses on identity-centric […] Source: Q&A with Providence CIS...

One of the best things about high-performing software vendors is they're constantly updating their applications to make users more efficient and secure. But with this benefit comes a challenge -- the training provided upon hiring or implementation quickly becomes obsolete as time and upgrades go by. Unfortunately, if not addressed with additional training, users soon become dissatisfied with the t...

The key to impressing Kent Sona, VP and CIO at Methodist Health System? Take ownership of a problem, even if it doesn’t fall under your purview. “Own and run with it,” he said during a recent interview. Sona also talked about forming strong vendor partnerships, addressing social determinants, and understanding the why. Source: Q&A with Nebraska Methodist CIO Kent Sona: “It’s about Caring for the W...

Health systems have no shortage of people who want to do amazing things with all the data at their disposal, such as providing clinical decision support at the point of care, leveraging genomic information for more tailored treatment plans, or developing AI algorithms. But those next-level uses only stand a chance of being effective if the data upon which they are built is high quality. In this im...

Ransomware attacks don’t happen in the blink of an eye, despite what many think, says cybersecurity expert Nadir Izrael, chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder of Armis. For weeks and months, bad actors will penetrate an organization, overriding and infecting different systems before the final attack. A lot can be done at the beginning of such an attack to mitigate it, if cyber-leaders have...

St. Joseph Health Director of Technology Infrastructure & Cyber Security (Information Security Officer) Jesse Fasolo talks with healthsystemCIO Founder and Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra at the Vive Conference about the benefits of having clinical engineering report up to IT security; some key points for proper cyber-hygiene; and the importance of developing a process for vetting and […] Source: Q...

If an organization truly believes in digital transformation and wants a true digital leader, “you need the scope to go with it,” said Saad Chaudhry of Luminis Health. In this interview, he talked about his recent title change, the “massive” Epic reset that he believes will improve the user experience, and why it’s so critical to view initiatives “through the lens of upcoming generations.” Source:...

healthsystemCIO Founder and Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra talks with Health Sector Coordinating Council Director Greg Garcia at the Vive Conference about the structure and relationships among entitles like HHS, FDA, HSCC, the Health ISAC, and 405(d); the importance of the NIST framework and how HICP, JCP and other materials released by the HSCC can help healthcare […] Source: Q&A with HSCC Execut...

Research has shown that certain roles in health systems are the target of cyberattacks far more than others. And for those who are highly targeted, sophisticated phishing campaigns are the approach of choice. So how can CISOs and CIOs -- working with key leaders inside and outside of IT -- create a culture where vigilance is heightened without impacting workflow? In this timely webinar, we'll spea...

One of Chris Paravate’s core objectives? To make sure that as Northeast Georgia expands its physical footprint, “we’re not just extending what we already have in our portfolio, but really taking the opportunity to test new technologies, implement new tools, and bring them back to other existing facilities,” he said in a recent podcast interview. Source: Q&A with Northeast Georgia CIO Chris Paravat...

As health systems have digitized, they've done so not by moving from paper not to home-grown software, but to vendor-supplied products and services. That means, to a large degree, CIO success is determined by how well he or she does in effectively selecting and managing those relationships -- which usually run into the hundreds. And for core strategic vendors, those relationships are akin to marri...

“There aren’t many people who, in a moment’s notice, would drop everything and come help us if we needed it,” said Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, speaking about his friend, Tim Stettheimer. In a recent interview, Branzell talked about the enormous impact Stettheimer had on the industry, the qualities he embodied as a teacher and mentor, and the huge task CHIME faces in replacing him. S...

When it comes to keeping UNC Health Care secure, connected medical devices are top of mind for Dee Young, the organization’s chief security information officer. But she doesn’t do all the work alone; Young relies on her security team, which includes engaging with credentialed police. She likes to think of it as, “us against the […] Source: Q&A with UNC Health Care CISO Dee Young: Engaging Operatio...

Despite its complexity, healthcare can be boiled down to a simple concept: giving back time, said Saad Chaudhry, CDIO at Luminis Health. In this podcast, he talks about the personal experience that altered his thinking, and how his team is leveraging digital tools to help patients achieve their “existence allowance.” Source: Q&A with Luminis Health CDIO Saad Chaudhry, Part 1: “We Can’t Go Wrong If...

How about this scenario: The technology that had allowed one nurse to safely keep watch over 20 patients at a centralized station is down, meaning a lot more clinicians are suddenly needed to cover the same load. What will you do? This is the type of emergency that Tomislav (Tom) Mustac, Mount Sinai Health System’s […] Source: Q&A With Mount Sinai Senior Director of Cyber Tom Mustac: Probing Quest...

For compelling patient safety reasons, healthcare IT executives often focus their connected-devices security program on the medical devices at the bedside. However, as more and more non-bedside, even non-clinical, devices are connected to the network, it's incumbent on IT professionals to know what, and where, they are. That's because the correct functioning of those devices is critical to continu...

Investing heavily in go-live support, laying the right groundwork, and having the right people in place are all critical to the success of a major initiative. But perhaps the most important component, said Jordan Ruch, CTO of RWJBarnabas Health, is the ability to “adapt to, and highly function throughout, periods of transformation.” Source: Q&A with RWJBarnabas CTO Jordan Ruch: “Standardization is...

Threat actors are very sophisticated these days, requiring CISOs to match their “elegance” in devising countermeasures, according to Ryan Witt, managing director of healthcare at Proofpoint. In this episode of healthsystemCIO’s Partner Perspective Interview Series, Anthony Guerra, founder and editor-in-chief, talks with Witt about how identity is the new perimeter, and emails are still one of the...