50 leading healthcare IT experts, Part 2

50 leading healthcare IT experts, Part 2

Healthcare IT is fortunate to have many knowledgeable experts willing to share what they know with others. Following up on last year’s popular look at 50 of the leading HIT experts in the field, Health Data Management today concludes its compilation of some of the guiding lights of the industry, many of which are new to the list this year. The list of the first 25 can be found here.

Some have worked to advance the industry for nearly half a century, while others are newer voices who have taken on the industry’s new challenges. All are worthy of mention as a sample of those who are advancing the important work of healthcare IT.

Pamela McNutt

Senior vice president, CIO, Methodist Health System

McNutt has played a leading role in understanding federal regulations affecting health information technology and the nation’s providers. She has been active in policy committees for the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and often quoted for her quick insights on the nuances of how regulations will affect healthcare IT.

Daniel Nutkis

Chief executive officer and founder, Health Information Trust Alliance

The Health Information Trust Alliance, widely known as HITRUST, was born out of the belief that information security should be a core pillar of, rather than an obstacle to, the broad adoption of health information systems and exchanges, and Nutkis was the visionary who had the foreknowledge to create it. Nutkis has more than 20 years of experience in providing strategic advisory services in areas relating to health information technology. Before founding HITRUST, he held various positions with email encryption and e-prescribing service company Zix Corp. and was also with Ernst & Young.

Deborah Peel, MD

Founder, Patient Privacy Rights

The organization’s mission is to restore patient control over personal health information. Peel is an often-quoted and well-respected spokeswoman for privacy of patient information and risks that need to be addressed in the wide use of healthcare information technology.

Jonathan Perlin, MD

President of clinical services and chief medical officer, HCA

Perlin provides leadership for clinical services and improving performance at HCA’s 170 hospitals and more than 800 outpatient centers and physician practices. Some of his current activities include advancing electronic health records for learning healthcare and continuous improvement; driving value through (big) data science and advanced analytics. Before joining HCA in 2006, Perlin was Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs. This year, he led a panel of HIT luminaries in writing a discussion paper for the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) that focuses on interoperability; the piece also lays out a roadmap for delivering a return on the nation’s healthcare IT investment over the last decade.

Meredith Phillips

Chief information privacy and security officer, Henry Ford Health System

At Phillips' behest, Henry Ford was the first provider organization to sign on to the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance to prevent medical ID theft. To do so, she streamlined efforts around verification processes, trained staff to pay attention to body language and provided other guidance during an enterprise-wide EHR installation.

Marc Probst

Vice President and CIO, Intermountain HealthCare

Probst has been a leader in Information Technology and Healthcare services for the past 20 years. Before coming to Intermountain, Probst was a partner with Deloitte Consulting and has served as the CIO for a large third-party administrator. He also has served on federal advisory panels addressing health IT issues. He’s coming off a term as chair of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

Stephanie Reel

CIO and Vice Provost, Johns Hopkins University

Reel is CIO and Vice Provost for Information Technology for the Johns Hopkins University, and Vice President for Information Services for Johns Hopkins Medicine. She leads implementation of the strategic plan and operational redesign for information services, networking, and telecommunications, as well as clinical, research, and instructional technologies.

Bert Reese

Vice president of portfolio management and innovation, Divurgent

Reese moved to Divurgent early in 2016 to work with its executive team and clients. He’s widely known throughout the HIT industry for his more than 30 years’ experience with Sentara Healthcare, an integrated health system. Most recently, he served as Sentara’s senior vice president and chief information officer, with responsibility for information technology, process improvement, and information and supply-chain management. Reese’s achievements at Sentara include the implementation of a cross-enterprise electronic health record, which drove significant financial savings and improved clinical outcomes throughout the system.

Marc Rotenberg

President and executive director, Electronic Privacy Information Center

Rotenberg teaches information privacy and open government at Georgetown Law and frequently testifies before Congress on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues. He’s recently been in demand for his take on the future of privacy and electronic health information.

Christopher Ross

CIO, Mayo Clinic

Ross has the responsibility of leading IT efforts at one of the nation’s most prominent healthcare providers, but also is making contributions to the industry at large. He serves on the Health and Human Services Health IT Standards Committee, the Markle Foundation Connecting for Health Steering Committee, and previously served on the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative and the CDC’s National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee. Before coming to Mayo in 2012, he was executive vice president and general manager of the clinical interoperability business for Surescripts. He has 28 years of diverse experience in healthcare, information technology and government.

John Showalter, MD

Chief Health Information Officer, University of Mississippi Medical Center

Showalter led work to adopt clinical predictive analytics that churn through standardized and “dirty” EHR data to provide real-time predictions on heart attack risks for UMMC’s patient population. Using predictive analytics, he has been able to take the entire population of patients and narrow it to a target group of only 1.5 percent of all patients. Within that 1.5 percent, 75 out of each 100 patients are predicted to have a heart attack.

Rasu Shrestha, MD

Chief Innovation Officer, UPMC (Pittsburgh)

Shrestha, trained as a radiologist, has been a key architect of an innovative unified approach to image viewing across 20 UPMC hospitals and 30 imaging centers. He also serves as the executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises, the innovation and commercialization arm of UPMC, and leads a team of over 200 technology professionals.

Pat Skarulis

Senior Vice President of Information Systems and CIO, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Before joining MSKCC as CIO in 2002, Skarulis served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. She also served as an Assistant Professor in the Rush University master's degree program in Health Systems Management.

Tom Skelton

CEO, Surescripts

The company is enabling the exchange of healthcare information through its national network. Skelton is responsible for leading the nationwide health information network’s strategy, performance and operations, as it works to perfect e-prescribing and expand clinical messaging capabilities. He has more than 25 years of experience in corporate management, strategic planning, and mergers and acquisitions, as well as strong expertise in both the healthcare technology and healthcare services sectors.

Bill Spooner

Former CIO, Sharp Healthcare

Spooner retired from his role in 2014 as leader of Sharp HealthCare’s IT team. He worked for Sharp since 1978, moving to the IT side in the mid-1980s. But he’s not completely retired, still serving as a consultant and industry expert of key topics within healthcare IT.

Terri Steinberg, MD

Chief Medical Information Officer, Christiana Care Health System

Steinberg led design of a massive population health initiative that has recreated treatment strategies for more than 20 chronic disease states. Christiana Care now is taking population health a step further and analyzing the health status of all Delaware residents, whether by Christiana or not, via data feeds from a statewide health information network.

Charles Stellar

President and CEO, Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange

Stellar was named by the WEDI Board of Directors as WEDI’s president and CEO after having served as WEDI’s interim CEO since January 2016. As an executive leader with more than 35 years of experience in healthcare, association management and organizational leadership, Stellar oversees the strategic guidance of the organization, its staff and committees. WEDI is a collaboration of stakeholders working to enhance exchange of health information. The group also serves as an advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Carol Steltenkamp, MD

Chief Medical Information Officer, University of Kentucky HealthCare

In addition to her role at the University of Kentucky HealthCare, Steltenkamp also served the industry through her role as chair of the HIMSS Board of Directors. A practicing pediatrician, Steltenkamp is an instrumental leader in the advancement of Health Information Technology throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky and beyond. As the CMIO of UK HealthCare, she is responsible for the leadership and management of all clinical information systems.

Paul Tang, MD

Chief health transformation officer, IBM Watson Health

Within the last year, Tang changed jobs, moving to IBM Watson Health from his long time role as vice president and CMIO of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Under Tang’s direction, Palo Alto’s more than 900 physicians helped develop the MyChart patient portal that’s now part of the Epic EHR system. He is vice chair of the federal Health Information Technology Policy Committee, and chair of its Meaningful Use workgroup. He is a member of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and co-chairs its Quality Subcommittee. Tang is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and chaired an IOM patient safety committee.

Robert Tennant

Health Information Technology Policy Director, Medical Group Management Association

Tennant is a widely respected voice within healthcare IT, particularly as it relates to physician engagement and use of technology in medical practice. He also participates in numerous industry efforts and panels.

Bradley Merrill Thompson

Member, Epstein Becker & Green

Thompson is a Member of the law firm of Epstein Becker & Green, where he counsels medical device, drug and combination product companies on a wide range of FDA regulatory, reimbursement and clinical trial issues. He also serves as chairman of the board of EBG Advisors, which is affiliated with the law firm and takes a multidisciplinary approach to helping healthcare and life sciences companies navigate the obstacles that they face.

Micky Tripathi

President and CEO, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative

Tripathi is well-known for playing a leadership role in working to achieve interoperability within the healthcare industry. His activities range from policy guidance at the federal level, to collaborative strategic planning at the state and community levels, to implementation of health IT systems at the frontline of healthcare delivery.

Ferdinand Velasco, MD

Vice president and CHIO, Texas Health Resources

Velasco serves as chief health information officer at Texas Health Resources. He served for 10 years as the chain’s chief medical information officer, and is widely respected for his ability to interact with peers, and blend outcomes research and medical informatics.

Mariann Yeager

CEO, The Sequoia Project

Yeager is leading efforts at The Sequoia Project to encourage the wider use of interoperability in the U.S. The Sequoia Project is a non-profit public-private collaborative advancing secure, trusted and interoperable health information exchange nationwide; it supports health IT interoperability initiatives, including the eHealth Exchange, the country's largest health data sharing network; Carequality, a multi-stakeholder initiative that enables health data sharing networks; and the RSNA Image Share Validation Program, an interoperability testing program to enable the sharing of medical images.

Michael Zaroukian, MD

CIO, Sparrow Health

Zaroukian has held key IT leadership positions for the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians, and is now leading use of the EHR to transform care at Sparrow Health, a delivery system in central Michigan affiliated with Michigan State University and the Mayo Clinic. He also serves on the AMA's advisory committee on physician EHR usability.