Health Systems Hiring Chief Digital Officers; How Does This Effect the Current C-Suites

    During my career in healthcare IT dating back to the early 1980s, I have seen one major change in the executive leadership in hospital IT. This was the creation of thechief information officer (CIO). Prior to this time, the key IT position in hospitals was the HIS manager who reported to the CFO. This was logical because the major functions of the HIS (hospital information system) at that time were billing and tracking patient admissions and discharges (i.e., patient management systems). About ten years later, hospitals began to appoint chief information officers (CIOs). This change roughly coincided with the deployment of what we know today as EHRs for which the CIOs were responsible and which thrust them into the clinical domain.The next major change in hospital IT leadership we are now seeing is the appointment of hospital Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) (see:Memorial Sloan Kettering taps former CVS Health, Aetna exec as chief digital officer). Other major health systems are following suit (see:Kaiser Permanente taps Prat Vemana as first chief digital officer). Below is an excerpt from this first article:Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has tapped Claus Torp Jensen, Ph.D., as the organization's first chief digital officer and head of technology. Jensen joins MSK from CVS Health and Aetna, where he served as chief technology officer and head of architecture for the past four years. In that role, Jensen led technolo...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Source Type: blogs