When we chose the industry-leading folks at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to grace our cover this month, because of their pioneering work in applying business intelligence tools to clinical care improvement, we weren’t the only ones noticing their caliber of innovation. It turns out that CIO Sue Schade has just been recognized as one of CIO Magazine’s “2008 CIO 100 Winners.” As our cover story points out, Schade has worked very extensively with colleagues Michael Gustafson, M.D., Tejal Gandhi, M.D., and others at the hospital’s Center for Clinical Excellence to vastly and systematically improve patient safety and care quality. CIO recognized Schade’s accomplishments by naming her one of 100 CIOs nationwide, across all industries, deserving of recognition for their accomplishments. The magazine’s editors noted that “Brigham and Women’s Hospital was among the first healthcare organizations to implement the Balanced Scorecard to improve hospital performance, The hospital used SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare to improve health services, patient experience and business management.”
What’s more, Schade wasn’t the only healthcare CIO to make the list. Michael Nguyen of the California Department of Health Care Services, Jeff Kessler of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Gregory Veltri of the Denver Health and Hospital Authority, Thomas Lauzon of Health Plan of Michigan, Detlev (Herb) Smaltz of Ohio State University Medical Center, Michael Krouse of OhioHealth, Bert Reese of Sentara Healthcare, Gerry Lewis of Seton Healthcare Network, Edward Marx of Texas Health Resources, Dan Drawbaugh of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Craig B. Luigart of the Veterans Health Administration, Lori Beer of WellPoint, and Jeff Keisling of Wyeth also made the list, for a very wide variety of innovations. And they joined 86 other CIOs, from companies as diverse as Accenture, Aflac, ATandT, BP, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, and Marriott International, all of whom are creating strategic innovations in their industries.
To me the fact that 14 of the 100 CIOs named by the magazine came from some area of healthcare is very significant. As with everything we at Healthcare Informatics do, it is clear that a great deal of innovation is taking place across the healthcare industry. It is highly gratifying for me when our coverage is further validated by other sources. Congratulations to Sue Schade and all the other healthcare CIOs on that list, and may the innovation continue!
