Vanderbilt University Medical Center HealthIT has announced a change of leadership. In January 2019 Neal Patel, M.D., M.P.H., who has been VUMC’s chief health information officer, will succeed Kevin Johnson, M.D., M.S., as HealthIT leader.
HealthIT’s responsibilities include informatics support for a broad scope of VUMC’s health system demands. Tools supplied and supported through HealthIT help enable VUMC to achieve its strategic objectives within the clinical, educational and research enterprises.
Johnson, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor, will continue to serve as chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI). A professor of pediatrics, he joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2002 and has been chair of the DBMI since 2012. He was named Senior Vice President for Health Information Technology in 2014.
During his tenure, Johnson served as leader for the multi-year, system-wide effort to replace its homegrown EHR with Epic, which went live in November 2017. Patel joined Johnson as co-lead during the Epic launch.
Through this leadership change, Patel will now report to John F. Manning Jr., PhD, MBA, Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Chief of Staff. “With Dr. Patel succeeding Dr. Johnson in this role, there is an assurance of continuity as we move forward. With our Medical Center and health system at an important inflection point, and in a period of significant growth, I want to express my appreciation to Neal for assuming these new responsibilities,” Manning said in a prepared statement.
Patel joined the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Critical Care in 1997. He was named Chief Medical Informatics Officer in 2006. His responsibilities in this role included leading efforts for translating the Medical Center’s healthcare delivery, quality and patient safety goals into informatics strategies to optimize the delivery of patient care.
