John Halamka: CIO of the Year

John Halamka gave a very interesting and attention grabbing presentation on the role of a CIO. His job specifically, as a CIO in a hospital, holds particular significance in that he has to work under the tight budgets that hospitals have. When a hospital has to decide between new medical equipment and new technological advancements, it is not always easy to convince the board on the importance and future value that these advancements may have. One particularly interesting point that John made in his talk was the potential availability of patients medical records to all doctors on a nationwide, or even global, network. This is particularly interesting to me, as we discussed in the last class, as this availability of medical records could lead to a future with less privacy guarantees. The project is very intriguing as emergency personnel could access records very quickly and best treat for their patients. I am very eager to see where this technology goes in the future and where the future of information availability and sharing may go.