John Halamka

John Halamka, held a discussion regarding the roles of a CIO in today’s healthcare industry. Dr. Halamka is the CIO for Harvard Medical School and Beth Isreal Deaconess Medidcal Center and spoke about the day to day challenges and required skill sets in his line of work. The main theme of the lecture was the growing influence of IT in all aspects of business and the need for future skilled IT workers. Dr. Halamka explained the constant demands he faces throughout the day and although he would love to complete all of them, 90% will never develop simply due to the constant change in available revenue, changing information and technology, and structure within the employees. IT is one of the most important aspects of Dr. Halamka’s job, he is constantly using it to develop new software, improve software, and change the way information is shared. He explained how there he was a need for improved information sharing between doctors and doctors as well as doctors and patients. He developed an electronic way to make this happen so he can now prescribe medicine to a patient from a computer without actually seeing a patient for a follow up visit. This is just a small part of what he has accomplished and I was very impressed by his list.

In Conclusion, I was very interested and actually entertained by the lecture. Dr. Halamka was very informative and funny at the same time through the use of his stories, which explained the importance of IT in his line of work. Also, I found the class of water on the Kevlar suit pretty memorable as well.