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Geoff Brown is senior vice president and CIO at Inova Health System, a six-hospital integrated delivery system located in northern Virginia that includes 1,725 inpatient beds and 416 nursing home beds, along with several ambulatory services. Brown has 33 years of experience in IT, management, consulting, and strategic planning, and has served as CIO in public, for profit and not-for-profit healthcare organizations. Prior to joining Inova, Brown served as CIO for Grady Health System, and before that he was associate hospital administrator and CIO at Tenet Health System’s Atlanta Medical Center and South Fulton Medical Center. He was appointed to the HIT Standards Advisory Committee by the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Secretary of Technology and Secretary of Health and Human Resources. Brown earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and was awarded an American Management Association Certification from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. He is an MBA candidate at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix.
With nearly 30 years of experience in healthcare IT, Mary Anne Leach is currently vice president and CIO at Children’s Hospital Colorado, a multi-facility organization located in Aurora, Colo., that includes a 318-bed hospital, and emergency, urgent care, and outpatient facilities. Prior to joining Children’s, Leach served as VP of Clinical Applications for Catholic Health Initiatives, a 70-hospital system based in Denver, and before that was president of M.A. Leach & Company, Inc. She also held roles at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and IHC Affiliated Services (a division of Intermountain Health Care), as well as Superior Consultant Company. Leach is an active member of CHIME, the CHIME Advocacy Leadership Team, HIMSS, CHIMSS, and the Children’s Hospital Association’s CIO Forum. She is holds the credential of Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO) from the CHIME, and was the 2011 Denver Business Journal CIO of the Year in the non-profit category.
An accomplished IT leader with more than 25 years of experience, George McCulloch is deputy CIO in the Informatics Center of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a recognized leader in theory and practice of Biomedical and Clinical Informatics. McCulloch has held the senior management titles of director, deputy CIO, and CIO in organizations ranging in size and complexity from a 200-bed hospital in Illinois to a 1,000-bed Academic Medical Center in Tennessee. His healthcare experience also includes work at the American Hospital Association’s Technology division and at what was McKesson’s (HBOC) Healthcare IT Outsourcing division. He is a CHIME Fellow and has been a leader in the development and advancement of IT practice in CHIME and the CHIME CHCIO program. At Vanderbilt, he initiated a yearlong development program called Lessons In Leadership that mirrors the CHIME Boot Camp model of having rising leaders experience and better understand healthcare and healthcare IT. McCulloch serves on a number of advisory committees including those of Philips, and the recently chartered Middle Tennessee MTeHC RHIO, and is a Contributing Scholar for Laureate Education.
Todd Richardson was named CIO of Aspirus, a non-profit health system based in Wausau, Wis., in October. Aspirus serves patients in 14 Wisconsin counties and the upper peninsula of Michigan. Prior to that, Richardson was CIO at Deaconess Health System in Evansville, Ind. for two years. Deaconess is a fully implemented Epic Enterprise facility and has four hospitals that have earned HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 recognition. Before joining Deaconess, Richardson served as vice president of IS for both Christus St. Vincent’s hospital in Santa Fe, N.M., and Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare in Waterloo, Iowa. Richardson received a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Nebraska and has achieved CHIME CHCIO certification. He participates in advocacy efforts at the state and national level around healthcare IT through memberships in HIMSS and CHIME. Richardson has served on the board for the New Mexico HIE and sat on the management committee of the Indiana Network for Patient Care, which is part of the Indiana HIE.
Helen Thompson is CIO for the NCH Healthcare System in Naples, Fla., where she leads the organization’s technology programs and is helping to build its health information exchange (HIE). She has spent the past two decades working in the IT industry. Previous, Thompson worked as the interim CIO for Georgia Health Sciences University (GHSU) through B. E. Smith. While working with GHSU, she led the merging of three separate IT Teams and helped the organization implement and leverage its EHR while building its presence with the Georgia Regional Academic Community HIE. Prior to that, she served as CIO for eight years at Heartland Health, where she oversaw the implementation of an EHR system and launched an HIE program. Thompson has published articles on IT Strategic Planning, governance, and measuring the benefits of IT, and has presented nationally and internationally on EMR Benefit Attainment. Thompson is a Fellow for the CHIME and the Advisory Board Company and is a member of HIMSS and ACHE. She also has extensive military experience, serving as deputy CIO of Strategy and Vision for Naval Reserve Forces; communications Officer/CIO for EMF Dallas in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2004-2005); and medical CIO for the Joint Forces Command Surgeon. In 2002, Thompson completed her certification as a Department of Defense CIO.
As Health Information Technology Program Manager for the Fort Drum Regional Health Planning Organization, Corey Zeigler oversees the project that has successfully implemented electronic health records in 95 percent of primary care offices in the Fort Drum region. Through connecting these practices and the five regional hospitals to the local HIE and implementing other care quality improvement measures, the community has achieved the highest concentration of patient-centered medical homes in the United States. Zeigler previously served as the CIO for Canton-Potsdam Hospital in Potsdam, N.Y., and was manager of a Battle Simulation Center on Fort Drum. Zeigler served as a helicopter pilot and officer in the U.S. Army for 13 years, in Desert Shield/Storm, Haiti, Somalia and Bosnia.