HIMSS Oregon Advocacy Meets with Rick Howard, CIO

I had the great fortune to be able to sit down with Oregon Department of Health Services CIO, Rick Howard. Rick has been involved with HIMSS Oregon in the past and helped with such initiatives as the 2007 HIMSS Oregon Advocacy Day in Salem. Rick has been tremendously busy advocating a new model that would streamline the development of state IT projects in general and HIT in particular. Rick passionately spoke about the need for states to take new approaches to the implementation of IT and organizational processes that support the sharing of information. The ultimate result would be more efficient and effective services.

I introduced HIMSS Oregon and noted that we are an inclusive organization that leverages people's expertise in many different fields to bring positive change to the delivery of health care. We agreed that HIMSS Oregon has an important role to play by sharing our membership's expertise to help construct sensible and effective state policies. Toward that, we look forward to continuing our dialog with Rick.