by Tom Berg, Fellow, Strategy Director, Associate Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Nursing
The Tennessee Chapter of HIMSS and The University of Tennessee-Knoxville Health Informatics Graduate Certificate Program co-hosted a webinar the evening of March 9 with the theme: Career Opportunities and the Future of Healthcare Informatics. This first-ever webinar brought together participants that included students and faculty from the University of Tennessee, area healthcare organizations, and members of the public interested in topics related to health informatics.
Victoria Niederhauser, Dean of the UTK College of Nursing, kicked off the evening, which moved on to brief presentation by each of the 5 panelists representing key areas of Health Informatics which included: Dr. Kevin Johnson (Senior VP for Health IT, CIO, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor and Chair of Biomedical Informatics, Professor of Pediatrics at VUMC), Tod Fetherling (Chief Data Scientist at Perception Health President, Tennessee Chapter HIMSS), Didi Davis (VP, Informatics, Conformance & Interoperability at The Sequoia Project), Martha Earl (MSLS, AHIP, Director/Associate Professor, University of Tennessee Medical Center, UT Graduate School of Medicine, Preston Medical Library/Health Information Center), and Chris Skinner (Informatics Officer, Covenant Health, MBA, BSN, RN-BC-Informatics).
More than 100 participants registered for the event. Tiffany Madigan, Executive Director of Tennessee HIMSS , said “these kind of events allow us to increase the reach of HIMSS into key populations within our region and allows us to engage students interested in careers in Health Informatics, we are looking forward to ways we can expand our new-found partnership with the University of Tennessee.”