Advisory Council

The healthcare industry is diverse. There are a limited number of elected members on the HL7 Board of Directors, and therefore they cannot represent all of the areas in healthcare. To address this situation, the Board has asked specific individuals from the healthcare industry to participate in the HL7 Advisory Council.

Members of the Advisory Council have been chosen based on their:

• personal experience and background
• ability to listen to the views of others
• ability to provide useful strategic advice to the Board

The input of the Advisory Council will be critical in helping the Board to make decisions. The Advisory Council positions are two-year, nonrenewing seats. In the summer of 2004, five industry leaders committed to serving on this committee. The first meeting of the Advisory Council was convened on July 28, 2004 at Lake Tahoe, CA.

Advisory Council Chairs

Richard Dixon-Hughes

Managing Director,DH4 Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia

Deputy Chairman, Standards Australia

Richard Dixon Hughes has long-standing involvement in both health informatics and standards development and is actively involved in developing health informatics standards in Australia and internationally.

Some 20 years ago, he founded DH4 Pty Limited, a consulting firm which specializes in ICT strategic planning and management consulting for health and government clients. Recent DH4 projects have included major studies for Australian Federal and State Governments relating to national clinical terminologies, health client identifiers, standards for sharing of EHR information, the business architecture for a national EHR system and national health informatics standards.

Prior to forming DH4, Mr Dixon Hughes was head of information systems within the Health Department in the State of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. He held this post for close to 8 years and was responsible for developing and implementing a major program of computerisation throughout the NSW public health system (involving some 250 hospitals). Subsequently, he also worked under contract at CIO-level in several health service organizations.

Mr. Dixon Hughes' qualifications at undergraduate and post-graduate level in electrical engineering, law and information technology and is both a Chartered Professional Engineer and a Legal Practitioner of the Supreme Court of NSW. His technical experience has been in line management, software engineering and health informatics, while his legal focus is on general commercial law, IT law and corporate law.

He has been a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors since 1993 and has a range of experience as a non executive director and as a member of government Advisory Councils at both Federal and State level. He has been a member of the Board of Directors at Standards Australia since 1997, where he is currently Chair of both the Finance and Audit Committee and the Communications, IT and eCommerce Standards Sector Board.

Mr Dixon Hughes also serves on a Materiel Assurance Board for an Australian Government agency and is a member the board of the Lincoln Red Cattle Society (Aust) Ltd and the Council of the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA). From 1992 to 1997, he was an independent member of the board of the NSW Casino Control Authority, the government regulator for casinos in the State of New South Wales. He has also been active in Engineers Australia and, in 2005, his contribution to the profession was recognized by elevation from Fellow to Honorary Fellow.

Email: richard@dh4.com.au

Robert Dolin, M.D.

Semantically Yours, LLC

Email: BobDolin@gmail.com

Advisory Council Members

Sam Brandt, M.D.

Vice President, Chief Medical Informatics Officer
Siemens Medical Solutions Health Services Corporation

Dr. Brandt joined Siemens Medical Solutions in 2000, and is responsible for the company's Clinical Informatics efforts, including the incorporation of innovations and clinical content within Siemens IT solutions. A board-certified, practicing family physician, he has a passion for leveraging computer technology to help physicians and clinicians provide the most effective and efficient patient care. This includes using workflow engine technology to help ensure safe, reliable, and efficient execution of healthcare processes in a patient-centric manner in order to anticipate the needs of clinicians and support their decision-making processes. He is a member of the Board of Directors at The New England Institute (NEHI).

Formerly, Dr. Brandt was the Vice President of Medical Informatics and Clinical Processes at Tenet Health Systems, one of the country's largest healthcare corporations. There he was responsible for clinical systems strategy, led the development of an enterprise data warehouse, and served as medical director for Tenet's 1,300-member physician group.

Prior to that, he spent seven years at Kaiser Permanente, serving as Director of Design & Development for their National Clinical Information System Program and participating on the senior management team of the Kaiser North Carolina region.

He completed his family practice residency in Asheville, N.C., in a program associated with the University of North Carolina, and received his M.D. from Eastern Virginia Medical School and a bachelor's degree from Duke University.

Philip J. Burstein, MD

Vice President Healthcare Data Optimization, Medicines Development, R&D
GlaxoSmithKline

Phil Burstein is Vice President, Healthcare Data Optimization, Medicines Development, R&D at GlaxoSmithKline in R&D. He leads a very talented team dedicated to fully utilizing clinical trial data and observational data in drug discovery and development. Before joining R&D in 1999 he spent a year in the former SmithKline Beecham HealthCare Services Department developing disease management tools for managed care markets.

Phil received an AB from Princeton University before attending medical school at the Medical College of Virginia. Following a three year internal medicine residency at MCV he spent two years in the Air Force as an internist and flight surgeon. After completing an Endocrinology Fellowship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, he practiced Endocrinology for ten years and spent another ten years in hospital administration before joining SB in 1998.

E-mail:  philip.j.burstein@gsk.com

Mark A. Dente, MD

Chief Medical Informatics Officer

Dr. Dente's started his informatics career over 18 years ago after graduating Boston University School of Medicine, focusing on new approaches to increase patient safety, drive physician adoption of technology, and create new methods to implement evidence-based medicine.

Prior to joining GE Healthcare Dr. Dente served as President of MBS Service Inc, a consulting company providing international executive healthcare management services. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Wang Healthcare Information Systems, and led that company's design of an ambulatory electronic medical record.

As Chief Medical Informatics Officer for GE Healthcare Information Technology, his global responsibilities include: Applying domain expertise in informatics to drive Comparative Effectiveness Research, strategic evaluation of emerging technologies for the healthcare portfolio, as well as developing and delivering GE's clinical informatics research direction & messaging globally. Additional responsibilities include; clinical liaison for GE's standards based Interoperability Strategies, Knowledge Management / Evidence Based Medicine, and secondary use of Clinical Data programs

As a physician executive, Dr. Dente continues to maintain close academic, government and industry contacts as well as drive GE's "Early Health - Personalized Medicine" initiative at the national and international level.

E-mail:  Mark.Dente@ge.com

Dr. James T. Dove, M.D.

Dr. Dove graduated from Case-Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine and a fourth year as Chief Resident at Mt. Sinai Hospital School of Medicine in New York City. He spent two years in Public Health Service assigned to Washington, D.C. in Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. VA Hospital and the National Institutes of Health. Cardiology training was completed at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. In 1973 he began practice in Springfield, Illinois and has been affiliated with the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Currently he is Clinical Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, SIU School of Medicine. He served as Chief of the Division of Cardiology from 1991 until 1999. He is a founding partner of Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants, Ltd., which is a 44-member group of cardiologists. He has been actively involved in clinical research and served until 2005 on the Board of Directors of the Prairie Education and Research Cooperative (PERC), a practice-funded, non-profit research foundation. His interests have been in coronary artery disease, quality initiatives, and more recently in the use of an electronic medical record to facilitate quality performance. The practice has developed its own quality tools to interface with the electronic record to promote adherence to ACC/AHA Guidelines on coronary artery disease, hyperlipidemia, and congestive heart failure. These tools are not intrusive and when used result in 100% compliance with all of the Class 1 elements of care for patients with the above diseases. Physicians can instantaneously at the point of care evaluate their adherence to the practice guidelines, compare their compliance on all patients that they have seen with a given diagnosis, and compare their performance to their peers. Currently they are working on incorporating ACC appropriateness criteria for Nuclear Cardiology, CT, and CMR into the quality tool. The practice has developed HL7 interfaces for exchange of information from five hospitals into the electronic record.

He is a past Governor for the American College of Physicians, Downstate Illinois Chapter and received the Laureate Award from the Illinois Chapter of the American College of Physicians in 1992. He was awarded Mastership in the American College of Physicians in April 2002. He was President and Governor of the American College of Cardiology Illinois Chapter. Nationally, he has served on numerous committees within ACC including Quality Strategic Direction Committee, Guidelines Applied to Practice (GAP), and the Informatics Committee. He was Chair of the Board of Governors, Secretary for the ACC, Treasurer and Chair of the Budget, Finance & Investment Committee, and Vice President of the ACC. He is currently President-Elect of the American College of Cardiology.

He was married to Carol Ann Proctor in 1960 and they have two children, Laura and Steven, and five grandchildren, Noah, Adam, Ainsley, Connor, and Sierra.

J. Michael Fitzmaurice, Ph.D., F.A.C.M.I.

Senior Science Advisor for Information Technology,
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Before joining the Office of the Director, Dr. Fitzmaurice was Director, Center for Information Technology, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research until March 1998. He joined the Public Health Service in 1987 as Director of the National Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology Assessment, coming from the Health Care Financing Administration where he was Acting Director, Office of Research. Previously, as branch chief in the Office of Research, he directed the development of Medicare's Prospective Payment System. Dr. Fitzmaurice received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1972 from the University of Maryland. He has separate undergraduate degrees from St. Joseph's College (Rensselaer, IN) in Mathematics and in Economics. He was an adjunct Associate Professor in the Howard University Graduate School of Business, 1972-77, and the University College Graduate School, University of Maryland at College Park, 1982-87.

He is active nationally and internationally in encouraging the uniformity and computerization of health care information to improve the quality of patient care and public health policy decisions. In 2000, he received the Elmer Gabrielli Award from the American Society for Testing and Materials, Committee E31, for his dedication to and achievements in national health data standards. In 1999, he received the Future of Health Technology Award, and was elected a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics.

In 1993, he served on the White House Health Reform Task Force (Information Systems and Administrative Simplification Working Groups). The White House Information Infrastructure Task Force released his paper "Health Care and the National Information Infrastructure (NII)" in Putting the Information Infrastructure to Work (May 1994) that presents the vision of how the NII can benefit the health care sector. From 1996 to 2000, he co-chaired the HHS Information and Cross-cutting Implementation Team that provided oversight for developing the health data standards requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (P.L. 104-191). He was an active member of the HHS Privacy Working Group that produced the HIPAA Privacy Rule. He was lead staff to the NCVHS Computerized Patient Record Working Group that produced the congressionally mandated report on standards needed for patient medical record information and its electronic transmission. This report was sent to the Secretary of HHS on July 6, 2000, and is available at http://ncvhs.hhs.gov/hipaa000706.pdf

Currently, Dr. Fitzmaurice advises the Director of AHRQ on developing health information technology research programs, and represents AHRQ on the White House Networking Information Technology Research and Demonstrations Program and on the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS). From 2001-04, Dr. Fitzmaurice was lead staff on the HHS Secretary's Council on Private Sector Initiatives to Improve the Security, Safety, and Quality of Health Care. Dr. Fitzmaurice was also a member of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) RFI Response Review Team that in 2005 reviewed and prepared summaries of the 500 public responses. http://www.ahrq.gov/data/hipaa1.htm. He initiated and managed AHRQ's Data Standards Program, with an annual budget of $10 million in 2004, 2005, and 2006. He is a member of the American Medical Association's Ethical Force Oversight Body.

Dr. Fitzmaurice, with Karen Adams and John Eisenberg, published AThree Decades of Research on Computer Applications in Health Care: Medical Informatics Support at the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2002;9:144-160. With Stephen Wagner, he co-authored ACritical Standards Convergence@ in Person-Centered Health Records: Toward HealthePeople, eds.:Demetriades, Kolodner, Christopherson. New York: Springer Science + Business Media, Inc., 2005. His chapter, "Computer-Based Patient Records," was published in The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, Third Edition. Boco Raton, FL, 2006.

Email: mfitzmau@ahrq.gov

Nicholas J. Hilger

JDA eHealth Systems, Inc.

Nick Hilger is the Business Development Partner with JDA eHealth Systems, a SaaS Revenue Cycle Middleware provider to Hospitals and Physicians. JDA offers a comprehensive suite of applications for upstream, midstream, and downstream Revenue Cycle operations. Hilger spent the majority of his professional life as the CEO of Health Systems in Minnesota (HealthEast), Colorado (HealthOne), and Illinois (Columbia/HCA). Following his Health System experiences he helped launch several start-up health ventures and consulted with major Health Systems in the area of Hospital / Physician partnerships and joint ventures. Immediately prior to joining JDA he was a senior executive at United Health Group working in strategic outreach to Health Systems.

Email: nhilger@jdaehealth.com

Debbie Rieger

Chief Operating Officer, CalRHIO

E-mail: riegerdebbie@msn.com

Helga Rippen MD

Dr. Rippen has been a leader in health informatics and consumer and clinician use of related technologies for over 15 years. Dr. Rippen has worked with diverse groups on a variety of topics ranging from EMR adoption in physician offices, healthcare quality, ethics, a national health information infrastructure, usability, privacy, and consumer control. Dr. Rippen was the Chief Health Information Officer and Vice President of Health Information Technology for HCA where she led the development of the clinical EHR Program. She served as Senior Advisor for HIT for the Secretary's office at the US Department of Health and Human Services where she was involved with the creation of the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT (ONCHIT). Previously, she was Director of the Science and Technology Policy Institute for RAND supporting the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Director of HIT for Pfizer Health Solutions, and Founder of the HIT Institute for Mitretek Systems, a prominent Washington, DC-based non-profit group. She has been involved with all aspects of HIT including system design, implementation and clinician adoption.

Dr. Rippen received her medical degree, with honors, from the University of Florida, and completed her medical residency training at Johns Hopkins University where she also received her Masters in Public Health with a focus on health policy and management, epidemiology and biostatistics. She obtained her PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University. She is Board Certified and has medical licenses in California, Maryland, and Virginia.

Email: helgarippen@westat.com

Nina M. Schwenk, M.D.

Vice President Mayo Clinic
Chair, Information Technology Committee
Consultant, General Internal Medicine

Nina M. Schwenk, M.D., is a consultant in Area General Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic. She is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Mayo Medical School and past chair of the Division of Area General Internal Medicine. Dr. Schwenk is Vice-President of the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees and Chair of the Mayo Clinic Information Technology Committee.

Dr. Schwenk received her undergraduate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated from medical school at McGill University in Montreal Canada. She completed residency and fellowship training in internal medicine at Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Schwenk is active in professional and academic societies at both the local and national levels.

Email: nschwenk@mayo.edu

Jeremy Thorp

Director of Business Requirements
NHS Connecting for Health

Jeremy Thorp is the Director of Business Requirements in the Technology Office of NHS Connecting for Health. In this role he is responsible for the Business Architecture of the National Programme for IT in England, liaising closely with the Department of Health on policy and strategy issues. He is also the business lead within NHS Connecting for Health for the Secondary Uses Service (SUS) programme, supporting reporting and analysis of Care Record information.

Jeremy has previously worked at national, regional and local levels in the

NHS:

• Nationally in the Department of Health Information Policy Unit and in the NHS Information Authority
• Regionally in the South and West region, and
• Locally in the Bristol area where he still lives.

Email: jeremy.thorp@nhs.net

John Tooker, MD, MBA, FACP

Executive Vice President/Chief Executive Officer
American College of Physicians

Dr. John Tooker is the Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the American College of Physicians (ACP). ACP is the largest medical specialty society in the U.S., representing 124,000 specialists in internal medicine (internists), internal medicine subspecialists, and medical students.

ACP's mission is to enhance the quality and effectiveness of health care by fostering excellence and professionalism in the practice of medicine. Reinforced by the strength of its membership and guided by a strong policy portfolio, ACP is leading efforts to unify the internal medicine community, develop new models of patient care and delivery, and implement fundamental and comprehensive reforms to repair a dysfunctional payment system to make internal medicine more attractive as a career choice.

Dr. Tooker serves on the boards of the National Quality Forum, eHealth Initiative, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (Chair-Elect, 2008), the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, the Electronic Health Record Patient Safety Advisory Board, and the Council of Medical Specialty Societies. He also represents ACP as a founding member of the AQA, formerly the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance and serves on the Connecting for Health steering committee.

Prior to joining ACP in 1995 as Deputy EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Tooker was Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine and Program Director of the Internal Medicine Residency at the Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine, where he practiced internal medicine and pulmonary and critical care medicine.

Dr. Tooker earned his MD at University of Colorado School of Medicine, his native state, completed his internal medicine residency at the Bellevue Hospital Center in New York and the University of Colorado, and his pulmonary and critical care fellowship at the Maine Medical Center and the University of Washington. He is a graduate of the Fox School of Business at Temple University, and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Email: jTooker@mail.acponline.org

Charlene S. Underwood, MBA

Director, Government and Industry Affairs
Siemens Medical Solutions

Charlene Underwood is director of Government and Industry Affairs for Siemens Medical Solutions.

A nationally recognized expert in the field of healthcare informatics, Underwood directs Siemens outreach and advocacy activities in emerging market initiatives, specifically those related to government activities in healthcare information technology (HIT) including: the U.S. Government's activities on HIT; regional healthcare information organizations (RHIO); community connectivity; HIT standards across the healthcare industry; interoperability; transitions of care; Electronic Health Record (EHR) strategies; quality initiatives; pay for performance; and grants and government funding.

She is a leader is delivering Siemens solutions message to key stakeholders throughout the healthcare industry and on Capitol Hill, while developing programs that enable Siemens leadership in key government and industry initiatives. She provides valuable input and direction to healthcare and government leaders on the power of HIT to transform healthcare through her leadership in high-profile industry organizations, including her role as Chair of the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) Electronic Health Record Vendor Association.

Underwood has a long history of researching, managing, and implementing all aspects of HIT, both within the U.S. and globally. This experience has qualified her to set strategic direction for Siemens EHR solutions, as well as participate in outreach efforts to impact the direction of the industry. She has actively advocated for industry involvement and has held leadership roles in influential organizations including HL7, in which she participated in defining the organization's EHR functional standards and model; the Computerized Patient Record Institute (CPRI), which awards the Nicholas E. Davies award for excellence in EHR implementation - of which she was a founding committee member.

A 32-year employee of Siemens Medical Solutions HIT division, she has participated in defining business strategies and requirements for many of its clinical solutions, including INVISION®, the healthcare industry's most widely installed HIT system, and Soarian®, the only healthcare information solution built to streamline healthcare processes through workflow engine technology.

Underwood is a Phi Beta Kappa from Purdue University with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. She earned an MBA in marketing from Temple University.

A native of West Chester, Pennsylvania, she is married with 3 children and enjoys fitness activities, gardening, travel, and community outreach.

Email: charlene.underwood@siemens.com