Halamka to Step Down from Harvard Medical School CIO Post

John Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Harvard Medical School, and co-chair of the HIT Standards Committee, will give up his part-time role at the medical school.

In a recent posting on his Life As a Healthcare CIO blog, Halamka says a series of major initiatives affecting the industry as a whole, as well as changes in the science of medicine as it becomes "more computationally intensive" require a full-time CIO at Harvard Medical school and a greater focus by him at Beth Israel.

"I believe that Accountable Care Organizations, Patient Centered Medical Homes, and the Partnership for Patients/CMS Center for Innovation will create exponential growth in healthcare I.T. requirements," he writes. "My senior leadership at BIDMC knows that we'll need novel approaches to healthcare information exchange for care coordination and population management. They know we'll need new analytics which include cost, quality and outcomes. They want new tools to make these analytics available to every stakeholder, both outside and inside the EHR."

To best serve the increasing needs of his customers, it is time to "pass the baton at HMS to a new I.T. leader," he adds. Halamka will continue to serve as an advisor to the medical school's dean.