Johnny Halamka

Wow, this guy was very interesting. He was obviously very smart from a young age, from figuring out microprocessors to inventing an early form of turbo tax. He was just a smart guy in general. He is someone who wears many hats across the Northeast in the medical field. One thing I commend him for is being able to keep the audience interest.

Obviously a lot of what he talked about concerned the health care industry and how his job works. One thing I took away was that it was a lot more complicated than it looks or seems. It seems like he plays a lot of damage control whenever a key decision is made because, as he reiterated throughout his talk, you can't please everyone. Plus, he talked about many important breakthroughs that are coming in the healthcare IT industry. Which to invest in? It's a tough decision, and capital and man power is always limited. It seemed like he was always in a bind in deciding who to please at which time. From everything from e-prescribing to iPad use in the hospital. The iPad could be used for many things, from pulling up patient medical records to mining hospital databases. Another breakthrough could be in converting all paper medical records to electronic, internet accessible records. If there could be a way to make a universal database of medical records, all lag time with referrals and delivery times could be cut down significantly.

Also, it amazed me that he's still a doctor. He obviously had a lot of schooling, but he was also naturally smart, and had an inclination to learn from an early age. I think that his talk reinforces John McFadden's point of lifetime learning.

He made another point about addressing the most important, urgent issues first. There are always going to be issues to deal with, problems to address. Nothing ever goes exactly as planned. A lot of a top ranking person's duties are damage control; how to control the situation, then how to relieve the situation.

Another thing he showed us was the "top 10 ways to say no". The reason for knowing this is to be able to combat others when they don't get their way. This is very important in high ranking positions when decisions need to be made that say "yes" to the majority, and "no" to the minority. Then sometimes there is a backlash from the minority.

A huge point was the constant of change. In his industry, they are always behind the ball because the tech industry is changing so fast. In addition, new ways of using the technology in the healthcare industry come through everyday. John McFadden also noted the upcoming job of bioinfomatician. I'm sure that John Halamka would agree with McFadden's assessment.

All in all it was a very interesting talk and Halamka is definitely a smart guy, deserving the award of CIO of the year.