An Informaticist Should Be at the Center of Your Organization’s Data, People, and Systems

An Informaticist Should Be at the Center of Your Organization’s Data, People, and Systems

"Clinical informaticians transform health care by analyzing, designing, implementing, and evaluating information and communication systems that enhance individual and population health outcomes, improve patient care, and strengthen the clinician-patient relationship." —Gardner RM et al. Core Content for the Subspecialty of Clinical Informatics

On a daily basis, our team is reminded of the difficulties clinicians and hospital operations staff run into while using inputs from their systems to recognize risks and plan for improvements. There is no shortage of systems to relay status to management or to provide audit details, but how can the data points be managed, presented, and interpreted in such a way that they are actionable? Some of that is provided through decision support systems like CareSight, but no system or development team can replace the capabilities of an embedded professional like a Clinical Informaticist (part clinician, part propeller head :-)).

Today, via an interview conducted suitably in real time via our Slack messaging system, I spotlight Heather Downey, CareSight’s Clinical Informatics Lead. Heather is equal parts facilitator, translator, and listener and is an especially important intermediary between our customers’ systems and the insights gained from those systems. Click here to read on.

Heather Downey MS, RN is CareSight’s Clinical Informatics Lead. She brings to CareSight’s Clinical Solutions Practice her experience as part of the Northwell Health’s CIO’s Office Clinical Informatics Team and as an RN Staff Nurse for Huntington Hospital. Heather’s CareSight work focuses on creating customized analytic dashboards and reporting tools that align with customer initiatives; analyzing data and identifying process improvement areas; and providing ongoing, post-implementation services to customers and their in-house committees.

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Kenny Schiff is the Founder and CEO of CareSight. A 20-year veteran of the healthcare technology business, Kenny is considered by his customers and peers to be a no-nonsense, trusted resource who can be counted on to deliver complex solutions with high impact. His team pioneered managed services to clinical communications customers starting in 2003. Visionary always, but never afraid to be hands-on, CareSight is a great creative platform for Kenny’s entrepreneurial and technical passions.