It's Been So Long

They say time flies when you're having fun. I must be having a ball. I'm not entirely sure what happened to 2009, but I'd like to apologize for the absence of posts, and pledge to keep our alumni, students and friends better connected to the MSHI Program this year.

I'm delighted to report that the program is alive and well. This month we've highlighted our accomplished alumni and beginning in February, we'll feature an introduction of 3-4 current students each month.

Future posts will include spotlights on current students, faculty viewpoints, development and alumni activity and a de-identified/aggregate summary of our recent alumni survey. If you have topics you'd like us to report on, please feel free to e-mail me or call the MSHI Program Office (205) 934-3509.

 - Amanda

3 MSHI Alumni among "Top 40" Graduates of School of Health Professions

The School of Health Professions (SHP) celebrated its 40th anniversary last year.  As part of the anniversary celebration, SHP honored 40 of its alumni who are "the personification of the school's mission, vision, and values" (SHP Magazine). 

The "Fab 40 Alumni" were celebrated at an Awards Dinner on November 6th.  The amount of talent among the alumni the room was something to behold - even for the youngest among them, our very own Rick Moore.  What follows is the description in the SHP Awards Dinner booklet of each of our honored graduates.  


Randy Carpenter

MSHI Class of 1997

Randy Carpenter is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for HealthSouth Corporation, a $2B for profit healthcare provider of rehabilitative and specialty care services . At HealthSouth Mr. Carpenter leads 140+ information technology professionals providing information services to HealthSouth’s 160+ locations in 26 states and Puerto Rico. He initially joined HealthSouth in October of 2000 as Vice President and Associate Chief Information Officer and was promoted to his current position in May of 2003.

With over 30 years experience in Healthcare and Information Systems, Mr. Carpenter has held positions most recently as the Corporate Chief Information Officer for 18 acute care hospitals, Hampton, Virginia, the Chief Information Officer for the Air Force Academy Hospital, Colorado Springs, Colorado and the Chief Software Development Executive for the Medical Systems Program Management Office in Montgomery, Alabama.

Mr. Carpenter holds Bachelor of Science Degrees in Computer and Information Systems and Business Administration from Troy State University. He holds a Master of Science Degree in Personnel Management from Troy State University as well as a Master of Science Degree in Health Informatics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS) and is a Fellow of the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (FHIMSS) and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (FCHIME).

Mr. Carpenter serves as an adjunct faculty member to the Department of Health Administration at UAB and is the Course Director for the Information Systems Course in the Executive Masters Program. He is a member of The Military Retired Officers Association (TROA) and is a member of the Builder’s Society with United Way. He also serves on the School of Health Professions (SHP) Dean’s Advisory Board at UAB and the Industrial Advisory Board for the Institute of Business Intelligence in the Culver House School of Business at the University of Alabama.

Randy and Lynne, his wife of 29 years have two children, Aubrey 27 and Barry Alan 25.






Joan Hicks
Health Information Management Class of 1986
MSHI Class of 1994

Joan Compton Hicks, MS, RHIA, began her collegiate training in 1975 when she received an Associate Degree in Applied Science from Jefferson State Junior College and continued in the first class to graduate with a certificate in Medical Record Technology from UAB. In 1986 she graduated in the first non-traditional medical record administration class with a Bachelor of Science, and was a member of the first graduating class from the graduate program in Health Informatics.

Ms. Hicks began her career in the Medical Records Department of Cullman Medical Center as a File Clerk. Between 1988 and 1998 she held the positions of Instructor for the Division of HIM in the UAB School of Health Related Professionals, Senior Consultant with Healthcare Management Associates, Director of MIS for Children’s Health System and Director of Health Information Services for UAB. She is currently the Privacy Officer and Chief Information Officer for UABHS.

Ms. Hicks serves as Adjunct Faculty Member for UAB School of Health Professions, Department of Health Services Administration, Health Informatics Program, and Health Information Management Program. She is a member of the Board of Commissioners for the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education. She is also an active member of HIMSS and AHIMA.

Ms. Hicks has received honors and awards from the Alabama Association of HIM Distinguished Member, Alpha Eta Society, Outstanding Graduate Division of HIM Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the School of Health Related Professions, Outstanding Preceptor Award for the Bachelor of Science Program in HIM, Motivator Award-AHIMA, Best Practices-AHIMA for CareFlow Net Project and most recently was recognized by Modern Healthcare in the IT Case Study Contest.

Married to Kenny Hicks for 35 years, Ms. Hicks is the mother of two daughters, Lindsey Burks, who graduated from UAB’s School of Nursing and is employed at UAB Hospital in SICU and Laurel Hicks who is a junior at Auburn University.

Her favorite memory as a student and the impact of UAB are the same – “it is the people, my classmates, the faculty, and my co-workers and I am forever grateful and indebted to UAB.”



Rick Moore
MSHI Class of 2003

As Chief Information Officer for the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), Rick Moore is responsible for the vision and strategic direction of the Information Services, Information Technology and Information Products. He also works closely with NCQA’s stakeholder partners and represents NCQA on leading several national health information technology initiatives and panels including the Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), the National Quality Forum (NQF) Health Information Technology Expert Panel (HITEP), the Markle Foundation’s Steering Committee on Connecting for Health, and the American Medical Association (AMA) and NCQA Collaborative for Improving Quality Measurement in Electronic Health Records.

Prior to joining NCQA in 2008, he was the Director of Health Informatics at the National Association of Children’s Hospitals where he led the development of information services and products for over 200 member hospitals. He has also served the Office of the Secretary of Health Affairs at the Department of Defense where he led the development of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems and was awarded the Information Technology Officer of the Year of the Joint Medical Information Systems Office in 2004.

From 2001 to 2003, he was competitively selected by the U.S. Air Force Medical Service to attend the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he studied Health Informatics. In 2002, he was selected as a recipient of the HIMSS Foundation Richard P. Covert National Scholarship Award. Previously, he has served as the Director of Medical Readiness at Langley Hospital and was recognized as the Medical Readiness Officer of the Year for the command. He has also served as the Director of Managed Care for Moody Community Hospital and was selected in 1996 as the Air Force Medical Service’s Managed Care/Patient Administrator of the Year.

He holds a graduate degree in Health Informatics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, as well as a graduate degree in Management from Troy State University. He is a certified health care executive and Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE), a Fellow of the Health Information Management and Systems Society (FHIMSS), a certified Professional in Health Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS), a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

In Memoriam: Helmuth Orthner, PhD

It is with great sorrow that we inform our alumni, friends and colleagues of the sudden death of Dr. Helmuth (Helly) Orthner on March 16, 2009. Having just held a celebration for Dr. Orthner’s retirement from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) this past December, his accomplishments are fresh in the minds of his friends and colleagues. There is neither time nor space to fully outline his many contributions to the field of health informatics locally, nationally, or even internationally, however, a few points are worth noting.

Dr. Orthner immigrated from Austria to the U.S. in 1967. He graduated from the Technical University of Munich (Germany) with a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering with a focus on technical communications. He joined the Department of Biomedical and Electronic Engineering at University of Pennsylvania (Penn) as a graduate student in the Fall 1967 and graduated with a PhD degree in 1973. He held faculty positions at George Washington University and the University of Utah prior to UAB.

Dr. Orthner joined the UAB faculty in 1998 with impressive credentials. He was often called the “Father of the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAM-C)”, which he helped form in 1976. Most of you now know of this organization as the American Medical
Informatics Association (AMIA).

He worked at UAB for 10 years and during that time did much to further the national position and prestige of UAB’s Health Informatics Program. During his tenure as program director, more than 100 students were graduated from the program as it became an essential element of the Department of Health Services Administration and the School of Health Professions. He forged linkages within the community that supported both students and research. These partnerships included the UAB Emergency Department, the 1917 Clinic, Children’s Health System, and the Birmingham Regional EMS System.

Dr. Orthner’s research interests focused on the information infrastructure of the pre-hospital emergency medical environments. While at UAB, he worked on numerous research grants and contracts, with the most notable being the “Applications of Advanced Network Infrastructure for Health and Disaster Management” from the National Library of Medicine. This multi-year project filled his time for the last several years and enabled Dr. Orthner and his team to pursue communication technologies fully. He was proud of this contract and its diverse accomplishments.

All of these are important to mention but the accomplishments of his many students are the real legacy that Dr. Orthner leaves at UAB. Among some of these notable accomplishments include three graduates who went on to found their own informatics companies, the CIO of a national healthcare organization, the Director of Security for one of the largest “Blues” in the country, and several faculty members at prominent universities across the United States.

Dr. Orthner will be missed by his friends and colleagues. The field of medical informatics has lost one of its true pioneers.

John Glaser to speak on February 19th in Birmingham

John Glaser, PhD, is the invited speaker for the LR Jordan Distinguished Lecture to be held at The Wynfrey Hotel on February 19. A networking cocktail reception begins at 5:30 in the Ballroom followed by a seated dinner at 6:30.

Reservations and a ticket are required so please respond to Angela Grace (afgrace@uab.edu) by FEBRUARY 12.

Hope to see you on the 19th!

Welcome!

Welcome to the UAB MSHI Program Blog! We're glad you've taken time to come visit. We created this for most of the reasons that you can probably think of:

1. It's a greener alternative (no excess paper generated, no gas guzzling postal trucks delivering newsletters to residences).
2. It's more cost effective (cost of paper newsletter = $400, cost of blog = $0).
3. Information and events of interest can now be delivered before or as they're happening, not 3 months later.
4. Blogs enable immediate dialogue by way of the "Comments" button at the end of every post (we moderate all comments to mitigate random posters and spammers).
5. Information reaches a much broader audience of heatlh informatics professionals.

We plan to post on a bi-weekly basis and will send a courtesy e-mail notification every other month via the MSHI Alumni & Student list-serves to keep you up to date with your graduate program and your alma mater.

We always like to hear from you so please leave a comment. We look forward to moving into the 21st Century with you!

Amanda Dorsey

Assistant Director, UAB MSHI Program

Student Enrollment up 100%

It was a good recruiting year for the MSHI Program. After roughly 75 inquiries and 28 application reviews, we admitted a class of 14 students for the MSHI Class of 2010. The students come from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds, including aerospace, Banking/Finance, Health Information Management, Economics, Computer Science, Business, Nursing and Research.

Look for a copy of the MSHI Student Pictorial in your mailbox in early November.

Faculty Update

We're pleased to announce the addition of a new MSHI Program faculty member, Darrell Burke, who comes to us from Florida State where he was an Assistant Professor in the College of Information. Dr. Burke earned his Ph.D. in Health Services Organizations at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Among some of his research interests are IT strategy and the intersections of governance and hospital performance, the effects of outsourcing IT functions on financial performance of hospitals and the association between hospitals’ IT capability and financial outcomes. Dr. Burke will divide his time between teaching in the MSHI and MSHA programs and contributing to departmental and cross-school research intitatives. Dr. Burke can be reached at deburke@uab.edu.