Contributing Authors

Maria Arellano, MS, RN

Maria Arellano is the Clinical Product Manager for American Healthtech, a post-acute care information technology company. She has 30 years experience in nursing specializing in long term post-acute care (LTPAC), and has served roles in nursing administration, consulting, and teaching. Arellano has assisted nursing homes across the country with regulatory compliance and quality improvement activities and is a frequent presenter of national and statewide workshops on clinical and leadership topics. Prior to her current role, Arellano worked on telehealth research projects involving veterans with PTSD, medication management, and heart failure. She also designed software applications for clinicians in LTPAC settings.

Arellano received her nursing degree from Arapahoe Community College, a BS in business from the University of Phoenix, and a master's degree in Health Care Informatics from the University of Colorado, School of Nursing. Arellano served on technical expert panels for CMS and is currently serving on the Nursing Informatics Committee for HIMSS.

Melissa Barthold, MSN, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS

Melissa Barthold is the Senior Clinical Solutions Strategist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, in Jackson, Mississippi. She has more than 25 years of nursing practice, with more than an additional 15 years practice as a nursing informaticist. She obtained her master's in Nursing Informatics in 1999 from Loyola University of Chicago's Niehoff School of Nursing where she is currently completing her doctor of nursing practice degree. She has served on the HIMSS Nursing Informatics Taskforce and Committee as the Chair of both the HIMSS Annual Conference Education Committee (2010) and the Distance Education Committee (2011). She has chaired the NI Taskforce's Standard Practices Forum for the last several years. Melissa has served as adjunct faculty at Loyola University of Chicago and Barry University, Miami Shores, Florida, as a faculty facilitator at Excelsior College, and was appointed as adjunct faculty at Nova Southeastern University School of Nursing. She holds certifications from HIMSS (CPHIMS) and Board Certification from the American Nursing Credentialing Center, where she is serving her second term on the Content Expert Panel: Nursing Informatics.

Lisa Anne Bove, DNP, RN-BC

Lisa Anne Bove is currently a Senior Manager with Leidos Health. Lisa Anne is a nursing informatics specialist focused on improving health using electronic information and improving nurses and physicians work processes using technology in healthcare. Lisa Anne has worked in healthcare informatics for more than 25 years in a variety of positions and has been certified by the American Nurses Credentialing Center in Nursing Informatics since 1986. Lisa Anne functioned as the CNIO of a major multi-system hospital system, as a program manager for larger clinical design and implementation projects, and as an educator for continuing education and college-level classes.

Bove received her DNP from Duke University in North Carolina in 2013, focusing on informatics and the value of bedside documentation. Lisa Anne was also on the American Nursing Informatics Association Board of Directors from 2005-2012 and was Conference Co-Chairperson from 2010-2012. Lisa Anne is an active conference planning committee member of the Delaware Valley Nursing Computer Network (DVNCN). Lisa Anne has published and spoken on numerous topics, including informatics and project management.

Seth D. Carlson, BS

Seth D. Carlson has more than 16 years experience in the field of Information Technology, with the past 9 years in healthcare IT. He currently works as a principal business analyst and integrator of new IT systems. In a former position, he served as a Testing Lead for several years and specialized in the testing of Clinical Health Systems, HL7 interfaces, and databases. He received his bachelor of science degree in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Maryland in College Park. He is currently enrolled in the master of science in Business and Management, Information Systems program at the University of Maryland in College Park.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions of the author expressed in "Testing in the Healthcare Informatics Environment," Chapter 4, do not necessarily state or reflect those of the U.S. government.)

Lincoln S. Farnum, MS, RRT, CPHIMS

Lincoln Farnum is a health IT consultant living in the Tampa Bay, Florida area. A registered respiratory therapist (RRT) with experience in both neonatal/pediatrics and adults ranging from pulmonary lab and polysomnography to intensive care, Mr.

Farnum brings his clinical experience to improving healthcare IT system usability and intelligence. He received his master's degree in Medical Informatics degree from the Northwestern University' Feinberg School of Medicine. He has been implementing information systems, developing clinical decision support and business intelligence features, and working to improve the experiences of clinicians for more than two decades.

Rick Gagnon, RN, FNP

Rick Gagnon is a registered nurse and a family nurse practitioner. As a clinician, he has a valuable perspective on clinical operations with expertise in public health, acute care, and home healthcare agency operations and management. In the home care arena, he specializes in agency startups and consulting for certified and private duty agencies. As a business and leadership coach, Mr. Gagnon illuminates the notion of possibility through his passion for helping others develop their full potential. He also possesses valuable experience as a private business owner.

Gagnon has been a nurse for 30 years and has worked both as a clinician and in leadership positions in acute care, public health, and home healthcare, as well as corporate positions in healthcare and IT. For the past 15 years, Mr. Gagnon has focused his professional attention on home healthcare, in operations, startups, and informatics. He has been a certified agency administrator, a branch manager, and a private duty manager, and also served as the director of operations for private duty for one of the largest home care companies in the United States, with 55 agencies reporting to him. He has worked in a variety of healthcare software settings, including hospital IT and informatics, enterprise patient access, scheduling, and physician orders management, in implementation, education, and systems analytics roles.

Daniel Gracie, DNP, RN-BC

Daniel Gracie received his bachelor of science in Nursing from Mountain State University in Beckley, West Virginia. In 2007, he began work on his master of science in Nursing in Administration at the Medical University of South Carolina. In 2010, he returned to the Medical University of South Carolina and completed his doctor of nursing practice in 2012. During this time, he focused his time on the implementation of informatics competencies into the curriculum of baccalaureate nursing students.

Currently, Gracie leads his team in the build of CPOE with the Epic project at the Medical University of South Carolina. In this role, he also serves as a project lead for the Meaningful Use and Regulatory Reporting planning and implementation. Prior to this, he served in roles that focused on the implementation of healthcare IT solutions and frontline staff support at the Medical University of South Carolina. Gracie also teaches informatics and healthcare quality and leadership as adjunct faculty at a number of nursing schools.

As a board member of the American Nursing Informatics Association, Gracie has served as the social media liaison and a member of the conference planning committee, and has lead the conference planning committee for the past 3 years.

Susan M. Houston, MBA, RN-BC, PMP, CPHIMS, FHIMSS

Susan is the Chief Portfolio Officer at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center where she is responsible for the full lifecycle management of the clinical and administrative applications. She has extensive clinical, informatics, and project management experience with a variety of healthcare-related organizations. Susan has taught project management at the University of Maryland School of Nursing Masters of Informatics program and has presented at local and national conferences. She has co-authored a number of informatics articles and the book Project Management for Healthcare Informatics (Springer publishing). She has authored a number of courses in the HIMSS eLearning Academy as well as The Project Manager's Guide to Health Information Technology Implementation (HIMSS).

Susan C. Hull, MSN, RN

Susan Hull is a nursing executive and national thought leader who is passionate about co-creating technology-enabled innovations, transforming health and care eco-systems to dramatically improve population health and wellbeing, with national and international reach. Susan believes we can achieve an affordable, sustainable learning health system where consumers, providers, and communities are dynamically engaged and thriving, with personalized health solutions achieving the Triple Aim.

With more than 30 years experience, Susan has served in a variety of roles transforming health and improving health of populations, including nursing and health system executive, new healthy community partnership and community health information network (CHIN) executive, clinical informatics and decision support executive, consultant and action researcher, and designing and managing a new Children's Hospital Emergency Service. Susan is the founder and CEO of WellSpring Consulting, supporting healthcare organizations and communities in the United States and Canada since 1994 to strengthen their capacity for innovation in services, products, and impact. She recently served as the chief health informatics officer for Diversinet and the vice president of the Elsevier CPM Resource Center, has served on the NeHC Consumer e-Health Advisory Board and the ONC FACA Consumer Technology Standards Workgroup, and serves on the Tiger Initiative Foundation board.

Amy K. Jacobs, MSN, RN-BC

Amy K. Jacobs is a terminology specialist at Medicomp Systems, Inc. She has 28 years of nursing experience and has been actively involved in nursing informatics for the last 12 years. She is board certified in nursing informatics by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. She previously provided medical expertise for the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS). She also has extensive system analysis and system testing and evaluation experience. She served on the board of the American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA) in the role of treasurer and job bank liaison. She currently is a member of ANIA, HIMSS, and AMIA. She holds a post-master's certificate in Nursing Informatics from the University of Maryland, School of Nursing, a MSN from Georgetown University, School of Nursing, and a BSN from Pensacola Christian College in Pensacola, Florida.

Brenda Kulhanek, PhD, MSN, MS, RN-BC, CPHIMS

Brenda Kulhanek is the Corporate Director for Clinical Practice and Education at Adventist Health in California where she works with hospital, clinic, and home care leaders to increase the performance of healthcare staff within their organizations. She received her PhD in Training & Performance Improvement from the School of Education at Capella University. She is a registered nurse, and is board certified in both nursing informatics and health information management systems. Kulhanek has served as a contributing faculty member for the School of Nursing at Walden University since 2011, serves on the board of the American Nursing Informatics Association, and is a frequent presenter at nursing informatics conferences throughout the country.

Susan Martin, RN, BSN, JD

Susan Martin is chief of the Security & Privacy Office at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center (CC). As part of the senior leadership team in the Department of Clinical Research Informatics, she is responsible for ensuring that the clinical information systems, networked medical devices, and mobile technology supporting clinical care and research are secure and compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and the Privacy Act. Her interest in privacy law and the protection of health information in clinical IT systems developed while implementing a new electronic medical record system, a surgery and anesthesia information system, a clinical barcode application, and two-factor authentication for access to networked information systems at the Clinical Center. She serves on the NIH Privacy Incident Response Team, reviewing security and privacy incidents involving sensitive information. She is also a staff nurse at Suburban Hospital, a Johns Hopkins Health System affiliate hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. In this role, she is reminded of the informatics professional's delicate balance to improve the user interface with clinical IT systems and provide timely access to the patient's data in acute care settings while satisfying requirements for security.

Theresa (Tess) J. Settergren, MHA, MA, RN-BC

Theresa (Tess) Settergren is the director of nursing informatics in the Enterprise Information Services department at Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles, California. Tess directed several ambulatory electronic medical record implementations for Cedars-Sinai, and helped to enable integrated enterprise workflows for computerized physician order management at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Tess has more than 18 years of experience implementing and optimizing clinical systems and technologies. She was director for more than 200 clinical applications, including the enterprise electronic health record (EHR), in her position prior to Cedars-Sinai. Tess has been board certified in Nursing Informatics since 1997.

Tess earned her MHA from University of Minnesota Carlson School of Business, and her MA in Nursing (CNS) from the College of St. Scholastica. She was co-founder and president of the MInnesota Nursing INformatics Group (MINING) from 2000-2007, where Tess established an annual nursing informatics conference program featuring internationally recognized informaticists, and collaborated to launch the first and second Minnesota T.I.G.E.R. conferences. She has served on boards of directors for Alliance for Nursing Informatics, Center for Healthcare Innovation, Minnesota Epic User Group, and Community Health Information Collaborative (Minnesota), and served on the management committee for the Minnesota Center for Health Electronic Commerce.

Christy St. John, MSN, RN-BC

Christy St. John is the associate chief nursing informatics officer for the Bon Secours Health System. Bon Secours is a large integrated health system with 14 acute care hospitals, ambulatory practices, home health, and long-term care facilities across seven states. She holds an MSN in Nursing Informatics from Walden University and a Nursing diploma from Bon Secours School of Nursing. She is a board-certified informatics nurse and a member of Sigma Theta Tau. Her experience includes bedside practice in cardiopulmonary care, nursing leadership, and informatics leadership. Christy has led multidisciplinary teams of health professionals in designing, promoting, and facilitating evidence-based, patient-focused content within the EHR. She is an expert in all phases of the clinical system development lifecycle, including design, build, test, train, implement, and evaluate. She has led and supported go-live efforts across the system at each of the 14 acute care hospitals. Christy has presented at the national level on a variety of topics related to informatics and nursing practice, including strategies for developing evidence-based care plans and clinical pathways within the EHR and early recognition of deterioration. Her focus over the last year has been elevating and integrating nursing practices and workflows within the EHR. Additionally, Christy continues to focus on how technology and informatics can best support care delivery at each phase of the patient's journey.

Marcy Stoots, DNP, MS, RN-BC

Marcy Stoots has more than three decades of strategic and operational leadership experience in healthcare informatics and nursing. She has specific expertise in clinical adoption and optimization of EHRs to promote evidence-based practice and improved clinical outcomes. Stoots recently led the clinical adoption team through a successful large-scale, multi-facility EHR implementation at BayCare Health System in Clearwater, Florida. She received her MS in Nursing Informatics from the University of Maryland, and is currently pursuing her DNP with a focus in nursing and clinical informatics from Vanderbilt University. She is board certified in nursing informatics and a frequent speaker at industry conferences.

Luann Whittenburg, PhD, RN-BC, FNP-BC, CPHQ, CPHIMS

Luann Whittenburg is the chief nursing informatics officer at Medicomp Systems, Virginia. Luann is an RN and board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner who has authored several chapters and publications on nursing informatics, data quality, metadata, and terminology. Her healthcare informatics experience is in information operations for large healthcare delivery systems. She is a United States delegate from the American National Standards Institute to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committees on Health Informatics (TC215) and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TC249). Luann is board certified by the ANCC in Nursing Informatics, HIMSS health information management systems, and NAHQ healthcare quality. Whittenburg volunteers with the Virginia Medical Reserve Corp and is a member of the National Capital Area HIMSS Chapter, the American Nurses Association; American Academy of Nurse Practitioners; and board member of the ICNP National Scientific Advisory Board and the Clinical Care Classification System. She holds a PhD from George Mason University; master's of science in Nursing and a post-master's certificate from Marymount University, Virginia; and bachelor of science in Nursing from George Mason University; and is a member of Sigma Theta Tau, Epsilon Zeta Chapter.