by Tim Jones

As our 2014-15 year gets underway on July 1, we are pleased to welcome James Brady who takes over as President from Clark Kegley. I caught up with Jim at the annual planning meeting held at National University on May 30th to find out a little more about who he is, what he does, and what plans he has for our chapter this year.

Here’s what he had to say:

What is your day job?
In many ways, my day job has a number of similar themes to what I do as a volunteer with the HIMSS organization. As the CIO for Kaiser Permanente Orange County, I work closely with management and staff to look for ways to improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and deliver great solutions that patients and members need to stay healthy. As many of us are realizing more and more each day, healthcare is in a time of transformation. We have to do things differently if we want to see better outcomes and more affordability. This requires us really trying to look for new ways to solve the challenges that face us. Whether as a HIMSS volunteer or a healthcare professional at Kaiser Permanente, I often find myself doing lots of listening, collaborating, and thinking out of the box – all with the goal of finding new and innovative ways to enable others to be better at their profession.

How long have you been a member of HIMSS?
I first joined HIMSS in 2007 when I was IT manager at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center. Most of my experiences up to that time were on the IT side of healthcare. I was attracted to HIMSS because the association offered so much in terms of networking, educational content, and opportunities to get involved in the local and national healthcare IT community. To be able to step beyond traditional IT and learn about other areas of health information systems and clinical areas, was just what I needed. I found that I had a lot to offer as a HIMSS volunteer, and the folks involved in serving the chapter were a great group of healthcare professionals – I’m really glad I took that first step to attend the local conferences and join the chapter.

What are your main goals for our chapter this year?
HIMSS has truly set the standard for healthcare information systems, particularly with providing exceptional educational content, networking, advocacy, and many other value-added services. As one of HIMSS’ most high-performing chapters, the Southern California chapter has already done a great deal to enrich the professional lives of our local members. However, because the healthcare landscape is continuing to evolve, as a chapter we must continue to look for ways to enable that transformation. There are several areas of focus I hope to see us move forward with this coming year. One is to make sure our chapter conferences provide educational content that is relevant and timely to the challenges and opportunities that are unfolding before us. We’ve had some great conferences with wonderful speakers recently. This coming year we are working hard to ensure the content and meetings align with topics that are current and meet the needs of our chapter members. Another exciting opportunity that we have this coming year to is to significantly increase the number of HIMSS organizational affiliate members in Southern California. We can do this by helping both large and small healthcare organizations better understand the benefits of being an organizational affiliate, and by finding ways to sign up employees with the free annual HIMSS memberships that are available to them. We will be making improvements to our website, and continuing to looks for ways to better utilize social media to engage both existing and potential members. Last but not least, we have an absolutely stellar group of talented healthcare professionals that will be looking to welcome new volunteers to help the chapter continue to advance in areas such as advocacy, ambulatory, sponsorship, marketing, and academic programming. We truly value the diversity of our membership and look forward to another fantastic year!

Tell us about your family.
I really can’t say enough about the value of family, and my passion and focus for my family is no exception. I married the girl I fell in love with while in college, and we’ve been enjoying each other’s friendship ever since. She grew up in Hawaii, and has a wonderful extended family. We have two daughters, a son, a young granddaughter, and a miniature schnauzer – never a dull moment with the Brady Bunch!

What is on your Bucket List?
One day I think I’d like to compete in the Ironman event on the Big Island of Hawaii. Got lots of training needed to prepare for that though in the meantime! I picked up playing the acoustic guitar a number of years ago, but since I was a kid, I’ve always dreamed of being able to play the electric guitar – perhaps one day I’ll get my chance at a high energy solo! On a more serious note, helping safely raise my two youngest children and transitioning them to who they were created to be is probably most top of mind for the Jim Brady bucket list items.

Back to Summer 2014 Newsletter