March 8, 2022 is International Women's Day!

International Women's Day has been officially recognized by the United Nations since 1977. Celebrated in many countries across the world, it is a day dedicated to recognizing women for their many extraordinary acheivements. Today, the Michigan HIMSS Chapter would like to honor our very own member, Helen Hill, and her acheivements as a trailblazer for women in healthcare and information technology. 

  Helen L. Hill, FHIMSS

  Board Director of Public Policy / Advocacy and Past President

  Michigan Chapter of HIMSS

Hello HIMSS Michigan! I’m your Board Director for Public Policy / Advocacy. Twenty years ago, along with a great and dedicated group of friends and colleagues, I founded the HIMSS Michigan Chapter and became its first president. From the start, we wanted to make sure that all geographic regions of the state were represented on the Board, as well as all sectors of the healthcare industry across the care continuum.

Our mssion then and now was to collaborate with others in the public and private sectors to improve Michigan’s and the nation’s access to high-quality, affordable and equitable healthcare, using our collective experience in healthcare and technology to innovate, educate and advocate for change in our healthcare delivery system.

Our members have been on the frontlines of local, state and national HIT/HIE initiatives designed to advance interoperability and standards, to improve data quality and care coordination. We have been proud to bring HIMSS global resources to benefit our state.

Our Michigan HIMSS Chapter has consistently been recognized as a Changemaker Chapter for Advocacy / Public Policy. Our public policy priorities at the state and national level include interoperability, connected health, cybersecurity and privacy, and health equity.

Over the last two years our HIMSS Michigan Board, our members and the HIMSS Government Relations team have been active participants with MDHHS, the HIT Commission, MiHIN and countless others throughout the state in the development of Michigan’s 5-Year Strategic HIT Roadmap, “Bridge to Better Health Report, Strategic Planning for a 5-Year Health IT Strategy,” that was publicly released on January 26, 2022, and is being reviewed by the HIT Commission in February. This was a great pleasure, as I was in the 2004-2010 group that developed the original Michigan Strategic Plan, Conduit to Care, and started the MiHIN, the State-level HIE.

A little background on me. I’ve had a long and varied career in healthcare. When I was a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor working on a degree in Classical Studies (Latin, German, linguistics and a smattering of sciences), I worked at the Bureau of Government Library and at the UM Computing Center loading grad students’ card decks into a Mod-20. When I graduated in 1968, I was selected by the University to be in a 5-member pilot program designed to develop systems analysts that was run by a woman from IBM’s Toronto Education center. I started out at a time when there were few if any commercial programming courses anywhere and when very few women were in the industry.  There also was very little commercial software available in healthcare – so if you needed something, you found the resources and developed it yourself.

There were many opportunities for growth! I worked as a programmer and analyst for the University of Michigan and then moved to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor where I became the first woman on a 5-person IT Development staff.  At St. Joe’s, I had great opportunities to work with clinical departments (Pharmacy, Nursing, OR, ED, Critical Care, staffing -scheduling, Development, Corporate Finance, Physician Group administration, etc.) to develop and implement healthcare software systems and publish papers. I became a software development Director and later the Assistant to the CIO responsible for strategic planning for SJMH and other regions of its new corporation (Sisters of Mercy Health Corporation, now Trinity Health). AT SJMH, I also learned how to get grants and, with the support of the Provincial Administrative team and CEOs from the corporation, formed a multi-state professional organization for women (Sisters of Mercy Women in Management).

Throughout my career I have had the good fortune to have dynamic, innovative leaders as mentors at times of great corporate and healthcare industry growth and diversification.

Over the years, I have moved from natural languages to computer languages and from product development to public policy, advocating for interoperability, standards and a transformed healthcare system. It has been fun and rewarding. Through my consulting career and my work with HIMSS here in the state and at the national level, I’ve met incredibly talented people from all over the world as well as next door in Michigan who are now my friends and contacts.

Today, I’m a nationally recognized expert in healthcare information technology (HIT), health information exchange (HIE), informatics, identity assurance and healthcare public policy, with more than fifty years of comprehensive experience in healthcare IT as a consultant, product developer, project director and executive for national consulting firms, integrated healthcare delivery systems, provider organizations, ACOs, HIEs, software vendors, healthcare industry associations, and insurers. I also have an extensive record of successful event planning, publications, white papers and executive presentations for local, regional, state and national healthcare IT conferences and webinars.

I led statewide groups that brought in more than $35 million in grant funding for Michigan, including SSA e-Disability Claims and the Detroit Beacon Cooperative Agreement. I was also a member of the public-private group working with the State of Michigan to secure Michigan’s ONC HIE Cooperative Agreement.

I’m partially retired but still do some consulting. I’m the Director of Public-Private Initiatives and CIO for the South East Michigan Health Information Exchange (SEMHIE). I am also on several Boards, in addition to the HIMSS Michigan Chapter Board. Since its founding in 2010 through an ONC Cooperative Agreement, I have served on the Michigan Health Information Network’s (MiHIN) Board. Currently I serve on its Compensation, Strategic Planning and Cybersecurity Committees. I also represent SEMHIE on MOAC, the MiHIN Operating Advisory Committee. In addition, I am the Chair of the University of Michigan’s Henderson House Board of Governors and Treasurer (former President) of M-Women, a non-profit that supports women’s varsity athletics at the University of Michigan.

Over the years, HIMSS has given me the opportunity to expand my interests and qualifications in HIT/HIE, cybersecurity and public policy.  I was fortunate enough to serve on the Public Policy Committee, chair the HIE Committee and the Interoperability & Standards Committee, and serve as liaison to the Nursing Informatics and Cybersecurity Committees, among others. In addition, I have worked on a number of innovative technology projects, including the 6-state HIMSS-GSA e-Authentication pilot. Michigan HIMSS has been a great partner in these initiatives. We even held a Michigan Day on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to attract federal agency and foundation investors to the cutting-edge work being done in our state.

Over the last two years, I’ve been representing MI HIMSS in an academic partnership with the Interoperability Institute (Mary Kratz) and University of Michigan’s Med School (HILS), School of Information and the School of Public Health (Allen Flynn, PhD, PharmD) on building a health informatics curriculum and open source FHIR-based tools for academic course packs. Our intern, Rutendo Goto, accompanied us to HIMSS21 in Las Vegas to present this work.

In my spare time I play golf and since I live close to the Big House, you’ll often find me cheering wildly at UM football games and at UM women’s basketball and softball games!

Thanks to my varied career and my adventures with HIMSS, I have amazing friends and colleagues all over the world. I wish the same for all of you!

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