New COACH/CHIME Partnership Opens Doors for Canada’s Executive Health Informatics Leaders!

ANN ARBOR, MI, & TORONTO, ON, March 30, 2016 — The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and COACH: Canada’s Health Informatics Association are pleased to announce a new partnership fostering greater opportunities for senior health informatics leaders in Canada and the United States. This new collaboration focuses on professional development, best practices, networking events and thought leadership exchange opportunities for the CHIEF: Canada’s Health Informatics Executive Forum.

The introduction of the CHIME Health IT Leadership Academy, which builds off CHIME’s highly successful Healthcare CIO Boot Camp, to the 2016 CHIEF Spring Symposium in June will be just the first major benefit of the partnership. This education event, taking place on June 3, will enable CHIEF members to explore an array of engaging topics, including the contemporary provider environment, the evolution of IT governance and client decision-making processes, as well as long-term strategic partnership and trends and opportunities shaping healthcare and health IT.

“This partnership is a particularly important asset to COACH’s CHIEF members holding a chief information officer (CIO) position, as they will benefit from access to the wide variety of CHIME resources, allowing them to be better informed and positioned in meeting their current challenges, particularly around innovation and transformation in patient care and system sustainability — common challenges that healthcare leaders face across North America, and around the world,” said Mark Casselman, CEO, COACH. “This initiative also opens the door to CHIEF members looking to connect with industry leaders and innovators from across the United States. Through the COACH partnership with CHIME, our CHIEFs can tap into new perspectives, experiences and information about critical issues, leadership capacity building, succession planning and other important areas.”

The agreement, executed through a memorandum of understanding between COACH and CHIME in late 2015, is part of a growing effort by CHIME to enhance professional development for senior health IT leaders across the globe.

“CHIME has seen growing interest internationally for its professional development and educational programming,” said Russell Branzell, FCHIME, CHCIO, president and CEO, CHIME. “We know that our colleagues in Canada and around the globe are facing similar challenges to those of health IT leaders in the United States. Through partnerships like the one between CHIME and COACH, we can further elevate the role of health IT leaders as key members of the leadership team. And, we can spread best practices that will better enable them to adopt IT solutions that will advance improvements in patient care.”

About COACH
COACH: Canada’s Health Informatics Association is the voice of health informatics (HI) in Canada promoting the adoption, practice and professionalism of HI. COACH represents a diverse community of accomplished, influential professionals who work passionately to make a difference in advancing healthcare through information technology. HI is the intersection of clinical, IM/IT and management practices. Members are dedicated to realizing their full potential as professionals and advancing HI through access to information, talent, credentials, recognition, programs and a broad range of services and specialized resources. www.coachorg.com 

CHIEF is the primary Canadian forum for Chief Information Officers and senior health informatics executives. The forum addresses critical business issues, builds leadership capacity, forges relationships, enables peer dialogue, supports succession and maximizes professional development time for members. CHIEF is a forum of COACH. 

About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 1,800 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org. 

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