Peter High

03-09-2015

Excerpt from the Article:

Dr. Jan Lee currently serves as the CEO of the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN), the nation’s first statewide clinical health information exchange. She works with key leaders in the statewide health care community to aggregate clinical data from hospitals, laboratories, radiology centers, ambulatory practices and health plans into a longitudinal health record. Additionally, Dr. Lee is a board certified Family Practice physician with a Master of Medical Management degree and a wealth of leadership experience.

CIO Insight: Describe the Delaware Health Information Network.

Jan Lee: The metaphors we use to describe our core services are “the post office” and “the public library.” We deliver clinical results and reports to providers on behalf of the hospitals, labs, and imaging centers who contract with us to provide that service (our “post office” function). In the process, we archive a copy of that data for future query and retrieval through our provider portal (our “public library” function) by other health care professionals with a need to know. Participation in these core services, either as a “data sender” or an end user or both is nearly universal across the health care community of Delaware.

CIO Insight: As the oldest and longest running statewide health information network, how have you fostered relationships among entities who might otherwise view themselves as competitors?

Lee: Visionary leaders of Delaware’s largest health systems agreed from the beginning that the welfare of patients is best served if all the relevant clinical data is available at every stage in the continuum of care. Time and experience revealed that they each continued to thrive in the environment of data sharing, and we have now reached the point where the few stragglers are coming to us saying they are losing business to competitors who HAVE chosen to share their data through DHIN.

CIO Insight: In 2005, the eHealth initiative developed a framework for assessing and tracking health information exchange development. Seven stages of development were defined. Could you describe those?

Lee: My abbreviated description of the seven stages is as follows:

Stage 1 – Starting (need recognition)

Stage 2 – Organizing (defining goals, funding sources, governance, policies)

Stage 3 – Planning (tactics, business plan, securing funding)

Stage 4 – Piloting

Stage 5 – Operating (fully operational, data actually being used by HIE participants)

Stage 6 – Sustaining (fully operational with a sustainable business model)

Stage 7 – Innovating (expansion of value-added services)

We are happy to report that we are solidly in stage 7.

CIO Insight: How do you impact patient outcomes?

Lee: We save the practices time (and time is money) in searching for missing information. They are less likely to give up the search if it is easy and quick to get all the information they need in one spot. We have seen a 21% reduction over four years in the rate of ordering a specific set of high cost imaging studies and a 64% reduction in the rate of ordering high cost lab studies. This means reduced radiation exposure and out-of-pocket costs for the patient…

To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight

by Peter High, published on Forbes

3-9-2015

Since the days of the industrial revolution, cities have been the engines of economic growth. The revolution was effective in developing prosperity for many countries, but the development was not always “smart,” sacrificing health conditions, for instance, for greater productivity.

Now with greater use of technology, a number of cities are accumulating data, delivering innovation, and enhancing lives of citizens. Juniper Research recently compiled its list of top-five “smart cities.”   The author of the study, Steffen Sorrell, focuses on two “overreaching” benefits of smart cities: sustainability and efficiency. To that end, he identified five essential components of a smart city.

• Technologies
• Buildings
• Utilities
• Transportation & road infrastructure
• The smart city itself

The people who live in cities are driven economic performers who are seeking to take advantage of technologies to further their personal and collective opportunities. Cities provide them these opportunities and in doing so draw many like-minded parties into their midst. With this drive and  an increase in active participants, there are downsides. Most notably, energy consumption, waste and congestion. In this day and age people are increasingly concerned with climate change and awareness of limited resources all while demanding more efficiencies and technological development.

Citizens are not the only factors to consider in the evolution of cities into smart cities. Governmental and commercial entities are going to play increasingly important roles  in development and implementation of technologies that pace the way to the smart city.

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

CIO.com discusses ways in which businesses can understand the traits and work styles of the Millennial generation

Lauren Brousell

03-05-2015

Excerpt from the Article:

This is the millennial generation’s moment in the hot seat. Millennials are often viewed as impatient, tech-obsessed and disloyal to their employers, but while the specifics may be different, each generation has been in this position before: You’re new to the workforce, you have new ways of working and businesses can’t quite figure out how to deal with you.

…“The accessibility of success is so much greater than it once was,” says Chris Davis, manager at consultancy Metis Strategy. “You have access to role models who are outside your own company. You have role models in public, on LinkedIn, and you can see how someone charted their path to success.”

…”Companies need to think about the tradeoffs that employees are making by not having a flexible schedule,” Davis says.  “If you force people to miss out on life events because of a lack of flexibility, then that is taxing.  People are more productive when they have a choice.”

Though millennials may value a flexible work schedule and the tools that enable the convenience — laptops, smartphones, VPNs and cloud software, for example—they still value face time, according to the report. About half (51 percent) said they prefer talking with colleagues in person, compared to the 19 percent who prefer email and 7 percent who favor online chat.

Davis says millennials should be cognizant of when situations call for face time, and when IMing or emailing is ok. Otherwise, they risk perpetuating the misconception that they’re self-absorbed, he says.

To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO.com

by Peter High, published on Forbes

3-2-2015

Federico Florez Gutierrez is the Chief Information and Innovation Officer, and he is also the Global Purchasing Chairman at Ferrovial, an $8 billion Spanish company involved in the design, construction, financing, operation and maintenance of transport and commercial infrastructures. In his current role he is responsible for IT, innovation, and is the chairman of the purchasing committee at the company. From Flores Gutierrez’s perspective, it is natural that IT leaders should take on responsibilities in areas that have not historically been under IT’s control, as information and technology now are dramatic sources of innovation for any company. IT has a hand in driving both revenue augmentation and cost efficiency. As a result, he believes more IT executives will follow in his footsteps to become a CIO-plus.

(This is the 20th interview in the CIO-plus series.  To read past interviews with CIO-pluses from companies like ADP, McKesson, Walgreens, and P&G, please visit this link.  To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)

Peter High: Please describe your responsibilities as chief information and innovation officer of Ferrovial.

Federico Florez Gutierrez: As CIO, I am responsible for managing IT within the company trying to provide the best value to the business. During last six years, we have looked for synergies, integrating the infrastructures communications. We externalized them changing the cost from fixed to variable, and looking for cost reduction. We developed vertical applications for the core business process and use SaaS for non-core applications in a cloud based. We centralized the purchasing function of IT and the IT security.

As Innovation Officer, I am the person responsible at the Executive Committee to lead innovation. That means, to coordinate this function in Ferrovial. We developed a methodology to implement it in the whole company in an open innovation model, looking for projects of business innovation which have impact in the P&L, and we launch projects for business challenges.

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

by Peter High, published on Forbes

2-23-2015

Gene Kim was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug early. In 1992, while still a student at Purdue, Kim co-authored an open source tool called Tripwire, which would become a free software security and data integrity tool useful for monitoring and alerting on specific file changes on a range of systems.  Kim would become the Chief Technology officer of Tripwire, a role he would have until mid-2010.

In 1999, while still at Tripwire, Kim began to formally study IT organizations, noting the methods used by high performing organizations.  One observation was that these organizations often had IT operations, security, audit, management, and governance working together to solve common business objectives. This research would eventually lead to a number of books that Kim would co-author. Visible Ops Security was released in 2004, and The Visible Ops Handbook was released in 2009.  When Kim left Tripwire, it was to dedicate himself to this research, to speaking, and to consulting with companies around the world.

In 2013, Kim (together with Kevin Behr and George Spafford) authored The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your business Win.  As the title suggests, the book is told as a novel.  The hero of the story is Bill, the IT manager of a company called Parts Unlimited. The company is pursuing a critical IT initiative that is over budget and late. The CEO tells Bill that he has 90 days to fix the mess, or IT will be outsourced.  The notion of DevOps is born, referring to a development method that pushes communication, collaboration, integration, automation and measurement of cooperation between software developers and other IT team members. DevOps also highlights the interdependence of software development and IT operations. It aims to help an organization rapidly produce software products and services and to improve operations performance.

As Kim notes from his study of over 14,000 IT professionals worldwide, high-performing organizations are two and a half times more likely than their peers to exceed profitability, market share, and productivity goals.

(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please visit this link.  This is the ninth interview in the IT Influencers series. To read the past eight interviews with leaders such as President Vicente Fox of Mexico, Walt Mossberg, Salman Khan, Jim Goodnight, and Yves Behar, please visit this link.  To read future interviews in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)

Peter High: Gene, what is driving demand for DevOps?

Peter High

02-23-2015

Excerpt from the Article:

Laureate International Universities is a leader in international higher education, with an enrollment in excess of 950,000 students, in 80 institutions and across 29 countries. The company states as its mission to seek to make high quality, higher education accessible and believes when students succeed, countries prosper and societies benefit. Karl Salnoske joined Laureate nearly a year ago, and was new to the industry. He had been a CIO at pharma leader Schering-Plough and at integration services provider GXS, but an industry that is both dynamic, and at the heart of so much positive change presented an interesting new challenge for this IT veteran. In this interview, he describes his path to Laureate, the role technology plays in the company and the road ahead.

CIO Insight: Karl, you have been a CEO, a consultant, a CIO and a COO, among other responsibilities across your career. You had worked in a variety of industries, but education was not among them. What attracted you to Laureate?

Karl Salnoske: Although I’ve not worked in the education field before, in many ways coming to Laureate felt like a natural progression. I’ve always been attracted to opportunities to have impact at scale, and am motivated by being part of a company driven by a strong sense of purpose. Laureate offered both of these.

We currently have 70,000 employees in 29 countries, serving almost one million students. The opportunity to lead the implementation of a new IT delivery model that caters to both the current need and future growth was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss.

While Laureate is a thriving international company with an ambitious agenda, at its core is a commitment to making higher education accessible and impactful in communities and countries where it is needed most. I was attracted to the mission, and was immediately impressed by the people I met.

This was one of those rare moments when you see opportunity, talent and purpose converge, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight

by Peter High, published on Forbes

2-16-2015

India is a fascinating place for anyone who is interested in technology.  The number of major technology firms is growing just as the number of companies around the world who work with Indian technology resources grows along with them.

I have spent the past week in Mumbai, and at every turn, I’ve been asking people about the technology they use, the companies they admire, and the state of India today. Last week, I had lunch with an IT leader at a major Indian airline.  We met in a conference room in her building. I had a take-out biryani, and she dined on a lunch out of four identical silver tins called tiffin boxes. I asked her about her lunch not realizing that I was on the cusp of learning about the most fascinating logistics organization I had ever heard of.

That morning, as she began her commute to work, a cook in her home prepared her lunch for her. Her cook knows her taste, and prepares her favorite dishes each day of the work week. The dishes, in her case typically made of vegetarian thali, were dished into four identical tiffin boxes. At 9:30, a delivery man, called a dabbawala, which translates to “one who carries the box”, knocked on the door, and picked up the four tins. He would collect similar tins around my friend’s neighborhood, often climbing stairs to get to apartments in high buildings.  He would do this even during monsoon season. It is more than likely that he is illiterate, as 85 percent of the dabbawala workforce is. The boxes that the tins are put into, called dabbas, are marked with different numbers, letters, and colors.  These designate the point of origin and the destination of each dabba, including the trains and stations that will be used along the journey.

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

by Peter High, published on Forbes

2-23-2015

Mumbai has many architectural symbols that mark its rich history.  There are historical religious temples and mosques. There are Portuguese buildings churches from the 16th century from that country’s period of colonization. There are many British colonial buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the most famous of which is the Gateway of India. It was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary of England, but also was the point through which the last battalion of British troops marched on February 28, 1948 to signal the end of British rule of India.

Add to this list of structures that define a period in Mumbai’s history Antilia.  The billion dollar residence of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani in South Mumbai is reported to be the world’s most expensive residence.  At 400,000 square feet and 570 feet in height it is one of the largest and tallest on earth, as well.  Though 27 stories, it is the equivalent height of a building that is nearly 60 stories. The structure began in 2002, and was completed in early 2010, and it takes its name from a mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean.

Ambani, his wife, and three children reside in the top four floors. Below them are six levels of parking with room for 168 cars, guest rooms, a health club, a swimming pool, a dance studio, a 50-seat cinema,  gardens, and a temple.  Above them are three helipads. All of this is accessible via 11 elevators.

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

Author and adviser Peter High discusses the role of today’s CIO, where that role has been and where it’s going.

Patrick K Burke

02-18-2015

Excerpt from the Article:

CIO Insight recently had the opportunity to chat with author, podcast moderator and adviser Peter High in New York City. High, an all-around busy man who was about to embark on an overseas business trip when we spoke, provided CIO Insight with a look at the role of today’s CIO, where that role has been and where it’s going. High kept an upbeat tempo as he settled into a chair by the fireplace in the sedate and cozy library of the Penn Club in New York. And the U Penn grad has plenty to be upbeat about. His latest book, Implementing World Class IT Strategy: How IT Can Drive Organizational Innovation, touches on  the seismic shift CIOs are experiencing and maps out what’s to be expected of today’s stewards of all things technology. Aside from penning a book, High moderates The Forum on World Class IT, a popular podcast, and he’s already turned his attention to beginning another work focused on the first 100 days of a CIO’s tenure. The following is a condensed version of CIO Insight’s conversation with Peter High.

CIO Insight: How long did you work on your book, Implementing World Class IT Strategy–and the book has a subtitle–?

High: It does–How IT Can Drive Organizational Innovation. A little bit more than a year. It came out of a body of work that I had been doing with a variety of CIOs and helping them formulate strategies. One of the hypothesis that the book is based upon is many CIOs are phenomenal at execution, great at tactics, not necessarily as comfortable in creating strategy. So a lot of it comes from counseling CIOs who are looking to become more strategic, more part of the strategic conversation in the broader part of the enterprise.