Chief Technology Officer Archives

Bio of Brian Thomas

Brian has served in several senior leadership roles, including Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Healthcare Executive in the Fortune 500, Healthcare and public sector spaces. He is known for delivering innovative and user-friendly solutions to the business partners and customers he serves.

Prior to his executive roles, he gained experience in and recognition for dependable performance improvement, leadership, program management and solution innovations. Brian has 20 years experience in technology and healthcare. He has been featured in several publications including the Harvard Business Review, and was recently named one of the Top 100 Chief Information Technology Officers by Richtopia. He is a regular contributor to CIO Online and the greater IDG organization.

Prior to his more recent role, Mr. Thomas gained experience in and recognition for dependable performance improvement, leadership, program management, and solution innovations. Brian Thomas has progressed his career within the technology and healthcare verticals through increased responsibilities, leadership opportunities, and professional nominations. Additionally, he has been extremely successful at building and retaining cohesive and synergetic teams while delivering results at all levels of the organization, both in Infrastructure Delivery and Program Management. Mr. Thomas possesses expertise in the following common areas, but not limited to:

Strategic Planning & Execution	Fiscal Stewardship	Technology Innovation
Thought Leadership	Regulatory Compliance	Program & Project Management
Professional development	Support Performance Analysis	Data Center Operations, Design, Consolidation
Security & Compliance	IT Managed Services & Outsourcing	Team Development & Leadership
Digital Transformation	IT and Risk Governance	Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
AI, Blockchain & IoT	Cloud Architecture & Strategy	Negotiator, Mediator & Relations Management

Select Recent Accomplishments:

Closely partnered with Swope Health Service Board Members and the Senior Executive Team in developing and implementing a comprehensive Strategic Plan.
Recognized for Chief Information Officer (CIO) organizational contributions which resulted in a role expansion to CIO/Vice President of Support Services.
Enabled improved health care outcomes for approximately 40K patients by implementing interoperability and data sharing through bi-state connections with three regional Health Information Exchanges.
Realized nearly $1 million in actual, organizational-level cost savings through process improvement and contract re-negotiation.

Mr. Thomas is literate in a myriad of technology systems including Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Meditech, Merge/Vericis, PACS, Lawson, Cloverleaf, Microsoft SQL Server, SSIS, Tableau, ERP (PeopleSoft, Lawson, JD Edwards, Oracle), CRM (ACT!, Hubspot, Dynamics), NetApp, EMC Storage, Microsoft Windows Server, Cisco Networks and Voice, Nortel/Avaya Networks and Voice, Philips Healthcare, Citrix XenApp, Microsoft SCCM, Website Management, Social Media Strategy, and Microsoft Project Server.

Brian Thomas is a founding Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Trustees (FACHT) served as a Board Member for the Johnson County Community College HITECH Advisory Committee, a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), Kansas City CIO Exchange, and a Board Member of the Heart of America Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HOA HIMSS).

Mr. Thomas earned his Master of Business Administration from Baker University and his Bachelor of Science Information Systems from the University of Phoenix. Additionally, he has obtained the following certificates:

Organizational Leadership – University of Virginia
Artificial Intelligence – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Digital Transformation – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

This is the complete bio of Brian Thomas.

CIOs have an inherent duty to demonstrate the value of their departments, and this is never more true than with IT. It’s the same across other platforms of a business, from sales to finance to operations. With technology becoming more and more commoditized, companies are measuring the value of their IT departments, and thus services, in regards to the preservation of business value, creating benchmarks as a result of those outcomes, points out CIO. NO matter what department you’re talking about, the same principles of revenue generation and top-notch operations are used to not only evaluate but also prioritize and measure various projects to boost shareholder value. Here’s how CIOs can demonstrate the value of IT.

The IT department in any given company is an important cog in the output machine. Take a mobile sales platform for a healthcare EMR system, for example. If something fails at the IT level, the whole system gets hung up, resulting in the possibility of a patient not gaining access to the medication they need to be healthy. It’s too easy to imagine a bunch of IT pros sitting in a back room somewhere far removed from the daily operations of a business. Not so. They have just as much impact on the organization’s failure or success as anyone else.

Flexibility

Being flexible in an ever-demanding and complex environment is an important facet of an IT department, one that can make or break the operational capacity of an organization. As such, IT is required to provide more service and solutions above and beyond just “keeping the lights on.” In fact, IT and its partnership with business balance both past and present collaborations to determine future successes. Because IT is most useful when projects are delivered successfully to the end consumer, its value is dependent on persuading management to measure positive value-added contributions as well as maintain a steady presence — even despite such a complex environment.

Business Capability

Much more than a technological-minded organism, IT offers a great value to the business capabilities of a given company, not just in the area of technology capability and contributions. IT as a cohesive unit can provide valuable input on business decisions, leading to solutions that benefit the company as a whole. So what can the CIO and IT do together to demonstrate effectiveness to the rest of the organization?

Business operates on a principle of “what’s in it for me?” — after all, this is how competition thrives. Therefore, IT needs to:

Realize what their pain points are
Identify areas of improvement, specifically in relation to IT
Provide a strategic advantage from a productivity perspective
Work on developing a partnership mentality
Demonstrate value instance by instance, with clear objectives

The Value of IT

As the business strategist, the CIO needs to ensure IT’s strategic value is visible to the rest of the organization. Their position of leadership enables them to execute IT strategy, goals and objectives, and ensure they are aligned with the culture of the company as a whole. Driving business process improvements, IT becomes just as important a link in the chain as every other department when it comes to solutions that align with the corporate vision.