by
Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | July 27, 2017
HIMSS has tapped Harold “Hal” Wolf III to become its new president and CEO.
Wolf is slated to begin onboarding in September and and take over his full duties by year-end.
“It is a great privilege and honor to be chosen to lead HIMSS, an organization whose purpose is to improve health care and care outcomes,” Wolf said in a statement, noting that, “across the globe, health care is challenged to harness the power of information and technology, to solve for the unique environments of each health system, and to support the personalization of care to the individual. In alliance with the growing membership of HIMSS and the expansive capabilities of our organization, our collective task is to enable innovation across the full health care ecosystem.”
He succeeds H. Stephen Lieber, the much-lauded leader of HIMSS for 17 years, whose retirement plans have been in the works since he announced them in December 2016.
On the eve of the society's 50th anniversary in 2011, Lieber reflected on the biggest challenges facing members in the years to come,
telling HCB News, “The one thing that’s most critical is the requirement to move to interoperability. In the past, anyone visiting a physician has been faced with walking in the door and being handed the clipboard. When you go to a health care practitioner, they should already know everything they need to know about you before you walk in the door. The biggest changes will be providing the knowledge to treat us and treat us right.
“Technology, just as we’ve seen it in every other business sector, will be a driving force in the health care field. We’ve gone too far along to not bring it up to the level we see today, even just in grocery stores. At the store, they can find who’s buying what — down to the individual can. Bar coding, for example, relatively new for health care, has existed in the grocery store for 25 years. We’ve allowed, for too long, to not have technology eliminate duplication and waste in care.”
Wolf has over 35 years of experience in the health care technology space. He has been an advisor, thought leader and consultant, and is an ongoing leader in the areas of health policy and technology adoption internationally.
He played a key role in “the development of content, research and user interfaces for video-on-demand and broadband,” according to an HIMSS statement.
His expertise extends to integrated care models, mhealth, product development, marketing, distribution, information technology and innovation implementation.
