
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Our Board of Directors consists of seasoned health experts who are committed to creating positive change through the strategic use of health tech, data analytics and innovative management systems.
Meet our other leaders
Board of Directors
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Harold F. Wolf III
President & CEO
Harold (Hal) Wolf is the president and CEO of HIMSS, a global advisor and thought leader supporting the transformation of the health ecosystem through information and technology.
Wolf is respected internationally as a healthcare and informatics leader, with areas of expertise in mHealth, product development, integrated care models, marketing, distribution, information and technology, and large-scale innovation implementation.
Before joining HIMSS, Wolf served at The Chartis Group as director, practice leader, information and digital health strategy. Prior to The Chartis Group, he served as senior vice president and COO of Kaiser Permanente’s The Permanente Federation, representing more than 16,000 physicians. Wolf also held executive positions at MTV Networks and Time Warner, and served as senior advisor to McKinsey & Co.
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Elena Sini
Board Member, CIO, GVM, Care and Research Chair
Elena Sini is a CIO with 20 years of experience acquired among Italian top-tier public and private healthcare providers—such as the IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori and Humanitas. Since 2019, Sini has served as Group CIO at GVM Care and Research—one of the Italian private leading healthcare groups running healthcare facilities throughout Italy and other European countries.
Sini is chair of the HIMSS Europe Governing Council and is the founder of the HIMSS Italian Community, as well as a committee member.
During the course of her career, Sini has been involved in various committees established by national and regional healthcare bodies. Recently she was appointed by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity to provide advice to the drafting of European Union cyber guidelines for the healthcare sector.
Sini has been working as an adjunct professor since 2003. She also is a guest lecturer at the most prominent Italian Universities. Additionally, Sini is co-author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and has been awarded for implementing digital innovation projects in healthcare in Italy and by European bodies.
Prior to joining health IT, Sini held research roles in the media and television broadcasting industry with the RAI Research Centre and Canal+ Group.
She holds a master’s degree in telecommunications engineering from the University of Pisa. She completed post-graduate courses at the MIP -School of Management - Politecnico di Milano.
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Susan Heichert, RN, MA, FHIMSS
Board Member, President, The Cedar Isles Organization, LLC, Vice Chair
Susan Heichert is the former Chief Information Officer at Allina Health and is currently consulting in Information Technology strategy and leadership as President of the Cedar Isles Organization, LLC. She began her professional career in pediatrics/NICU nursing, practicing in Texas and Minnesota, after earning a B.S. in Nursing from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. Her M.A. is from the University of Minnesota. Previous positions include working with a start-up IT company to develop and implement an early bedside nursing application, Director of Nursing Informatics at St. John’s Health System in Detroit, consulting, and at Children’s Minnesota as part of the Cerner implementation.
Susan was part of the team that implemented Epic at Allina Health, and Allina was honored to earn the HIMSS Davies Organizational Award for that initiative in 2007. She moved into the CIO role, responsible for Information Technology, Health Information Management, Clinical Engineering, and Informatics. She has served in other interim leadership roles including VP for Care Management and SVP HR/CHRO. Susan is a HIMSS fellow and has been active with the MN Chapter of HIMSS as well as the national HIMSS organization since the ‘90s, serving in a variety of positions and on numerous committees as well as contributing to HIMSS publications. Additionally, she is a member of CHIME, serving on various CHIME committees. She was appointed to the MN State e-Health committee and served until 2016.
Susan has been recognized as a MN Top 10 CIO of the Year by the Minneapolis Business Journal, Top 10 Women Powerhouses in Health IT and Top Women Dynamos in Health IT by HealthCare IT News, among other awards. She has served as a Community Faculty member for Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, MN) and on the board of Senior Community Services, as well as volunteering with a variety of community groups.
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Ran Balicer
Board Member, CIO & Deputy-DG, Clalit
Prof. Ran Balicer is a physician, scientist and executive, Chief Innovation Officer for Clalit, Israel's largest healthcare organization caring for over half of the country’s population.
He also serves as founding director of the Clalit Research Institute, the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center on Non-Communicable Diseases Research, Prevention and Control.
In these roles, he is responsible for strategic planning, development and at-scale implementation of novel artificial intelligence and data-driven interventions.
Dr. Balicer is full professor and track director of the MPH program at the Ben-Gurion University School of Public Health, and heads Israel’s first and only dual Public Health & Data Science Physician Residency Program. He also serves as co-chair of the Ivan and Francesca Berkowitz Family Living Collaboration Laboratory at Harvard Medical School & Clalit Research Institute. In these capacities, he mentors young scholars and authored over 250 scientific publications, books and book chapters.
Dr. Balicer has served as chair of the Israeli Society for Quality in Healthcare since 2013, and as member of national and international health policy committees. He also serves as an advisor to governments and to international public organizations including the WHO, where he is involved in projects focusing on utilizing data,data science and AI in achieving effective healthcare provision and care integration.
Since 2020, Dr. Balicer has served as chairman of Israel's National Experts Team on COVID-19 Response, which advises the Israeli Government and Prime Minister. He has led globally recognized groundbreaking real-world studies on COVID-19 risk prediction and stratification; vaccine effectiveness, safety and advanced mitigation strategies
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Donna Henderson
Board Member, Head of International Engagement, Digital Health & Care Directorate, Scottish Government
In her role as Head of International Engagement, Donna leads the Scottish Government’s Digital Health and Care Directorate’s International Engagement Team. The Team’s objectives are to enhance Scotland's reputation as a leader in digital health and care, facilitate knowledge exchange between other countries and regions and promote economic opportunities for Scotland.
Donna has co-ordinated Scottish involvement in European funded digital health research and innovation projects since 2012, including the EU Health Programme SCIROCCO Exchange project which developed a maturity assessment tool for regions to assess the readiness of their health and care systems for the adoption of integrated care. She also acted as Chair of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing Action Group on Integrated Care from 2015 to 2018.
In January 2021, she was appointed as President of the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL). She was also proud to be recognised by HIMSS as a Future50 Class of 2021 Government Leader.
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Sumit Nagpal
Board Member, CEO, Cherish Health, Inc.,
Sumit Kumar Nagpal is a serial entrepreneur with a focus on disruptive digital health innovation at scale. Over the past 25 years, he cofounded and grew five companies that tackle progressively bolder systemic challenges in healthcare experience, cost and access.
Nagpal currently serves as CEO and board director at Cherish Health, Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company that he cofounded. Cherish Health develops advanced sensors and AI combined with medical evidence and human touch, focusing on the elderly, the frail, and those living with chronic conditions to improve their lives and proactively enable supported self-care.
Nagpal began his career working with Steve Jobs at NeXT, Inc., who taught him how to abstract complex problems and systems down to their essence. Trained as a software developer, Nagpal also learned how to architect large-scale systems to meet the needs of Fortune 100 clients.
In 1993, Nagpal launched Wellogic, where he created one of the industry’s earliest longitudinal health records for hospitals. The next generation of his work fused workflows and patient information across multiple organizations and enabled remote consultations—all before broadband and before internet was ubiquitous.
As his vision grew, Nagpal aimed at more complex new challenges—creating regional health information sharing networks by integrating patient information from laboratories, pharmacies, imaging centers and others involved in care delivery with records from health and social care providers—all to enable safer patient care. Nagpal sold this company to diagnostics supplier Alere (now a part of Abbott) to bring connected health solutions to market that integrated medical records with medical device data in community and patient home settings to proactively predict risk and intervene early to avoid cost and higher acuity.
After Alere’s acquisition of Wellogic, Nagpal started LumiraDx, where he worked with his partners to launch a portable diagnostic device and platform that brings reference lab precision testing into ambulances, physician offices, emergency rooms, remote village clinics and more.
Nagpal’s next startup was Carefully, where he focused on the vision of a hospital alternative at home. While incubating Carefully, he joined Accenture as managing director and global lead for digital health strategy. Afterward, he joined Comcast NBCUniversal as senior vice president and global general manager for health Iinovation. Nagpal then formed his next high-growth startup, Cherish Health—merging Carefully into the company to focus on enabling safety, wellbeing and care in the home.
Cherish Health’s first innovation is a low-cost, connected, wearable biosensor patch that is now being used to help mitigate COVID-19, enabling people with the virus to recover—socially distanced— where they live with 24/7 support from their care teams.
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Päivi Sillanaukee, MD, PhD, eMBA
Board Member, Special Envoy for Health & Wellbeing, Ministry of Social Affairs & Health Finland
Special Envoy for Health & Well-being of Finland 🇫🇮at the Ministry for Social Affairs and Health. Over 20 years experience at highest civil servant administrative positions both from government (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and Ministry for Foreign Affairs), and public sector (Municipalities + Special Health care district).
Actively participating also in Global Health: have chaired and facilitated global multisectoral, multipartner Health Security collaboration since 2015 facilitating capacity building at country level. Vice chair (2 years) and member (1 y) of @WHO Executive Board 2018-2021 focusing on good governance + strong and effective WHO. Excecutive President for WHO/Europe Regional Committee (RC71) 2021-2022. Member of @womeninGH (Women in Global Health) advocating for #GenderEquity in Health. Member of @GlobalPulse Finland’s health sector advisory board. Member of Board of Directors, @HIMSS and Member of the Inaugural Board of @I-DAIR
Sharing Finnish knowhow and experiences on legislative framework and enabling regulation on secondary use of social and health data for innovation policies, R&D&I and implementation of new technology digital and AI solutions as well as personalized medicine.
Skilled in Health Care and Social Affairs management, Health and social service management, Health Security, Universal Health Coverige, Integrated care, Communicable & Noncommunicable diseases, Government, Management, Health Technology & innovation, Entrepreneurship, Quality Management, Interpersonal Skills, Non-profit + for profit (start up) Boards. Strong, innovative, target oriented administrative professional graduated MD + PhD + eMBA from University of Tampere, specialization for Public Health Management and Honorary Doctor from University of Helsinki Faculty of Medicine. Also studied humanities and cultural sciences in University of Jyväskylä.Read bio -
Mark Sugrue, MSN, RN-BC, FHIMSS
Board Member, Senior Director, Healthcare Industry Group, Alvarez & Marsal
Mark Sugrue is a Senior Director with Alvarez & Marsal's Health Systems practice in Boston. Mr. Sugrue is an internationally recognized leader, author and expert in Health Information technology with more than 30 years of nursing, healthcare operations and management consulting expertise.
Prior to joining A&M, Mr. Sugrue served as a Managing Director at FTI Consulting. There, he co-led the firm’s Digital Health solution offering focused on assisting clients with the strategy, development, adoption, and optimization of leading-edge, innovative technologies. Additionally, he led major transformation initiatives on behalf of his clients, including enterprise-wide performance improvement efforts, Epic EHR optimization, contact center transformation, new facility merger and acquisition projects, emergency department throughput, care model redesign and other strategic initiatives.
Mr. Sugrue has served as a Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO) and Associate Chief Nursing Officer for Nursing Professional Practice. At UMass Memorial Medical Center (Worcester, MA), Mr. Sugrue led the successful implementation of the Epic Electronic Health Record. Earlier, Mr. Sugrue served as Lahey Hospital and Medical Center’s (Burlington, MA) first CNIO where he also led the successful implementation of Epic. Under Mr. Sugrue’s leadership both organizations achieved the prestigious HIMSS Stage 7 EHR adoption recognition.
Mr. Sugrue’s prior management consulting experience includes having worked for well-known firms, such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, KPMG/Bearing Point, and Arthur Andersen.
In 2020 Mr. Sugrue received a Citation for Outstanding Performance by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for his work leading the emergency COVID-19 response at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home (Holyoke, MA). Mr. Sugrue holds an MS in Nursing Leadership and a BSN in Nursing Science from Regis College, along with a BS in Biology and Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Mr. Sugrue currently serves on the Global Board of Directors for the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
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Benedict Tan
Group Chief Digital Strategy Officer & Chief Data Officer. Singapore Health Services
Mr Benedict Tan is the Group Chief Digital Strategy Officer (GCDSO) and Chief Data Officer (CDO) for Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) cluster.
SingHealth is Singapore’s largest healthcare cluster offering a complete range of multi-disciplinary and integrated medical care through a network of four hospitals, five National Specialty Centers and ten Polyclinics. As an Academic Medical Center, SingHealth pursues innovations to transform patient care delivery, and galvanizes the best clinical and research capabilities to discover new and better care for our patients.
As GCDSO for SingHealth, Benedict drives SingHealth’s digital strategy and roadmap to enrich the digital experience of patients and staff. His portfolio includes critical functions such as IT delivery and support, cybersecurity, analytics, data management and data governance. He also promotes the effective use of data in a secured manner, to support digitalization efforts as SingHealth’s CDO.
Benedict has more than 30 years’ experience in the specialized healthcare-IT industry spanning both private and public institutions including Ministry of Health, National Computer Board, SAP and SingHealth, and many distinct roles and responsibilities such as project manager, business development, product manager and implementation consultant. He has played key leadership roles in the implementation of several large-scale IT and process reengineering projects such as the Civil Service Medical Claims Reengineering initiative, SGH Bed Management and SingHealth Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Benedict has also led IT- enablement projects for many SingHealth facilities such as Academia, National Heart Center Singapore, and polyclinics.
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Barry Levine
Board Member, Principal & Founder, BJL Advisors
Barry brings over 35 years of experience to HIMSS as a new Board Director and Chair of the Finance Committee. He is known for successfully leading the revitalization of both public and private companies in a variety of C-Suite, consulting, legal, and corporate development positions. Barry Levine is Principal and Founder of BJL Advisors, a business advisory firm. The firm advises clients on financial, operational, and organizational improvement; strategic planning and execution; mergers and acquisitions; and equity and debt financings. Most recently, Barry served as the interim Chief Financial Officer of HIMSS, stewarding the organization successfully through a time of transformation and a new landmark partnership with Informa Markets for the HIMSS Annual Global Conference and Exhibition. Other healthcare clients have included PacifiCare Health Systems, Inc. (now part of UnitedHealthcare, Inc.) and American Medical Response, Inc., a leading provider of pre-hospital emergency medical services and medical transportation services in the United States. Barry was CEO of a privately held company that provided enterprise level software applications for various insurance industries, including healthcare. Barry started his career with a leading Wall Street based law firm focused on mergers and acquisitions; equity and debt financings; and corporate restructurings.
Barry earned a bachelor's degree in finance and accounting from Lehigh University and a law degree from The George Washington University Law School. He lives in Denver, Colorado with his family.
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Ernst Kuipers
Board Member, Former Minister of Health, Welfare & Sport, The Netherlands
Ernst Kuipers has extensive experience in healthcare, medical research, and government as clinician, healthcare executive, and Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport of the Netherlands. He will next serve as Vice-President Research for Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
As the Netherlands’ Health Minister from 2022 to 2024, Prof Kuipers led the country’s plan to improve pandemic and disaster preparedness during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also focused on a broad integrated care agenda and nationwide healthcare system reform to keep healthcare sustainable and affordable. To support this process, Ernst among others passed a law on electronic health data exchange. He further closed a Green Deal with the healthcare sector to increase its resilience and reduce its ecological footprint.
Before becoming Minister, Ernst long served Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands as CEO and earlier as Professor of Medicine and Department Chair. As CEO, he led the transformation to a new ‘smart’ hospital that forms part of the European University Hospital Alliance. Ernst was also Member of the Governing Board of the National University Health System in Singapore and a member of the Board of Curacao Medical Center. He further acted as Chair of the Dutch National Emergency Medicine Network, which played a major role during the covid pandemic. Ernst earned a medical degree, and completed training in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology in the Netherlands. He subsequently worked at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville TN, and then joined Erasmus MC.
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