Rhonda Chou, MBA, CMC

Rhonda Chou has dedicated her career to the healthcare industry for the past fifteen years. She is able to apply her unique combination of operations management, consulting and start-up business experience to assist her clients in addressing their most challenging problems.

Her areas of practice include: IM/IT/eHealth strategy development in both organizational and regional settings, business planning related to shared services ICT models, IM/IT strategy execution including project management and project management offices, budget planning and management, quality and business process improvement, and general business management.

Rhonda recently led the North American Operations and Corporate Services Group for a 100-person healthcare consultancy. In this role her general business management experience and specific expertise in financial planning and management, business process improvement, executive reporting and risk management were essential to the smooth operations of this rapidly changing company.

Cindy Grant, CHIM

Cindy is an HIM Professional and an experienced project director. She has extensive consulting and hospital operations experience, with Health Information Management in particular, as well as implementation and use of clinical systems and project management.

Cindy is currently leading US based initiatives in the area of Health Information Management – ICD-10 implementation. Cindy is certified as a Health Information Management professional by the Canadian Health Information Management Association (CHIMA). She is an experienced presenter to a wide variety of industry and sector forums and groups on the ICD-10 initiative. Currently, she is working with clients on the preparation of readiness assessments of ICD-10 to understand and initiate the multiple streams of activity that are necessary during the next three years.

Due to her practical approach leading to proven results, Cindy typically leads complex and multi-stakeholder projects that require someone with a great deal of experience in healthcare. Examples of projects she has managed range from initiating and managing a complex, multi-year clinical documentation design and implementation project for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, the largest public health service provider in the United States As well as, managing the procurement, vendor engagement and initiation activities and early implementation of the Client Registry solution for the province of Ontario. From 2006 to 2008, she managed the Alberta Infoway Chronic Disease Management Project to a successful completion of solution implementation in both Capital Health (Edmonton) and Calgary Health regions. She acted as the Interim CIO at Providence Care, a Complex Continuing Care, Rehabilitation, Mental Health and Long Term Care facility in Kingston Ontario.

Michael Guerriere, MD, MBA

A respected strategist, Dr. Guerriere works with leading health care institutions on information management, clinical change, quality improvement and health care operations management.

Dr. Guerriere has leveraged his extensive experience in clinical, technical and business settings to help leading health organizations achieve their goals and improve care for patients. He has also consulted for governments on health policy and strategy, particularly in the areas of hospital funding and integration of care delivery.

Dr. Guerriere holds a degree in Medicine and specialty training in Internal Medicine. He received an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago. Prior to joining TELUS, he served 10 years as an executive in academic hospitals and 11 years as an international health care consultant.

Dr. Guerriere is a frequent guest lecturer and contributor to the health management literature. He holds appointments as Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Administration at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto and Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Health Information Sciences at the University of Victoria. He has served on numerous boards including Ryerson University where he served as Chair, MediSolution Ltd., Canada Health Infoway, Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

In 2009, Dr. Guerriere was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ryerson University.

Mark Lazurko, MBA, CHE

Mark has over 23 years of experience providing a broad range of management consulting services to health care clients in Canada. He has a long track record of successfully leading complex projects leading to transformational change in organizations.

Mark’s in-depth knowledge of current health care systems and jurisdictional similarities and differences places him in a unique position; enabling him to provide strategic and operational advice to his clients.

Mark has extensive working knowledge of consulting methodologies and frameworks and has developed solutions that incorporate leading practices in health care management and service delivery. His areas of focus include business process improvement, activity-based analysis and costing, operational review, program evaluation, clinical process transformation, benefits realization, change management and project management.

Tara McCarville, MPA, PMP

As an experienced leader with a professional background in telecommunications, Tara demonstrated success as a management consultant with over 13years of experience leading high profile and high performing teams, including a strong information technology department.

Tara has earned the trust and respect of colleagues in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Tara has a passion for solving challenging problems, with skills and expertise in strategic planning, program and product management, operational improvement, facilitation and stakeholder management. Among her strengths are an ability to balance responsibility with risk-taking, effective communication and enabling the success of her team members.

Tara has led several national and provincial level initiatives, including large scale systems and software implementations. She has led strategic healthcare projects for provincial and regional organizations. Tara also has expertise in establishing program and project offices, including executive level business intelligence processes and tools.

Tara received her International Baccalaureate from the Lester B. Person United World College, her Honours Bachelor of Arts from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and her Master of Public Administration from the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Tara has been a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) since 2003. Tara sits on two volunteer Boards of Directors in Toronto.

Thomas Penrose

In more than 20 years of professional experience, Thomas has displayed exceptional leadership, communication, problem solving, and analytical skills. An effective project manager and facilitator, Thomas focuses upon delivering project objectives.

Thomas specializes in clinical systems, analyzing current operating procedures and encouraging improvement through process engineering.

Presently, Thomas manages our relationship and projects for New York City’s integrated healthcare delivery system, the largest municipal healthcare organization in the country. In this role he managed the development of a web-based application used to manage chronic disease populations diagnosed with diabetes, asthma, CHF, and depression. He also managed a diverse team of client personnel and consultants in the development and implementation of an e-Referral application.

Previously Thomas was the Technical Director of Customer Connectivity at LabCorp where he managed the development of laboratory HL7 interfaces for LabCorp clients across the United States. He also worked at Misys Healthcare Systems where he managed the development of the Misys EMR clinical application from inception through production release.

Steve Rome

Steve is an accomplished health IT executive with almost two and a half decades of experience in the healthcare space, in both public and private sectors. He has built business and technology successes at the executive and senior leadership levels, had extensive experience with provincial projects, and acted as a trusted advisor to healthcare leadership.

Steve has held senior positions at Canada Health Infoway including Director of Architecture, where he contributed to the development of the first eHealth blueprint for Canada, as well as Group Director, Investment Strategy and Planning where he was responsible for the development of programs to support the investment of provincial eHealth projects.

More recently Steve has been involved in creating provincial strategies, including eHealth, Medication Management / Drug Information Systems, and Diabetes Registries. He has also served as an advisor to many projects at the provincial, regional, LHIN, and hospital level. Steve has also been involved in the private sector working to develop eHealth products and services. Steve has specific knowledge and demonstrated experience of how business goals can be satisfied by technology solutions, and also understands the critical success factors required to ensure their success.

John Ronson, LL.B

John Ronson is a respected strategist, facilitator, governance and public policy expert with over 30 years of experience as a lawyer and management consultant. He has worked for clients across Canada and internationally, leading a variety of assignments to improve healthcare delivery.

As a lawyer, he was a partner with Blake, Cassels and Graydon, one of Canada’s leading law firms. Among many engagements, he led a team of lawyers acting for the Province of Ontario in the creation of Teranet – a public-private partnership to transform the land registration system for the province. A ground-breaking venture, Teranet has revolutionized land registration and information systems in Ontario and elsewhere. In his career, John led numerous engagements including the development of the Regional Cancer Program model for Cancer Care Ontario and the Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Strategic Plan for Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. His e-Health consulting work has included assignments for Canada Health Infoway, the Governments of Alberta and Ontario, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and at least seven of Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks. John also has an excellent understanding of government and government relations, developed in part by the two years he spent as Chief of Staff to the Minister of Health for the Province of Ontario.

John is a graduate of Queen’s University (B.A. and LLB) and the Institute of Corporate Directors. He has served as a Director of Teranet, Waterfront Toronto, the Canadian Cancer Society and a number of other organizations.

Cecilia Ryan, BSc., M.B.A., CHE, PMP

Cecilia is Vice President, Professional Services for TELUS Health Solutions, with 30 years of healthcare and information systems related experience in both private and public sectors.

She has firsthand experience in the delivery of patient care and has led organizational level projects in the area of business process re-engineering, workflow and documentation analysis, organizational restructuring, resource utilization, workload and performance measurement, quality assurance and information systems implementation.

Cecilia possesses a broad knowledge of current trends in the healthcare industry and the impact of these trends on health service and community service delivery. Her wide-ranging professional experience in the health service sector is complemented by her leadership skills and proven ability to develop excellent working relationships with staff at all levels and client personnel.

Her strengths include the ability to foster a team environment, motivate others towards the achievement of objectives and to communicate effectively with individuals from all levels within an organization.

Cecilia holds an Honours Bachelors of Science (Dietetics) from University of Ottawa and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Concordia University. She is also a Certified Health Executive (CHE) and a Project Management Professional (PMP). Recently Cecilia joined the Board of Directors for the Information, Communication and Technology Council; a not-for-profit Board funded by HRDC to provide research and information on Canada’s human resources.

Adrian Tiganila

Adrianhas combined his software engineering and senior hospital IT management experience towards the successful delivery of complex healthcare integration projects over the last 20 years.

He has been providing executive leadership services for the electronic child health network (eCHN) of Ontario for the last 12 years. As the project Chief Technology Officer, he manages eCHN’s multidisciplinary operations and development teams. Adrian led the team that designed and developed the eCHN solution and is responsible for the delivery of eCHN’s services to thousands of paediatric clinical users across the province as well as continued growth of the solution.

His areas of practice include IM/IT/eHealth strategy execution, management of medium to large multidisciplinary professional services teams, budget planning and management, management of solution architecture and development resources, executive reporting, privacy and security services.

Joseph Wagner, MPA, FHIMSS

Joe is an accomplished information services and healthcare management professional with 25 years of experience in implementing and managing healthcare information systems. He was most recently employed with the fifth largest public healthcare system in the United States.

Joe’s five years of experience as the Vice President and CIO of a major Florida hospital district allowed him to become an expert in managing complex and demanding projects. Joe coordinated and led large, diverse teams of professionals from four hospitals, hundreds of physicians and the Governor appointed Board of Directors to consensus on clinical and business applications and their budgets.

Joe is a HIMSS Fellow and is currently the President Elect for the HIMSS New York Chapter. Joe is very active in state and national HIE initiatives. Joe was selected by the HIMSS National Board of Directors to serve a two year post on the National HIE committee. The Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) Steering Committee provides leadership within HIMSS in the promotion and advancement of health information exchange and related activities. This committee supports HIMSS activities on the national, state and local levels as well as HIMSS advocacy efforts in legislative, regulatory and industry related issues.

Joanne Walker

Joanne has 20 years of healthcare informatics experience as a project manager, IT Director and consultant in the both the public and private sectors. She has experience with a wide variety of clinical information systems and has managed large scale system implementation projects in community hospitals, academic teaching institutions and provincially.

Joanne has a proven record of implementing large healthcare initiatives and a passion for motivating teams and bringing people together for a shared purpose to achieve complex change. She has a demonstrated ability, through province-wide projects, to effectively manage stakeholders from steering committees to project teams in a collaborative manner. Her detailed knowledge and understanding of access to care issues makes her an invaluable asset to clients seeking practical, sustainable solutions.

Joanne received her B.Sc. in Health Information Science from the University of Victoria.

Dave Wattling, CMC, ISP, ICD.D

Dave is a senior information technology consultant and accomplished entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience. His experience has allowed him to provide strategic, practical counsel and quality assurance to client engagements.

Dave brings his general leadership and business development skills to guide the Transformation Services team. This team provides the talent and services necessary for healthcare organizations to realize the maximum value from their investment in advanced information systems.

Before joining TELUS, Dave was Managing Partner and co-founder of a niche healthcare management consultancy of some 200 professionals operating across Canada and in the US and UK. In this role he was responsible for corporate management, business development and oversight of the US, UK and Western Canadian operations.

Prior to that, Dave spent 20 years building a number of successful businesses with healthcare as the primary focus. His background is truly multi-faceted – software and service, large and small business, North American and European venues.

Dave is an award-winning management consultant with significant healthcare expertise. He is the Founding Chair of ITAC-Health, Canada’s trade association for healthcare IT firms, and he is the Associate Editor of Healthcare Information Management & Communications Canada. Dave holds the Certified Management Consultant, Information Systems Professional and ICD Certified Director designations.

Mike Yackanich

Mike is a healthcare IT professional with over 20 years of experience. He has in-depth experience architecting, implementing, and maintaining highly complex and scalable systems.

Mike provides technical team management and hands-on expertise for real-time application integration, software development, and web/portal-based infrastructure and development. As an IT manager for over 10 years at the fifth largest public healthcare network in the US, Mike was responsible for management and direction for a wide range of technologies – including data and voice networks, application development, web/portal design and development, and application integration.

Most recently Mike has focused his passion and skills on the healthcare integration space. He has spent the last four years as a technology advisor to the integration services department of the largest public, not-for-profit healthcare network in the United States. In addition he has worked with numerous other healthcare providers across the United States and United Kingdom – providing integration strategy and related services.