Dee Emon, VP & CIO, Wake Forest Baptist Health, Chapter 2

When Dee Emon was promoted to the CIO role at Wake Forest Baptist Health in 2014, it was the first time she held that particular title — but she was no stranger to IT. In fact, Emon — a nurse by training — had spent the past decade with “one foot on each side of the fence.” As a result, she was able to bring to the CIO role an understanding of IT’s role in supporting patient care, something she’s always worked hard to convey to her team. In this interview, Emon talks about the toughest and most rewarding parts of being a CIO, how she has benefited from her experience in quality and performance improvement, and the work her team is doing with patient engagement and population health. She discusses the importance of building a strong network, how she has made cybersecurity education a priority, and what it’s like to work with Chad Eckes.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* A “non-traditional CIO” with 1 foot in IT, 1 in nursing

* From CCIO to CIO

* Helping IT understand “how we support patient care”

* Cybersecurity education from the FBI — “It really does help ensure we’re minimizing our risks.”

* Background in quality & performance improvement

* “We’re seeing more and more nurses gravitate to IT.”

* Moving the needle



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Bold Statements

The biggest learning opportunities I’ve had coming into the department full-time, at a time where cybersecurity is so imperative, is building a stronger background in IT security. That’s been a bit of a challenge and a growth opportunity for me.

As technology continues to be more and more relied on in the healthcare space, it’s become imperative to continue to tie what the IT employees do every day into patient care.

It’s a balance of securing your perimeter yet making sure that you’re not so restrictive that you aren’t able to execute on the mission of the organization.

It’s great to have people that know how the work is done in the clinical or academic areas, who really can sit down and be that bridge between how nurses work in a certain environment, and interface that with the system to best leverage it to support efficient workflows.

When you look at how do you move the needle on quality performance or any type of process improvement, there are a lot of ways to leverage IT technologies to get people to do that in a standardized method, which makes it easy to really know whether or not you’re improving.

Gamble:  Looking at your background, you’ve been in your current role for about two and a half years?

Emon:  Yes, just about three years. I’ve been here since the spring of 2014.

Gamble:  This was your first role really on the IT side, is that correct?

Emon:  Yeah, it is actually. I’m a non-traditional CIO. I’m actually a nurse by background, but really started getting into the IT space back in 2004 when I did my first implementation of an EHR back in Wisconsin. Ever since that time, I’ve had one foot in the IT camp as I’ve been in my nursing leadership roles. I actually did the startup for an all-digital hospital in 2005, which gave me a very broad view of IT — and not just on the clinical informatics front, but really understanding more the hardware server database aspects with that hospital startup. And ever since then, because of my background, at every organization I’ve worked in I have been, by de facto, the person that was volunteered to help or be the business sponsor on IT implementations for new software solutions.

Also through that time, I’ve done a lot of work with really tying in how do we improve our quality metrics and patient ...