Innovation Through Collaboration: How Brooke Army Medical Center’s CIO Aligns Tech With Clinical Need

Col. Chani Cordero explains how deep partnerships with nursing leaders and others are driving targeted innovations that improve care and conserve resources.

At Brooke Army Medical Center—home to the military’s only Level I trauma center—Col. Chani Cordero, CIO, is making nurse-IT collaboration a cornerstone of digital transformation. One standout example: a tele-sitter program that replaced dozens of one-on-one monitoring roles with remote observation units. The initiative, born from a nursing-IT partnership, has not only helped prevent thousands of patient falls but also freed up critical staff time in a resource-constrained environment.



“It was definitely a collaboration between the nursing division and my IT team,” Cordero said. “With the industry-wide staffing shortages after the pandemic, the question was: how can we use our existing people more efficiently and still ensure patient safety?”

Launched as a proof of concept with 25 units, the tele-sitter program achieved measurable success. According to Cordero, it prevented nearly 3,000 falls in its first year, yielding both improved clinical outcomes and significant cost avoidance. By eliminating the need for constant bedside sitters, the system saved an estimated 60 full-time equivalents.

The project has opened the door to expanded use cases. “We’re exploring how to apply this for elopement prevention, patient mobility, even bed management,” she said. “Nurses have also given us great feedback on the hardware. We’re now looking at shrinking the footprint to address space constraints.”



Just as importantly, the tele-sitter initiative exemplifies how Cordero’s team proactively engages clinicians. In some cases, operational leaders bring problems to IT; in others, her team introduces solutions based on external benchmarking and peer networking.

“Attending conferences and staying connected with other CIOs gives you insight into what’s working elsewhere,” she said. “You take those ideas to your users and ask: would this help?”

Cordero applied that same model to a virtual nursing pilot launched with support from an officer temporarily embedded in a civilian health system. “We had a discharge lounge that wasn’t being used much,” she said. “By virtualizing that workflow, we let patients discharge from their beds, freeing up nurses for other tasks. It’s a win-win.”

Governance Anchored in Strategic Alignment

Cordero’s initiatives may be clinically impactful, but they don’t happen without discipline. At the core of her process is a governance structure that evaluates each proposal on three fronts: alignment with strategic goals, cybersecurity readiness, and resource availability.

“We use what we call the TART process—the Technical Assessment Review Tool,” she explained. “We bring in engineers, cyber staff, and the business owner to go through a structured questionnaire. First and foremost, we ask: what problem are we solving?”

This process includes a thorough scan for duplicative capabilities. “We don’t want to bring in a new system if something already in place can do the job,” she said.

Her governance structure is designed to mirror the rigor of private-sector organizations. “People ask me about my IT strategic plan, and I tell them—I don’t have one,” she said. “My organization has a strategic plan. My role is to build an action plan that supports it.”

That clarity has helped elevate IT from a reactive department to a strategic partner. When Brooke identified a goal to enhance communications, Cordero aligned her team’s efforts behind that mandate, ultimately securing capital funds for infrastructure like a distributed antenna system. “It sounds basic, but before you can deploy mobile tools, you need cellular access everywhere in the facility,” she said. “Without that, innovation falls flat.”

She also uses visual planning tools to communicate IT bandwidth and avoid the perception tha...