Saad Chaudhry’s Leadership Journey, Part 1: From Maryland to Dubai

In a few weeks, Saad Chaudhry will embark on the opportunity of a lifetime when he becomes the first-ever enterprise CIO for Saudi German Hospitals Group, a multinational health system based in Dubai.

The opportunity, however, almost didn’t happen. Being a diligent associate CIO, Chaudhry was hesitant to click on an email about a CIO job in the United Arab Emirates; “I thought it was spam,” he said. In fact, it wasn’t until he received a phone call that he realized it was a legitimate offer to fulfill a dream to lead an organization on the other side of the world, applying the lessons he has learned during his career.

Recently, healthsystemCIO had a chance to speak with Chaudhry about what made him interested in pursuing the role at Saudi German, how he hopes to leverage his “human leadership” philosophy to drive change; why he isn’t worried about being able to adjust to a new culture; and what he’ll miss most about Anne Arundel.

Chapter 1



* Accepting the CIO role at Saudi German Hospitals Group

* About SGHG – a multinational health system with construction and real estate entitles

* “It’s a very interesting paradigm.”

* Personal history living abroad: “I’ve been exposed to many cultures.”

* Applying best practices in health IT adoption globally – “Why not help each other out?”

* Saudi German’s goal to standardize

* “You’re not just dealing with technology; you’re dealing with geopolitics.”



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Bold Statements

They’ve never had an enterprise CIO before. They’ve run their facilities on a regional basis, on a local basis, and they believe now is the time to standardize their technology footprint.

I’m excited about the idea of working hand-in-hand with the operational side of healthcare; with the architects, the CMOs, and the CEOs of the hospitals to ingrain technology in every facet of the process.

I believe if you take care of the human side, everything else falls into place, including change management and technology implementation.

I saw the opportunity for myself and others like me to be able to do that — to share our best practices, everything we’ve gone through in the past decade here in the United States, and allow these other countries to learn from us, and perhaps leapfrog us.

They started looking for a CIO who had that background of thought. Not necessarily somebody who’s been a CIO across national boundaries or has experience in that specific part of the world, but somebody who thinks globally.

Gamble:  Thank you, Saad, for taking some time to speak with us.

Chaudhry:  Absolutely, I’m glad to talk with you.

 

Gamble:  You are currently associate CIO at Anne Arundel Health System, but you’re stepping down from that role to pursue something quite different. Why don’t you start by talking about the role that you’re taking on?

Chaudhry:  Sure. I’m currently the associate CIO here at Anne Arundel Health System, based out of Annapolis, Maryland. We are a regional health system. After about two years in this role, I’ve accepted a role with Saudi German Hospitals Group, an international organization that is based out of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. It’s a multinational health system; they have about 15 facilities, and about five additional facilities that are in a various state of development or construction. They’re spread out everywhere from Egypt to Morocco to the Saudi Peninsula and United Arab Emirates, of course, and they’re going into Southeast Asia now as well.

The interesting thing about this organization is while they’ve been around since the 1980s, they encompass the entire healthcare vertical — they also have a construction company that builds the hospitals,