May 28, 2019
Dr. Christopher Leonard started his clinical career as a general surgeon and took advantage of opportunities in medical informatics. Initially, however, he was not aware that what he was doing was called informatics.
He was simply trying to standardize and improve wound care for his patients. But as he implemented protocols, integrated them into the EHR, and shared his improvements with others, he took on the role of medical informaticist. He ultimately joined a large wound care physician management company. Now, as its chief information officer, he leads the team that designs and develops its proprietary EHR.
Chris is a graduate of the University of Georgia, Kansas City, School of Osteopathic Medicine. He completed his general surgery residency at the Medical College of Georgia, and Master's in Health Informatics at Northwestern University.
Chris provides a view into his transition from very satisfied general surgeon to Chief Information Officer. And he gets into the details regarding what informatics is, and how it has evolved since he began pursuing it in earnest. Today's episode is Part 1 of this 2-part interview.
I’ll be presenting Part 2 next week. In it, Chris expains how he pursued his interest in informatics, acquired more pertinent skills, and eventually became CIO of his practice. He also gets into how informatics has evolved, and the common roles that he sees currently. He then gets into some detail about how to pursue an informatics career in today’s environment.
You can find links to the resources mentioned in today’s interview, and a transcript of the interview, by going to the show notes at vitalpe.net/episode091. The transcript will include both Parts 1 and 2, so it will be twice as long as the usual transcript.
This episode is sponsored by the U. of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA program, and by my own course, How to Pursue a Career as a Medical Science Liaison. You can learn more about it by going to vitalpe.net/mslcourse. But don’t delay, I’m closing the course on June 29, about four weeks after this interview is released.