Meet Our Member: Vitaly Herasevich, MD, PhD, MSc, CPHIMS

Vitaly Herasevich, MD, PhD, MSc, CPHIMS, is assistant professor of medicine and anesthesiology in the department of anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic, and associate program director of newly established Clinical Informatics Fellowship program. His interest in the area of medical informatics spans more than 17 years. With specific interest in applied clinical informatics in intensive care and science of healthcare delivery, Herasevich studies and develops novel clinical integrated solutions including real-time dashboards, tasks specific viewers, “sniffers” (alerts) and analytical warehouses in support of patient-centered decision-making and outcome reporting. He is the co-inventor of AWARE (Ambient Warning and Response Evaluation), a software environment for patient centered and workflow based EHR viewers. Herasevich is a member of the HIMSS Physicians Committee.

HIMSS: How did you become involved with HIMSS?
Herasevich: Health IT is heavily based on vendor-driven solutions. Since my academic interest is primarily in the area of clinical informatics, it quickly became obvious to me that HIMSS is an important organization in my field.

HIMSS: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your involvement with HIMSS?
Herasevich: Medical informatics is not about computers – it is about people. The most rewarding aspect of my involvement with HIMSS is my interaction with people.  The variety of backgrounds and expertise of HIMSS members provides me with a unique opportunity to see clinical informatics problems from different points of view.

HIMSS: Please describe some of the highlights from the physicians’ IT symposium planning committee for HIMSS14. What were some of the greatest challenges and successes?
Herasevich: The highlights include the enthusiasm with which the planning committee went about its work; the excellent coordination from HIMSS staff; the fantastic leadership provided by Drs. Louis Diamond and Carol Steltenkamp; and last but not least, the outstanding presentation from our speakers. It was challenge to fit the schedule into the one day program.

HIMSS: What have been some of the greatest achievements you’ve seen as a member of the Usability Workgroup? Greatest challenges?
Herasevich: We started the Usability Workgroup during a face-to-face Physicians Committee meeting last fall.  We formed a focus group with our first goal  to understand the barriers to improved EHR usability. In this short period, we prepared and distributed the “HIMSS Physician Community EHR Usability Pain Point Survey” to the broader HIMSS community. The results of this will be available soon. What was greatest challenge? It will not surprise anyone—time.

HIMSS: Please describe the usability resource brochure that you are developing.
Herasevich: The usability brochure is not intended to be a comprehensive review article or whitepaper on EHR usability. It is a brief entry guideline to the field presented as a short collection of annotated references to the most prominent, available resources (web, documents, reviews, original articles). We envision our members using this as a, “self-introduction cheat-sheet” to the world of EHR usability.

HIMSS: What advice would you give professionals just entering the healthcare or IT field?
Herasevich: If you are an IT professional—work closely with clinicians. If you are clinician—find yourself an IT professional and work closely with them. That partnership is very powerful.

Originally posted by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HiMSS). Read Original Article.